Jun 5, 2019

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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