Tolkien: A Celebration — Intro to Tolkien Scholarship

I’m gradually delving into the world of Tolkien scholarship: what people have written about J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth legendarium.  I previously read one of Matthew Dickerson’s books, Following Gandalf, a good introduction to treatment of themes found in Tolkien’s writing.  Now I’m reading through the essays in Tolkien: A Celebration, essays published shortly after the centenary of Tolkien’s birth (1992, 100 years after his birth), a good sampling of different ideas and directions that people have taken in academic study of J.R.R. Tolkien.  Indeed the possibilities seem endless, with what different people find to relate to in Tolkien’s writings.  Podcast episodes also provide introduction to various authors in this field, such as this Amon Sul podcast I recently listened to; the author, Dr. Lisa Coutras (Tolkien’s Theology of Beauty: Majesty, Splendor, and Transcendence in Middle-Earth mentions that Tolkien: A Celebration was her introduction to Tolkien scholarship.

Tolkien, as is so well known, “cordially disliked” allegory, and distinguished formal allegory from application — preferring the latter, in the imagination and application of the reader, instead of the single, particular meaning dictated by the author (as in formal allegories).  The essays in this volume certainly expand on the area of application; as generally the case with essay collections, some of these are more helpful than others.

The second essay in this volume, “Over the Chasm of Fire: Christian Heroism in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings,” by Stratford Caldecott, includes basic summary of events in The Silmarillion (for those who may not be familiar or have forgotten these stories), and offers insights regarding the loss of Beren’s hand:

Beren must lose his hand before Luthien can put hers in its place.  That is the way grace works: our own hand, our own ability to grasp and act, can only take us so far.  In reality as in story, life itself must be renounced, every sacrifice accepted, for the sake of love, before love can finally conquer even death, and man be united with grace beyond the grave.

and then, relating this to the account of Frodo and Sam at Mount Doom:

The desire to grasp is finally renounced; the grasping Shadow falls into the Fire and is forgiven.  Frodo has lost a finger, and humble Sam may see him as the great hero, but by that remark and the spirit it reveals it is Sam himself who is conformed to Beren One-Hand; Sam, not Frodo, whose touch will bring the Shire back to life in a golden age.

The next essay, “Modernity in Middle Earth,” is actually about how Tolkien expressed a concern that so many of us resonate with, getting to the heart of the things of most value, versus the progressive values of moderns and post-moderns.  The essay points out what is behind the most common criticism of Lord of the Rings: the dominant charge against Tolkien has been that of escapism and/or reaction; and the overwhelming majority of these critics, as is evident from their other writings, subscribe to the very same values of modernity — statism, scientism, economism, and secularism — which are implicated in the pathological dynamic that so alarmed Tolkien, and still deeply worries his readers today.  This can certainly be applied, as a way of understanding ordinary people around us who do not “get” Tolkien — as with a close family member who outwardly professes Christianity, yet has a scientific, 21st century technology and secondary causes, modernist outlook on life, and has read The Lord of the Rings but doesn’t see anything of particular worth there, preferring current-day authors of secular novels.

Another essay (“The Lord of the Rings — A Catholic View”) comes up with a rather unusual application — at least one I had never considered.  Isildur can be compared to three failed monarchs who held to the traditional construct of Church and State at a time when modernism was coming in strong —  Charles I of England (Anglican in early 17th century England), Louis XVI (Catholic, late 18th century monarch during the French Revolution), and Nicholas II (last of the Tsars, Eastern Orthodox, early 20th century), as another ruler who desired to uphold the traditional kingdom, yet had a personal weakness or flaw that brought about his downfall.  Granted that Catholics want to claim Tolkien as “one of our own,” but I tend to agree with others who have observed that what Tolkien created — though as Tolkien said it was a Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, more consciously in the revisions — was not something that put his Catholicism up front and center.  As the Amon Sul podcast host says, it’s great that Catholics want to promote Tolkien, but that’s not the main point about Tolkien and what he accomplished.

Some of the essays are written at the popular level (such as the opening one from George Sayers link: previous post), others at a somewhat higher reading level, and a few at a more academic level–notably, The Art of the Parable, which I’ll need to reread to fully appreciate its content.  The essay on time and death is also really good, noting the sadness and the pride that entered the elves, unfallen beings who nevertheless were not fully content and desired the higher station of the Valar:  an essay that brings to mind the wonderful fact of Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection, and the difference in the Middle Earth stories as a time before those events.

I’m just over halfway through Tolkien: A Celebration, and enjoying the many different ideas, applications, and different literary features of interest within Tolkien’s legendarium.  a

 

George Sayer’s Friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien

I read George Sayer’s biography of C.S. Lewis, Jack: C.S. Lewis and His Times, many years ago.  I’m now reading Joseph Pearce’s Tolkien: A Celebration, a collection of 15 essays that begins with Sayer’s “Recollections of J.R.R. Tolkien.”  While reading, I was reminded of George Sayer’s great writing style, straightforward and conversational, with lots of anecdotes and character descriptions.  This essay provides a portrait and life sketch of J.R.R. Tolkien, from one of his friends –and thus a much more engaging and positive view than that of Humphrey Carpenter’s biography from the 1970s.

I have come across online references saying that Humphrey Carpenter really did not like J.R.R. Tolkien.  That distance comes out in the overall tone and the lack of friendliness regarding his subject, in J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography – a very objective read with lots of biographical information, but not as heartwarming as what Sayer shared.  It’s also interesting to see that in the collection of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien himself mentioned his friend George Sayer, on three separate occasions — whereas Carpenter was a brief acquaintance near the end of his life, and never mentioned in Tolkien’s letters.  Yet it happened that the family asked Carpenter, soon after Tolkien’s death, to do a biography; Carpenter had his own biases, against Tolkien’s religion for one thing, but the family wanted someone who could write an official biography.  Sayer apparently did not then have the writer-publisher experience that was desired; his biography of C.S. Lewis, the only book he is really known for, was published years later, in 1988.  Yet I think a Sayer biography of Tolkien would have been much better than Carpenter’s.  What George Sayer shares in his essay is in agreement with much of what I already knew about Tolkien, but comes across in a way that endears the man to us, as someone that Sayer really cared about as his friend.

Describing a time he went on a hike with the Lewis brothers and Tolkien with wit and humor, we hear about C.S. Lewis’ opinion of Tolkien:

“He’s a great man, but not our sort of walker. He doesn’t seem able to talk and walk at the same time. He dawdles and then stops completely when he has something interesting to say. Warnie finds this particularly irritating.”

I soon found that the brothers liked to walk hard and fast for half an hour, a period which Warnie would time, for Jack never worse or, as far as I know, owned a watch. Then they would have what they called a ‘soak’. This meant sitting or lying down for the time it took to have a cigarette. Then the other man would shoulder the pack, which was their name for the rucksack, and they would go on walking hard for another half-hour.

[The arrangement for Sayer to walk with Tolkien] It worked really well. Tolkien seemed glad to be left behind by the Lewis brothers, whom he described to me as ‘ruthless walkers, very ruthless indeed’. … He also liked to stop to look at the trees, flowers, birds and insects that we passed. He would not have suited anyone who, like the Lewis brothers, walked partly for health, in order to get vigorous exercise. But it delighted me. He talked so well that I was happy to do nothing but listen. …. He talked faster than anyone of his age that I have known, and in a curious fluttering way. …. He knew more natural history than I did, certainly far more than the Lewises, and kept coming out with pieces of curious information about the plants that we came across.

Sayer even remembered a couple examples of the plant information Tolkien gave him.  Later recollections from Sayer fit well with what comes out in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien from the early 1950s, when Tolkien was trying to get Lord of the Rings along with The Silmarilion published.  Tolkien was focused only on that, his own troubles, and for a while become quite depressed.  Sayer and his wife spent some time with Tolkien, and found that introducing Tolkien to an early-technology tape recorder helped Tolkien snap out of his depression.  Sayer noted the risk he took in his friendship, since he knew how Tolkien hated technology, but Tolkien was so depressed that he took the chance.  Tolkien first recorded The Lord’s Prayer in Gothic–“to cast out the devil that was sure to be in it since it was a machine.”  This was not just whimsy.  All of life for him was part of a cosmic conflict between the forces of good and evil, God and the devil.  I played it back to him.  He was surprised and very pleased.  He sounded much better than he had expected.  He went on to record some of the poems in The Lord of the Rings.  Some he sang to the tunes that were in his head when writing them.  …. The more he recorded, and the more often he played back the recordings, the more his confidence grew.

It was after this visit that Tolkien apparently considered George Sayer as a close friend.  Tolkien’s letter 134 (August 29, 1952) notes the tape recording event:

I have recently made some tape-recordings of parts of the Hobbit and The Lord (notably the Gollum-passages and some pieces of ‘Elvish’) and was much surprised to discover their effectiveness as recitations, and (if I may say so) my own effectiveness as a narrator, I do a very pretty Gollum and Treebeard. Could not the BBC be interested? The tape-reel is in the possession of George Sayer (English Master at Malvern) and I am sure he would forward it for your or anyone else’s trial. It was unrehearsed and impromptu and could be improved.

Sayer also shared delightful anecdotes of Tolkien in his Catholic worship, showing him as a devout Catholic during these years:  the pre-Vatican type of Catholic that did not see the need for the 1965 Vatican II changes, and always went to confession before Mass.  Tolkien attended church with the Sayers at this time, and George Sayer shared Tolkien as one who was very friendly with young children.  I noted this similar quality while reading Tolkien’s Letters from Father Christmas, that magical quality of story telling and kindness to his own children.

I went back and found him kneeling in front of the Lady Altar with the young children and their mother, talking happily and I think telling stories about Our Lady.  … he loved children and had the gift of getting on well with them. ‘Mummy, can we always go to church with that nice man?’

and

The last time I met him was after his return to Oxford. He was with children (perhaps great-grandchildren), playing trains: ‘I’m Thomas the Tank Engine. Puff. Puff. Puff.’  That sort of thing.  I was conscripted as a signal.  This love for children and delight in childlike play and simple pleasures was yet another thing that contributed to his wholeness and the success of his books.

Sayer’s essay is delightful, and an excellent start to this book of essays, great reading for the many of us who love Tolkien’s Middle Earth and care about Tolkien the writer and the man.

Christmas with J.R.R. Tolkien: The Wonder of Christmas

As my thoughts are now on the annual holiday, considering Christmas and the great story of the nativity of our Lord, I have discovered another real gem from J.R.R. Tolkien:  Letters from Father Christmas.  The third of Tolkien’s books published posthumously (in 1976), it is an enjoyable little book; the audio recording comes in at slightly under 2 hours.  (From a library, I read an audio edition that provides different voices for the different characters of Father Christmas and the Polar Bear; the print versions include illustrations.)  These were Tolkien’s letters as “Father Christmas” to his children, starting in 1920 when his oldest son John was three years old, through 1943 (a short, last letter to Priscilla, then age 14).  These letters show the wonder and joy of Christmas for children, and a father’s great love for his children, as well as Tolkien’s creative genius.  As I read these I was reminded of Tolkien’s more “business” letters written during these years — the publishing of The Hobbit and then his start on the Hobbit sequel.  That book (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien) often indicates how busy Tolkien was with his family and work responsibilities, but here in Letters from Father Christmas we see where he spent some of that time that the publishers wanted 🙂.

It is fun to get caught up in the enjoyment of Christmas, “looking along the beam” as C.S. Lewis described the actual experience of an event: the presence of God, feelings of joy and wonder, and other emotions and feelings.  From my previous post, that series on C.S. Lewis described the difference between looking along a ray of sunlight (the enjoyment and actual experience) versus “looking at the beam,” which is the contemplative, analytical approach, the thinking about the thing.

So here I am writing about the experience of reading Letters from Father Christmas, after a recent experience of the actual enjoyment.  These letters tell various stories about Father Christmas’ adventures at the north pole, with the elves and other characters who work with him, and especially tales about “North Polar Bear,” sometimes referred to “P.B.” — various accidents and mishaps of a hilarious nature.  Along the way, Tolkien mentions the back story of Father Christmas, in Saint Nicholas who is remembered every year on December 6, and includes several stories about goblins, characters with other languages and even some runes, hobbits, and a character named “Ilbereth” (similar to Middle Earth’s Elbereth).  Tolkien interacts with his children’s gift requests, sometimes sending two or even three letters per year (evidently some years the children started writing to Father Christmas in November or even September, Lol!), expressing (as Father Christmas) his love for them, while also telling about all the children throughout Europe and America that he visits, and the “timetable” of how fast he is able to deliver presents, such as being able to deliver presents to 1000 homes per minute with his sleigh and reindeer.  Father Christmas also reminds them of other children throughout the world who are suffering and in need, including the hard economic times of the early 1930s and then especially during the war years of Christmas, the letters from 1939 through 1943, the World War II years in England.

Reading Tolkien’s Christmas letters is refreshing and delightful, something to get the focus back on the annual Christmas holiday, to be a child at heart.  This focus is so needful in our modernist/post-modernist world when some people advocate to not celebrate Christmas at all.  “It’s a pagan holiday!”  — actually it is not, as clearly explained in this online article: December 25 was selected by the early church for specific reasons, including that it is nine months after March 25 (which is also a very significant date in Tolkien’s works, as the date that the One Ring was destroyed with Gollum on Mount Doom), and had nothing to do with incorporating pagan holidays.  Or as another example of this modernist tendency, a local Baptist church has selected for its Christmas sermon texts this year, three New Testament theological texts that speak about the Incarnation (Hebrews 1:1-3, Colossians 1:15, and John 1:14-18) and only these three texts — and is exegeting these texts verse by verse, talking “about” the Incarnation (the “looking AT the beam”) as described in these texts, with no mention of the actual story of Christmas.  (Nothing wrong with these texts in and of themselves, but the Incarnation and Christmas story is so much more than the intellectual only, doctrinal aspect.)

The Incarnation (Christmas as we remember it each year) actually happened in our space and time world, and involved real characters, and a story with multiple events – a great wonder and a story to be remembered at this time of year, as we meditate on and appreciate the fact of Christ’s coming to Earth and becoming one of us, a real flesh and blood man.  A story that we will never exhaust the meaning of, as we annually remember the birth of our Lord, remembering also the real people involved: Mary, Joseph, Herod and the wise men, the shepherds and the angels, and Zechariah and Elizabeth, and Simeon and Anna and the others who witnessed the events at the time of Christ’s birth.

Have a very blessed Merry Christmas, everyone!

 

Further Up and Further In: Narnia, C.S. Lewis, and the V-Shaped Christian Conversion Experience

I’ve seen Hillsdale College advertisements on Facebook over the years (along with mention of it by a few online friends), but since it seemed that mostly their offerings were about American history and political related issues of American government, I had not tried it out.  A new offering from them, though, caught my eye: C.S. Lewis on Christianity.  The format is simple and straightforward — listen to several video lectures (this course has seven), and answer some multiple choice questions after each lecture.  Since I’m already familiar with C.S. Lewis, though it’s been many years since I last read his non-fiction, the lectures are a good overview of the major ideas in his non-fiction, such as Lewis’ Abolition of Man and Mere Christianity, and include some things that I had either forgotten or not come across before.

The third lecture talks about C.S. Lewis’ conversion to Christianity, and Lewis’ view of conversion as V-shaped: we must first go down, then further down, hit bottom and experience initial conversion, then gradually come back up, in the new life.  We can observe this pattern in much of Lewis’ fiction writing.  The lecturer mentions the number of steps into and out of the wardrobe, though I’m not sure if that is a really clear example; nothing in the text says that Lucy or the others stepped down and then stepped up, just that there were a certain number of steps.

However, other examples certainly do make the point.  The Silver Chair‘s overall structure is certainly that of a V: starting at the school Eustace and Jill attended, then to a very high cliff place above Narnia, then down to Narnia itself.  Then falling down into the giant-made letters of “Under Me” then down to Underland.  Puddleglum, Eustace and Jill finally accomplish the mission from Aslan while in Underland.  Then the return trip, back to Narnia, then back to Aslan, and then returning to the where it all started, at Jill and Eustace’s school.  The other Narnia travels from our world — The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and following — certainly have the beginning and end same, since that was in the nature of the travel itself — a point really noted in the first two stories, not so much in Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Yet The Silver Chair especially makes the V-shaped story in a very literal, geographical way.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader especially gives a picture of Christian conversion.  Eustace started out a real twit, then quickly worsened as he was put into difficult situations that revealed his bad character.  The downhill slide continued, until he ended up down in a valley, then became a dragon.  Upon finally becoming a dragon, the rock-bottom point of the V, in a great narrative account Eustace finally came to his senses:

his first feeling was one of relief.  There was nothing to be afraid of any more.  He was a terror himself now and nothing in the world but a knight (and not all of those) would dare to attack him. …

But the moment he thought this he realised that he didn’t want to.  He wanted to be friends.  He wanted to get back among humans and talk and laugh and share things.  He realised that he was a monster cut off from the human race.  An appalling loneliness came over him.  He began to see the others had not really been fiends at all.  He began to wonder if he himself had been such a nice person as he had always supposed.  He longed for their voices.  He would have been grateful for a kind word even from Reepicheep.

But then it was still a long way back up the “V”: he first became nicer and more helpful as a dragon.  After some time, then he met Aslan, and even then he first tried removing his own dragon skin, which still revealed more dragon skin under; then Aslan removed all the dragon and restored him back to a human boy.  Afterwards, as Lewis notes, Eustace began to be a different boy.  He had relapses.  There were still many days when he could be very tiresome.  But most of those I shall not notice.  The cure had begun.  The upward climb of that V had begun and would continue for the rest of his life — the “further up and further in.”  What a great picture of salvation is provided here: not merely a one-time event back in the past.  That was the cure that began.  Salvation then continues in the present life, and to the future glorification and perfection.

Then of course comes the glorious ending to the Chronicles of Narnia, with the idea of “further up and further in” in its fullness with the ushering in of the New Narnia, leading to the real, new England and New Earth.

The Hillsdale College lecture mentions a few other examples of a V-shaped experience, such as in  Lewis’ last novel, Till We Have Faces:  the heroine goes down into a green valley, a picture of the conversion experience — descent and loss, but such descent into greenness and fertility — which signifies gain and new life.  The bottom of the V is the “turn” — the “cure begun” in Eustace, also what J.R.R. Tolkien referred to as the eucatastrophe (see previous post link:   ).  Other examples of this bitter-sweet conversion, where the turn occurs, can be found in The Great Divorce (a character with a lizard on the shoulder), and also in the third volume of the Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, with the conversion of Jane:  It was a person (not the person she had thought), yet also a thing, a made thing, made to please Another and in Him to please all others, a thing made at this very moment… And the making went on amidst a kind of splendour or sorrow or both.

I’ll continue through this set of C.S. Lewis lectures, and then on to more lecture series from Hillsdale, for further insights into particulars of Lewis’ writing and then other topics such as classic literature.  Hillsdale also offers an introductory course on C.S. Lewis with another nine lectures.

The Tolkien “Canon?”: J.R.R. Tolkien the Sub-Creator

The more I learn about the early Christian church, and the world of the ancients, the better I understand and appreciate J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, and his full legendarium.  One interesting aspect of Tolkien’s world, similar to that of Holy Scripture, is the question of “canon” and what it includes.  For Tolkien’s massive collection about Middle Earth has an interesting historical feature in common with the word of God and our Bibles, something that truly highlights the “sub-creation” aspect of Tolkien’s work and his role as a “sub-creator.”

As we know, the Bible is a collection of many books that were written at many different times and places, and for which exist numerous manuscript versions with some manuscript differences.  Similarly, Tolkien’s world actually consists of multiple writings, from numerous times during Tolkien’s life — starting around the time of World War I, up until shortly before his death; he continued revisions, creating different versions of stories.  In our real world, in ancient times Christians worked with many different books within the full collection of what would later be bound together as “The Bible,” forming an official “canon” after several hundred years; and in modern times, scholars have studied the variations in Bible manuscripts within this canon collection.  Again, within the Tolkien fandom world, many people have tried to come up with an official, definitive canon of Tolkien’s legendarium, examining the differences in the different manuscript versions of Tolkien’s stories.  After all, J.R.R. Tolkien’s massive writing collection — of which he never discarded old versions — became a lifetime work for his son Christopher, to sift through all of the writings and publish the various works such as Unfinished Tales, Lost Tales, and numerous volumes of the History of Middle Earth.  Note these web pages that talk about the Tolkien canon: Tolkien Gateway Canon and an Ask Middle Earth post.  Note this observation from the second link:

This is a question that every reader has to – or gets to, depending on your point of view – answer for themselves. Some readers believe that whichever version was published in one of the “main” works (The Hobbit, LotR, and The Silmarillion) is canon. Others believe that whichever version Tolkien wrote last is canon. Others go on a case-by-case basis, essentially choosing their favorite versions of each story to be canon. And of course there’s the Global Theory, which argues that they’re all canon. It’s entirely up to you, and (no matter what anybody might tell you) there really isn’t a wrong answer.

As mentioned on one of the older Amon Sul podcasts, when we look at Tolkien’s own words within the story, we see that even Tolkien himself did not have a final, definitive version of all the tales, in his own imagination — as though the world existed on its own, outside of Tolkien’s imagination.  Tolkien himself seemed to be content with some level of “mystery” and lack of conclusion regarding these legends within Middle Earth.  Here I recall also, from reading The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, places where Tolkien described certain characters coming onto the scene, and his own reaction to these new characters — such as Faramir, in letter 66:

A new character has come on the scene (I am sure I did not invent him, I did not even want him, though I like him, but there he came walking into the woods of Ithilien): Faramir, the brother of Boromir – and he is holding up the ‘catastrophe’ by a lot of stuff about the history of Gondor and Rohan (with some very sound reflections no doubt on martial glory and true glory): but if he goes on much more a lot of him will have to be removed to the appendices

Regarding the uncertainty, though, we note for instance in The Silmarillion, places where the writing simply says “Some say that…”  or “others say…” such as these excerpts:

Some say that it was Mandos himself, and no lesser herald of Manwë.

Aforetime it was held among the Elves in Middle-earth that dying the Dwarves returned to the earth and the stone of which they were made; yet that is not their own belief. For they say that Aulë the Maker, whom they call Mahal, cares for them, and gathers them to Mandos in halls set apart;

What may befall their spirits after death the Elves know not. Some say that they too go to the halls of Mandos; but their place of waiting there is not that of the Elves, and Mandos under Ilúvatar alone save Manwë knows whither they go after the time of recollection in those silent halls beside the Outer Sea.

Thus, we can know with certainty the vast majority of the story of Middle Earth, allowing for some variations and different versions on minor points.  But the idea of a “canon” (something that has great precision,100% defined and conclusive) may not be the best approach to Tolkien’s world.  As mentioned in my last post , there is instead a type of ritual participation within the community of Tolkien fandom, a ritual that we can return to with repeated readings of Lord of the Rings through the years, for instance.

In a similar way, the early Christian church had a number of various scrolls that were considered part of the sacred writings, which were circulated, yet would not be bound together into one volume until many centuries later.  This collection of writings — which included many books that are now considered Deuterocanonical, or as “apocrypha” (by Protestants)  — served along with apostolic tradition for the early Christians, as what they shared in their ritual participation, their Christian communal experience.

Ritual Participation, and a Lent Reading of Lord of the Rings

An interesting point brought up in an Amon Sul podcast (episode #24), in relation to myth and story:  in our modern world, people often focus on “how can I relate to this person?” and similar questions.  As for example, which character in Tolkien’s world am I most like, or which one do I want to be like?  Modern people often ask, how do I relate to such people who are not ordinary, who do not have “ordinary” lives such as mine?  So it is in our modern, very psychologized world.  This can be seen as a symptom of modernism with its stress on individualism and lack of community.  A key part of community life, in contrast with our age, is that of ritual participation: the repeated, common experiences of a group of people, such as in observances in the calendar each year.  Such was the experience in pre-modern societies, whether pagan or in the early and then medieval Church.

In our age, science fiction and fantasy fiction lend themselves to a type of ritual participation: dressing up in costume, going to Star Trek or other sci-fi or fantasy conventions, for instance.  I remember my early days attending such events every year.  Lord of the Rings is another entry into ritual participation:  Doxamoots and related convention gathering events, but also the simple pleasure of the repeated experience found in re-reading through Lord of the Rings every year or at set times of the year.

On this note, I have even come across a reading schedule for Lord of the Rings.  It’s like a yearly Bible reading schedule, but for all the days of Lent (about 2 months) – and with specific chapters for assigned reading each day.  The schedule is even adjusted each year, with the 2023 reading schedule available here.  Various blogs have followed the Lent schedule, with posts related to the reading in the Lent schedule, such as this post from a few years ago, and also this post from 2015.  There’s even a Lenten Lord of the Rings podcast that provides daily updates, brief “devotional” thoughts on each day’s reading.

It’s certainly an aggressive schedule, one that I’m not sure if I’d be able to complete every day, but I think I’ll give it a try.  I may include audio book reading, with the audio book version (unabridged) I have (read by Rob Inglis).  Of course, Lent season is still four months away, and I completed this year’s reading of Lord of the Rings a month or so ago, to start on The Silmarillion now.

What are some other ideas and reading schedules for Lord of the Rings reading, or for reading of Tolkien’s other works?