SSF279 – Healing the Imagination: A Reading Course in the Lord of the Rings

In Secret Fire: The Spiritual Vision of JRR Tolkien, renowned Catholic author Stratford Caldecott wrote, “Tolkien is one of the great spiritual writers of our time….The symbolic and interior struggle of Good with Evil, of virtue against temptation and weakness, of tradition against corruption and treachery, are represented realistically enough in the legendariumfor us to be justified in seeing these works as a vehicle of great wisdom born of experience and suffering.” In this course, we will read and discuss selections from Tolkien’s masterful epic, The Lord of the Rings, to explore its spiritual depths, while considering the healing effect it can have on a modern imagination that has been atrophied and corrupted in a particular way through today’s secular audiovisual media.