J R R Tolkien was clear that his epic and heroic fantasy The Lord of the Rings (1954–5) was explicitly a Catholic work, though he did add that it was unconsciously so in the writing and consciously so in the revising. And the markers of his religious thought are certainly there to be found, in Gandalf’s death and return, the Valar, and the encompassing providence of Eru, as well as in odder ways and places. But if some of the Catholicism is orthodox enough, some of it is anything but, for he both denies the Augustinian treatment of death as punitive, and infringes the the Boethian orthodoxy about evil as a negative.
Philip Pullman was equally clear that the three novels comprising His Dark Materials – Northern Lights (1995; US title The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000) – were explicitly anti-clerical. “Blake said Milton was of the devil’s party without knowing it. I am of the devil’s party, and know it.” But although the third volumes witnesses the death of God the villain is not belief or deity, but the Magisterium that insists the world be as it thinks right, and claims a power of righteous destruction.
In both writers a strong personal belief, in God or in atheism, collides with moral pain and outrage and exceptionally potent imaginations. The pious Tolkien creates a radically heterodox alternative to core dogma, and the impious Pullman insists on the realities of religion while dismantling Milton. There aren’t any simple answers, but this course will dig into some of the complex questions both raise, alone and in conjunction.
Learning outcomes
- To understand more about Tolkien’s fantastical uses of religious thought;
- To understand more about Pullman’s fierce critique of Christianity and religiosity; and
- In comparing the set texts, to develop understandings of the complex uses of fantasy as an enabling mode of fiction.
