Tag Archives: literature

A Brace of Tolkien Posts for his 130th Birthday (#TolkienBirthdayToast)

Posted on January 3, 2022 by Brenton Dickieson

As J.R.R. Tolkien was born about 68,374,080 hours ago, the Tolkien Society is once again raising a toast to the Professor on his birthday, 3 January 2022 (see here). After Bilbo left the Shire on his eleventy-first birthday in The … Continue reading →

Posted in News & Links, Reviews | Tagged art, Bilbo, Blogging, books, Digital Humanities, film adaptation, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Garth, Leaf by Niggle, literature, Lord of the Rings, Mythopoeia, Peter Jackson, The Hobbit, Tolkien BIrthday Toast, Tolkien Society | 3 Comments

Christmas With J.R.R. Tolkien: The Father Christmas Letters

Posted on December 25, 2021 by Brenton Dickieson

My little 2015 piece on J.R.R. Tolkien’s funny and endearing Father Christmas Letters has had quite a spin around the internet this week. I cannot think of a better Christmas note for you, dear readers of A Pilgrim in Narnia, … Continue reading →

Posted in Letters, Memorable Quotes | Tagged art, art of letter writing, children's literature, Christmas, Christopher Tolkien, fantasy, Father Christmas, J.R.R. Tolkien, letters, literature, Lord of the Rings, myth, Santa Claus, The Hobbit, writing | 14 Comments

“A Sense of the Season”: C.S. Lewis’ Birthday Pivot and the Cambridge Inaugural Address (Updated 2021)

Posted on November 29, 2021 by Brenton Dickieson

In the autumn of 1954 at the age of 56, C.S. Lewis was at the height of his academic career. With a chance to speak to the academic community at Cambridge and the listening world on the BBC, Lewis used … Continue reading →

Posted in Lewis Biography, Original Research, Thoughtful Essays | Tagged anthropology, autoethnography, BBC Talks, C.S. Lewis, De Descriptione Temporum, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, F.R. Leavis, I.A. Richards, J.R.R. Tolkien, literature, Mere Christianity, Narnia, OHEL, Reflections on the Psalms, Surprised by Joy, The Discarded Image, theology, WWI | 3 Comments

Accidental Riddles in the Invisible Dark (Throwback Thursday, and The Hobbit Read-Along, and Hobbit Day)

Posted on September 23, 2021 by Brenton Dickieson

At A Pilgrim in Narnia, we have an occasional feature called “Throwback Thursday.” By raiding either my own blog-hoard or someone else’s, I find a blog post from the past and throw it back out into the digital world. This … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged Bilbo Baggins, books, Eucatastrophe, film adaptation, Gollum, Hobbit Day, Hobbit Read-Along, J.R.R. Tolkien, literature, myth, Peter Jackson, Providence, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings | 16 Comments

“The Poetry of Lucy Maud Montgomery” and the Critical Virtue and Vice of Editors

Posted on June 7, 2021 by Brenton Dickieson

One of the earlier biographers of C.S. Lewis, Chad Walsh once said that although Lewis was not a poet of greatness, he was (and remains) an interesting poet. This observation is relevant for many of the early-to-mid-20th century authors I … Continue reading →

Posted in L.M. Montgomery | Tagged Benjamin Lefebvre, C.S. Lewis, Canadian literature, J.R.R. Tolkien, L.M. Montgomery, literature, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Poetry, T.S. Eliot, The Poetry of Lucy Maud Montgomery, The Waste Land, The Watchman and Other Poems | 19 Comments

Affirming Creation in the Lord of the Rings

Posted on April 22, 2021 by Brenton Dickieson

Perhaps it isn’t that surprising that J.R.R. Tolkien’s books are so environmentally sensitive. Like Sam Gamgee, Tolkien loved things that grow and good tilled earth. He loved walks–long walks beyond his garden through English towns and villages and vast, untouched … Continue reading →

Posted in Fictional Worlds, Reflections | Tagged creation, creation care, Earth Day, environment, fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien, Legolas, literature, Lord of the Rings, Matthew Dickerson, The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, Treebeard, WWI | 7 Comments

The Other Reasons I Became a C.S. Lewis Scholar

Posted on March 30, 2021 by Brenton Dickieson

An intriguing, fun, and occasionally perverse part of being a scholar in areas where there is a lively fandom is that I am often asked to tell my “encounter” story. This can be a bit strange in that in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Reflections | Tagged academic writing, C.S. Lewis, Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, culture, J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, L.M. Montgomery, literature, Mere Christianity, Miroslav Volf, N.T. Wright, PhD Research, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sallie McFague, theology, Ursula K. Le Guin | 7 Comments

A Brace of Tolkien Posts for his 129th Birthday

Posted on January 3, 2021 by Brenton Dickieson

To celebrate Tolkien’s twelfthty-ninth (or eleventy-nineteenth–a joke that expires this year) birthday on 3 January 2021, the Tolkien Society is once again raising a toast to the Professor (see here). After Bilbo left the Shire on his eleventy-first birthday in … Continue reading →

“A Sense of the Season”: C.S. Lewis’ Birthday Pivot and the Cambridge Inaugural Address (Updated)

Posted on November 29, 2020 by Brenton Dickieson

In the autumn of 1954 at the age of 56, C.S. Lewis was at the height of his academic career. After nearly two decades of research and writing English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama, this magnum opus intensified … Continue reading →

Tolkien’s “I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size)” in Context: A Note on Books and Their Authors (#hobbitday)

Posted on September 22, 2020 by Brenton Dickieson

I don’t know that there is any more famous J.R.R. Tolkien quote than his claim to, in fact, be a hobbit. It’s really quite a delightful statement and worth quoting more fully: I am in fact a Hobbit (in all … Continue reading →