Episode Details

Tolkien is well known to have been concerned with the internal consistency of his fictional world, from geography to history to language. But he was also concerned with another sort of consistency: metaphysical consistency, not only within the work but between his work and reality (because he did not see the storyteller's task as providing an alternative to reality but an extension of it). Scholars have debated the nature of Tolkien's metaphysics; Jonathan S. McIntosh contends that the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas provides the most fruitful metaphysical lens with which to examine Middle-Earth.

Links

The Flame Imperishable: Tolkien, St. Thomas, and the Metaphysics of Faërie https://angelicopress.org/product/the-flame-imperishable/

Jonathan's Flame Imperishable blog https://jonathansmcintosh.wordpress.com/

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