Once again, I have had the distinct pleasure to work with a Signum University MA student through their thesis process. Jeffrey Wade has completed his thesis on “Unveiling Hope: Do the Inhabitants of Arda Know How Their Own Story Ends?” You can see the full abstract and a bio by Rev. Wade below, but I think you will be intrigued by the elegance of this question.
Readers of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings may be surprised to know that there are not many references to the creation stories in The Silmarillion. And yet, there is a narrative of hope in other parts of the Middle-earth materials, including the Ainulindalë in The Silmarillion and the unique dialogue, “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth.”
Imagine for a moment that we are the people inside the worlds of Frodo and Bilbo and their gangs and neighbours at the close of the Third Age. What do we know about that creation myth’s narrative of hope? What do we believe will happen at the end of days–even if we couldn’t fully articulate it? Do we have any reason to be hopeful, or is it just one weary age after another? How do we think the story ends?
Then, effectively shutting off (for a moment) the information in the dozens of volumes we have out here in the primary world of Earth in the Age of the Machines–and even setting aside Tolkien’s own beliefs, religion, and social imaginary–we return to the tales and epics in the secondary world of Arda and see what we can find. Do the inhabitants of Arda know their own eschatology?
Very cool idea, isn’t it? What results is a rich paper and an enlightening conversation.
You are welcome to join us for this free, online discussion on Wednesday, June 4th, a 5:00pm ET (2:00pm PT, 6:00pm Atlantic, 10:00pm UK Time, 12:00 midnight in Madagascar, and 6:00am in Japan). Simply register here. Following a presentation of his ideas by Jeffrey, I will provide some questions, and then we’ll open it up to those joining online throughout the world.
Part of the great fun of teaching graduate students is the work they produce in their thesis writing. I have been able to supervise projects about medieval models in C.S. Lewis’s science fiction (here and here), symbiosis in Octavia E. Butler, and several Tolkien studies, including “Speech-acts and Sub-creation,” “The Nonviolent Countercurrents in Tolkien’s Epic of War,” the figure of Galadriel and Tolkien’s mythopoeia, and an autoethnographic approach to Tolkien’s “Sub-creative Vision.” I have also been a second reader on projects about a vampiric reading of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and “Draconic Diction: Truth and Lies in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Old Speech.”
“Unveiling Hope: Do the Inhabitants of Arda Know How Their Own Story Ends?”
Abstract
This thesis concerns itself with the question of whether the inhabitants of Tolkien’s Arda possess an awareness of their creation’s eschatological end. It is not a study of Christian doctrine, Tolkien, or outside analysis. It is a study of how myth carries the weight of a telos through music, memory, and hope. This thesis’ conceit is the same as Tolkien’s, the entire legendarium has been recorded and passed down from the Valar to the Elves and subsequently through the Hobbits. Therefore, all of Arda is revealed to be undergirded by the Music of the Ainur, which is more than a creation hymn – it is a sustaining breath, echoing through waters, songs, and the hearts of every individual. This Music is heard beside hearths, in dreams before perilous roads, and wherever water is found. Drawing from the legendarium, with modern scholarship simply providing context, this study argues that Arda is alive and looking forward to a final eucatastrophe where all sad things come untrue.
Biography of Rev. Jeffrey Wade
Jeffrey E. Wade, Concordia Seminary, M.Div. ’14, became a student again shortly after discovering Signum University. What started as a hope to be a better reader, researcher, and writer soon blossomed into enrollment in the MA program with the desire to better communicate and inculcate hope using Tolkien’s legendarium as a foundation. Bringing hope is Jeffrey’s primary vocation as a pastor and head of school in Michigan. When not teaching, conversing, or residing in a good book, Jeffrey spends his time outdoors with his wife and three living children.
Direct registration link: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Gefl3FQkQ1WiqFb9iUnivA#/registration
Photo: “The Sea of Rhûn” by Ted Nasmith
Book Cover: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Ainulindalë, a Graphic Novel by Evan Palmer
A Pilgrim in Narnia 
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Enjoyed this presentation very much!
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Thanks!
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I did not see this in time – and probably would have shied away from the ‘mechanics’ of participation, if I had, but it sounds very interesting and I am glad to see that it is already available for viewing at the Signum University YouTube channel! (It is good to think that it continued into the Feast of St. Boniface in the time zone where he was murdered in his work bringing the good news to German pagans.)
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Thanks David, I appreciate you staying connected!
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Prof. Dickieson,
The perspective, or critical lens that Wade offers as his take on “Lord of the Rings”, counts as interesting food for thought for at least two reasons. The first can be chalked up as a simple matter of novelty. Whatever else can be said about his thesis, the fact that no one has ever thought to approach the books from the particular “lens” that Prof. Wade does is enough to grant us another way of looking both at and along the path of the beam, to borrow terminology from both C.S. Lewis and Stephen King. In terms of looking at the beam of light cast by “Unveiling Hope”, Prof. Wade’s conception of how the inhabitants of Middle Earth relate to their own Eschatology (for lack of a better word at the moment) raises some further interesting speculative possibilities, even with just the bare bones information provided by an abstract summary. Stepping outside of Tolkien’s secondary world with Wade’s ideas in mind can lead one to ponder an interesting question. How do Frodo or Bilbo’s knowledge of their own history, and the philosophy and beliefs undergirding form a thematic correlate with our Prime Reality?
In asking this question, I’m going back to more familiar ground, here. In particular, I’m curious what a possible relation between how the characters within the book come to know the past of their imaginary realm connects to how we, as real flesh and blood humans so the same in actual life? In other words, what do the efforts of an imaginary figure like Bilbo attempting to arrive at a greater understanding of his world by compiling the Red Book equate to with similar practices outside the text proper? It is this precise curiosity that a mere cursory description of Wade’s thesis has planted in my mind. I think a lot of the reason for that is down to the kind of Mythopoeia connected books I’ve been pouring through lately.
To make a long story short, it’s sort of left me at the point where I’m curious to see how possible it is to connect both Tolkien, Lewis, and a lot of the Inklings as a whole with two related strands of literary theory. For a long I’ve become interested in seeing if it’s possible to establish a connection between the Inklings and (1) the Humanist ethos of the Middle Ages and the English Renaissance from, say, Aquinas to Milton, along with (2) the possible inheritance of these earlier Traditions that were received by later Romantic talents, such as Coleridge and Wordsworth. The idea that Tolkien and Lewis fit along just such an artistic and philosophic historical continuum is one of those ideas that just makes a certain amount of sense to me. Like these are all the missing pieces which, I don’t know whether or not it completes the entire puzzle of their work. Though I’d argue such a rubric goes a fair way toward granting both fans and critics a better sense of the context of their thinking, both as individual authors, and as part of a group
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Getting back to this idea in connection with Wade’s thesis, and borrowing some further critical terminology, this time from T.S. Eliot. If we posit Tolkien as an Individual Talent, one who is aware of, borrows from, and makes a contribution to the Tradition of Humanism as practiced and passed on by the likes of Dante, Chaucer, and the Beowulf Poet, then perhaps this adds another supportive layer the Wade’s thinking on the importance of how Tolkien’s characters search out and related to the discovered meaning of their past. On the thematic, real world level, seeing Tolkien as something of an heir to the pedagogical practices of educational Humanists like Desiderius Erasmus might help create a neat symbolic link to the importance Tolkien attaches to his hero’s efforts to understand their history, and how it influences them on both a macro and micro level. It may even be possible to figure out how the author’s experience of the First World War could act of a catalyst for linking his schooling in the Humanism of the Renaissance and Middles Ages to his work as an artist. Tolkien saw the world loose its mind at first hand. One of the after effects of this was the need to see is he could justify his way of thinking in the changed environment of Postwar England.
I’ve said elsewhere that the ultimate meaning of “Lord of the Rings” can boil down to a single statement. Romanticism must come of age. Tolkien came away convinced that there was still value in the Romantic strain of Humanism he imbibed first from his schooling, and then from the books he liked to read. In time, this very idea of bringing the intertwined notions behind Humanism and Romanticism up to date for the modern world might have become one of the goals he set for himself as an educator. If there’s any plausibility to this line of thought, then it becomes easy to see how it’s reflected in his writings.
Just as Bilbo tries to set all of the information of Middle Earth down in the Red Book, so Tolkien ultimately found himself engaged in a latter day, Romanticized form of the Humanist project. Taking the scattered fragments of the past, and finding a way to preserve it so that others will be driven to hunt down the important hints and clues that history, literature, and learning in general can make available to a well attentive mind. At any rate, there’s one way of looking at it. Just a thought, really. If I had to offer any plausibility to this assumption, then I would have to point to something Tom Shippey said in “Author of the Century”. “I remain convinced,” he says, “that Tolkien cannot be properly discussed without some considerable awareness of the ancient works and the ancient world which he tried to revive (xxvii)”. Still, this is just the musings of a random fanboy. Though with any luck, it amounts to interesting food for thought.
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Dear ChrisC,
Thanks for this – there is indeed food for thought, here!
A couple curious tangent squiggles come to mind –
Which Hobbit knew, when – if at all – how old the Elves they were talking to, were – and what of the ages of Gandalf, Radagast, and Saruman? What effect did learning something of the age of Elrond Half-elven have on such things?
In the unfinished Lost Road and its sort of recast and/or successor, The Notion Club Papers, modern people experience some kinds of mental space and time travel, seeming to get first-hand experience of the past, variously relating to things they know to have survived for centuries – not least Old English poems and names.
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