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TITLE
The Individual and Community in Tolkien's Middle Earth
DATE:
Saturday, June 21, 2003
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CONTACT US
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DESCRIPTION
An examination of the role & integrity of the individual in relation to his role & place within the Community as presented in J.R.R. Tolkien's Myth.
The paper will focus on examples from Tolkien's work which highlight the role and relationship of the individual and the community, relating it to Tolkien's own beliefs about individuality & community. It will discuss the applicability of the mythological model presented by Tolkien through the medium of Middle Earth to the problems confronting modern society.
The paper will compare Tolkien's approach to these issues, as expressed in his letters and elsewhere, with his exposition of such issues in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, Farmer Giles of Ham and his important poem 'Mythopoeia'. The common themes of subsidiarity, or distributism, will be highlighted.
Related to, and integrated with, the central issue of subsidiarity, Tolkien's conception of other factors governing the role of the individual in communion with society will be analysed. These include the central tension between selflessness and selfishness in the nature of man & Tolkien's insistence that the former must prevail if the individual and the community are to prosper. The necessity of self-sacrifice, i.e. heroism, as the antidote to spiritual obesity, i.e. hedonism. The role of Tradition as a guide and protector, i.e. steering-wheel and brake, in relation to concepts of 'progress' and the correct and incorrect application of technological, intellectual or cultural 'innovation'.
Mr. Joseph Pearce |
SPEAKER/PERFORMER INFORMATION
Joseph Pearce has written books on two of the 20th century's literary giants, G.K. Chesteron and Hilaire Belloc. Friends in the same Faith, these men sought to understand and articulate the glories of the Catholic past and the contemporary ideological challenges of their own day. G. K. Chesterton once remarked that the Catholic Church saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his own age. Mr. Pearce will investigate the freeing intellectual breath of two great champions of Catholic culture.
LECTURE PREVIEW
SERIES THEME:
Communitas, 2003 Eichstatt
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