post by Ben Apland
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892 in Bloemfontein, South Africa. He later returned to England after his father died on February 15,1896. In 1900 his mom, Mabel, was received into the Roman Catholic Church and since then Ronald and his sister Hilary were brought up in the faith and remained devout Catholics the rest of their lives. In 1904 Ronald’s mom died of diabetes, it was pretty fatal in the pre-insulin days. After that Father Francis Morgan, who was a local Parish Priest who regularly visited the family, raised Ronald.
I believe he was a very devout Catholic or at least was good at following orders given to him: He met his wife Edith when he was 16. When he was 18 Father Francis forbade him from seeing her and even communicating with her for 3 years until he was 21. Ronald followed this to the tee and as soon as he was allowed to see her again he made sure he did. Rekindling the relationship did have its difficulties but it ended up working out and Edith even converted to Catholicism.
One of Ronald’s sons named, John Francis Reuel Tolkien, became Father John Tolkien. I think this is interesting because he seems to be named after Father Francis Morgan who was the priest that raised Ronald AND he also became a priest as well.
Ronald was a wiz at languages. He mastered Greek and Latin at a young age and even became competent in many other languages such as old Germanic and Finnish. He has even made up some languages of his own, most notably an elven language. He served for a bit in WW1 but only for 4 months after he got sent home to recover from trench fever. He got a position in the English department at the University of Leeds and while he was there founded a Viking club for undergraduates where they would read Old Norse sagas and drink beer.
He wrote many things, most notably The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. He also wrote many scholarly essays and translated some older Middle English texts such as Sir Gawain. He wrote some shorts stories one being "Leaf by Niggle" which we are reading for class.
Information from-
http://www.tolkiensociety.org/tolkien/biography.html#1
I like that you said "or at least was good at following orders given to him"...it kind of makes him sound like his character, Niggle. Doing things he knows he should do but maybe doesn't always want to.
ReplyDeleteHis Catholicism is definitely evident in the story we read.
Also, sweet story about him and his wife. Aw.
He had to wait three years before he could talk to his future spouse! Ahg, he's much more patient than I can ever hope to be.
ReplyDeleteI think it's really interesting that Tolkien was raised by a priest. We don't often consider writers of fantasy to be so strongly associated with a religious background because their work is not generally overtly religious. However, in the story we read by Tolkien his Christian background seemed obvious.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this blog because I never thought of him as being Catholic. Quite frankly I knew nothing about him! Agreeing with Bethlyn, it is interesting to see how Catholicism is related to our authors lives. Many times the authors are just raised in Catholic households or have turned away from religion which leads to just as effective writing. It is nice to see that we have a variety of Catholic authors. It is really interesting to me that his son became a priest because that means that Tolkien was so influenced by the Church, he was able to instill the love of it in his son.
ReplyDeleteBefore researching Tolkien I did not know much about him either, but I found a couple of things very interesting. The first being how catholic he was as that was a little surprising from knowing the content of his stories. Also I found that one of his reasons for creating and writing about middle earth is that he didn't feel there was a good English epic. I like that logic. We don't have this so I am going to make it myself.
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