FRIENDSHIP AND FREEDOM IN LORD OF THE RINGS: PART III

Course begins on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023, at 5pm Pacific (8pm Eastern), and goes for EIGHT consecutive Tuesdays.

NOTE: NO CLASS on Tuesday Oct. 31st for Halloween

Because of the length and richness of the text, we are closely reading Tolkien’s central work, The Lord of the Rings in three courses.  In the Fall of 2021 course we focused exclusively on The Fellowship of the Ring. Spring 2022, we examined The Two Towers.  Now, in Fall 2023, after a year’s hiatus, we are continuing the journey with The Return of the King.  We will continue discussing how Tolkien’s work directly addresses modernity’s paradoxical elevation and diminishment of the human person.  Tolkien rejects the modernist concept of the individual but embraces the essential importance of the person within proper community to achieve the good. 

In this final seminar, we will focus on and discuss closely how the power of friendship achieves the Ring’s destruction.  Within this discussion, we will look at the extreme limitations of the individual acting alone against superior physical and spiritual forces; the unseen hand of Providence coordinating the consequences of many characters’ choices; the despair that results from the modernist claim to autonomy.

Questions we have asked in previous seminars and continue in this final one:  What is the role of the person before overpowering evil?  Does human freedom exist and to what extent?  How does Tolkien’s presentation of friendship and community counter our present postmodern view of the isolated individual?  Why is the Christian God not made explicit in Middle-earth?  How is God both nowhere and everywhere to be found in Middle-earth?  Why does Tolkien’s work continue to resonate with contemporary readers?  How does Tolkien’s story offer hope amidst the cultural and religious despair of his own generation but also our own?

It is not required that a fellow have taken the first two courses on The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers to enroll in this final course. However, if a fellow has not read Tolkien’s work prior to this course, then it is expected that he/she will have read (not simply watched!) both The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers prior to beginning the course on The Return of the King. You may also seek access to the archived video seminars of the first two courses.