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Religion

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Journal

2018

Paganism

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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

"No Pagan Ever Loved His God": Tolkien, Thompson, And The Beautification Of The Gods, M. Fontenot Oct 2018

"No Pagan Ever Loved His God": Tolkien, Thompson, And The Beautification Of The Gods, M. Fontenot

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Alexei Kondratiev award for best student paper, Mythcon 49. Many scholars have commented on the influence of Catholic mystic Francis Thompson’s poetry on J.R.R. Tolkien’s early forays into creative writing. However, few critical studies have addressed possible connections between Tolkien and Thompson’s prose work. This paper suggests that if anything is comparable between Tolkien and Thompson, it is their respective understandings of art, creation, and the significance of artists, regardless of the form of poetic (or prosaic) expression these sentiments induced. Thompson’s essays on art, paganism, and the immortality of beauty come together to form backdrop against which we might …