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s-y-l-v-a-n-i-a.com. sylvania.com. Brett

1:45

McKay here, and welcome to another edition of

1:47

the Art of Manliness podcast. Virtue

1:49

ethics is an approach to life, a

1:51

framework for developing character and making moral

1:53

decisions. To learn about virtue

1:55

ethics, you can read a philosophical treatise by Aristotle,

1:57

or you can read a book by a philosopher.

2:00

read a fictional novel by J.R.R. Tolkien.

2:03

As my guest Christopher Snyder observes, the ideals

2:05

of virtue ethics are well illustrated in The

2:07

Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, being

2:09

vividly embodied in the characters of Middle-earth. Chris

2:12

is a professor of European history, a

2:14

medieval scholar, and the author of Hobbit

2:16

Virtues, rediscovering J.R.R. Tolkien's ethics

2:19

from The Lord of the Rings. Today

2:22

on the show, he shares the way

2:24

Tolkien's fantasy stories provide real lessons in

2:26

the capacity of ordinary people to act

2:28

heroically. We discuss the courage

2:30

of persistence, the importance of fellowship and how

2:32

it differs from friendship, the role of merry

2:34

making in the good life, and the value

2:36

of chivalry. After the show

2:39

is over, check out our show notes at

2:41

aom.is.hobbit.edu. Alright,

2:55

Chris Snyder, welcome to the show. Thank

2:57

you, Brett. Thank you for having me.

2:59

I'm looking forward to our conversation. So

3:01

you are a professor of medieval history

3:03

who also specializes in the work of

3:06

J.R.R. Tolkien. How do you say Tolkien

3:08

or Tolkien? I'm always wondering how to

3:11

there's a bit of debate about it

3:13

and Tolkien himself talks about this, but

3:15

Tolkien is good. So

3:19

J.R.R. Tolkien, I'm curious, did Tolkien

3:22

lead you to medieval history or

3:24

did medieval history lead you to

3:26

Tolkien? Yeah,

3:28

so most of the medievalists that

3:31

I know became medievalists because of

3:33

reading The Lord of the Rings or The

3:36

Homage or maybe C.S. Lewis's fiction. And

3:38

I'm a little unusual in that regard.

3:41

I was reading Tolkien and Lewis,

3:43

but I was reading their scholarship

3:45

before I ever read their fiction.

3:48

What drew me to the Middle Ages

3:50

was the Arthurian legends. And

3:53

so in high school, I just got really

3:55

hooked on the legends of King Arthur and

3:57

the literature, but also the historical history.

4:00

historical backdrop. And so I read what

4:02

Tolkien and Lewis said about Arthur before I

4:04

read any of their fiction. I think I

4:06

didn't read The Hobbit until high school probably

4:08

and Lord of the Rings until

4:11

college or even later. And so it

4:13

wasn't early in my career that I

4:15

kind of decided to work on Tolkien.

4:17

But the more I learned about their

4:19

academic careers at Oxford and

4:21

Cambridge and Lewis' case as well, the

4:23

more they became like academic role models

4:25

for me. And so around early 2000s,

4:28

around the time the movies, first movies

4:30

were coming out, that's when I decided

4:32

to work on my first Tolkien book.

4:34

Well, that's something people forget about Lewis

4:36

and Tolkien is that not

4:39

only did they write fantastic fiction, timeless

4:41

fiction that we're still reading today, but

4:43

they were serious academics like Tolkien was

4:45

a medievalist. Can you tell us about

4:47

his career as a medievalist? Sure.

4:50

So Tolkien came to

4:52

Oxford as an undergraduate to read

4:55

classics or greats, which means basically

4:57

be a classics major. And

5:00

after his first year exams, he didn't do

5:02

as well as he'd hoped. And

5:04

he had a tutor who counseled him to maybe

5:07

try this new degree called English. Oxford

5:10

didn't have an English degree until right

5:12

before World War One. So

5:14

he did, he moved over to English and

5:16

started to specialize in

5:19

the Germanic languages and in

5:21

philology, which is sort of

5:23

the history of languages and the science.

5:25

It's a subfield of linguistics, basically. And

5:27

you don't find it a whole lot

5:29

anymore. But it was really popular in

5:32

the 19th century. So Tolkien was a

5:34

philologist who, who specialized

5:37

in Old English literature

5:39

like Beowulf and Middle English

5:41

literature like Sir Cowan and the Green Knight.

5:44

What was his influence? What were his

5:47

contributions to the field? Are they still

5:49

lasting contributions? Yeah, absolutely. After

5:51

he served at the front in World

5:53

War One and was injured and almost

5:56

died, he came back to Oxford and

5:58

as he was recovering. He

6:00

got his first job working for the Oxford

6:02

English Dictionary. And so if

6:05

you pick up a copy of the

6:07

OED and turn to the letter W

6:09

and look up Walrus and some other

6:11

W words, the definitions are in part

6:13

courtesy of his work, Tolkien's work on

6:16

the dictionary, which is perfect work for

6:18

a philologist to do. And

6:20

so he just, he was working there and then he started

6:23

teaching a little bit at Oxford. And

6:25

then finally there was a job

6:27

opening at Leeds University and he went

6:29

there and soon after he

6:31

arrived, he worked on Middle

6:34

English vocabulary basically. And

6:36

he got a, eventually a professorship, so what

6:38

we would call a full professor at Leeds.

6:41

And then another one opened up at Oxford. And

6:43

so he came back to Oxford as a full professor and

6:46

he had written only a little bit

6:48

of scholarship at the time, but he

6:50

became really well known as an expert

6:52

on the poem on Beowulf and

6:55

on Sir Gowan and the Green Knights. So

6:57

he wrote about those things. And he also

6:59

did his own editions and translations. We

7:02

don't have all of the Beowulf stuff. We just have his prose

7:05

translation, but we do have a lot

7:07

of things that he wrote about those

7:09

poems. And he wrote an essay called

7:11

Beowulf, the Monsters and the Critics. And

7:14

it is the most important scholarly

7:16

essay on Beowulf. And

7:19

how did his academic career as

7:21

a medievalist influence his own fiction?

7:25

Yeah, so he had been in love

7:27

with languages since he was a small

7:30

child and had been

7:32

inventing languages. And like

7:35

many British school children, especially if

7:37

they go to better

7:39

schools, they're given classical

7:41

education. Greek and Latin is available

7:44

and he studied both. And

7:46

as we would think of it at high school

7:48

level, he was studying both. That's why he chose

7:50

classics. But he really was

7:52

falling in love with Old

7:54

English and Norse and also Welsh

7:56

and eventually Finnish. And

7:59

those stories about elves and dwarves. wars. And

8:01

so he started with the languages and then

8:03

he started building a world

8:05

around the languages. That is,

8:07

he would invent a language based on

8:10

the principles of these other medieval languages,

8:12

and then he would build the world

8:14

full of stories, characters, and their stories

8:16

based on those languages. And

8:18

that's very important to know about Tolkien. The

8:21

language always comes first. So yeah,

8:23

for decades he was doing this

8:25

kind of in private. He published a

8:27

few poems, but nothing really big until

8:29

The Hobbit came out. And The

8:31

Hobbit wasn't really attached to Middle-earth

8:33

at all. It was entirely just a story

8:35

about these creatures called Hobbits that he made

8:38

up for his children. And only

8:40

later did he decide to connect it

8:42

to this world that he was building

8:44

that we call the legendarium, which some

8:46

of it was published in a work

8:48

called The Silmarillion after he died. But

8:50

it's the world of Middle-earth and that

8:52

was kind of very late in the

8:54

game for him. So you

8:56

published a book called Hobbit Virtues

8:58

where you explore how Tolkien used

9:00

his Hobbit series to explore and

9:02

transmit virtue ethics to his readers.

9:05

For those who aren't familiar with

9:07

virtue ethics, what is it? And

9:10

so this was my second Tolkien

9:12

project and it really just came

9:14

about for two reasons. One, I

9:16

was working on a

9:18

handout for my students for a class I

9:20

teach and I kind of wanted to put

9:23

down religious principles and ethics across

9:25

different ancient cultures so that

9:27

they could see Chinese ethics

9:29

from Confucius next to Aristotle's

9:32

ethics as an example. So I'd been

9:34

doing that and then you might remember

9:37

there was an election in 2016 and

9:39

a lot of people talking about the

9:41

election and a lot of angst

9:43

in the country. And that's like, I want

9:45

to do something positive. How

9:48

can we bring people together? And I thought, well,

9:50

I think virtue ethics can do that because regardless

9:53

of your political, religious, cultural beliefs,

9:57

usually you recognize certain things

9:59

as virtue. issues as ethical behavior. And

10:01

we respond as human beings, I

10:03

think, very similar in most cases.

10:06

And that's what Aristotle wrote about in

10:08

a work called the Nicomachean Ethics. And

10:11

it was essential work for him as a

10:13

philosopher. A lot of what he had learned

10:16

from Plato, who had learned from Socrates, is

10:19

in the ethics. But it's also tied

10:21

to another book he wrote called The

10:23

Politics. In other words, you

10:25

can't have politics, political science, a

10:27

good orderly regime, unless you

10:29

have ethics, which is an

10:31

orderly soul, a person who has

10:33

an ordered soul. So for example,

10:36

I wrote my dissertation in part on tyrants

10:38

and tyranny. And Plato and

10:40

Aristotle defined tyrants as people with

10:42

disordered souls. So if

10:44

your soul is disordered, and you're given

10:47

political power, then the state, the regime

10:49

that you found will be disordered. That's

10:52

an example, kind of from the political side

10:54

of it, why ethics are important. But the

10:56

other part of, I think, Aristotle's definition that's

10:58

really important is saying

11:00

virtue and virtuous. We tend to think

11:03

of that in Christian terms, or even

11:05

Victorian terms, right? A virtuous young woman,

11:07

right, is somebody who doesn't sin or

11:10

appears to not sin. And that's not

11:12

at all how Aristotle uses the term.

11:15

Virtues are like

11:17

skills. And the best way to think

11:19

of this is like an athlete who

11:21

possesses certain skills, but they have to

11:23

practice for those skills

11:25

to be better and to be

11:28

habitually good at it. So Aristotle

11:30

says virtues are excellences

11:32

in different categories. And

11:34

you have to be kind of

11:36

educated enough to identify what the

11:38

excellence is, like where does bravery

11:41

fit on a scale of activity.

11:43

And then once you've identified that,

11:45

then you just practice being brave.

11:48

And a virtuous person is just

11:50

simply somebody who has habituated virtuous

11:53

practice. And what I

11:55

love about virtue ethics is, okay, Aristotle really

11:57

fleshed this out. But as you pointed out,

12:00

and I think C.S. Lewis pointed this out

12:02

in The Abolition of Man, this

12:04

idea of virtue, this shared sense of morality,

12:06

what it means to live a flourishing good

12:08

life, you can see

12:10

it everywhere. You can see it in ancient

12:13

Chinese culture, you can see it in Islam,

12:15

you can see it in Hinduism. And what's

12:17

interesting, if you look, the

12:20

specifics are different, because they're based on

12:22

their culture. But if you look at

12:24

the first principles, they're pretty much

12:26

cut from the same cloth. Confucianism, for

12:29

example, is very similar to Aristotelian

12:31

virtue ethics, where Confucianism

12:33

is all about using your

12:36

practical wisdom to know what the right thing

12:38

to do at the right time for the

12:40

right reason in any social circumstance you find

12:43

yourself in. That's how you be virtuous. And

12:45

Aristotle basically had the same definition. Yeah,

12:49

exactly. In fact, I teach in

12:51

our great book sequence, I teach Aristotle

12:54

and Confucius back to back because I

12:56

think there's so many similarities. And

12:59

the way they talk about the gentleman, the

13:01

virtuous man, I think that helps students to

13:03

see, but students don't always see that, right?

13:05

So they may think, for example, oh,

13:08

Christianity has a different virtue ethic

13:10

than, than Islam does. And

13:13

so again, I was developing a handout to

13:15

show, oh, no, there are a lot

13:17

of overlap, there's more overlap than

13:19

there is dissimilarity. And that's exactly

13:21

the point that C.S. Lewis makes

13:24

in the abolition of man, he makes

13:26

it in mere Christianity as well. But

13:28

in abolition of man, there's an appendix

13:30

he calls the Dao. And

13:33

that is simply showing examples of like

13:35

the 10 commandments and how they overlap

13:37

with religious roles or guidelines

13:39

and other religions and or religions and

13:41

philosophies. So I include a bit of

13:43

that and some of the appendices in

13:45

my books, you'll be able to see

13:47

those different traditions and just how much

13:50

they overlap. And I know

13:52

C.S. Lewis was very explicit about

13:54

his desire to reeducate people about

13:57

this, this shared moral language of

13:59

virtue ethics. That's what the abolition of

14:01

man's all about is that we've lost

14:03

this shared moral language and as a consequence

14:06

we have this disorder in our culture. Did

14:09

Tolkien have the same sort of goal as

14:12

C.S. Lewis of reviving a virtue

14:14

ethic in modern life? That's

14:17

a really good question because Tolkien

14:20

was a man who had parts of

14:23

his life and his soul he didn't

14:25

kind of share with the whole world.

14:27

Whereas Lewis wrote and shared

14:29

everything from so many different

14:31

angles and different fields that he ventured

14:34

into. And Tolkien, as it

14:36

about Catholic, was uncomfortable for example talking

14:38

about theology in scholarly way or in

14:40

authoritative way. He would say, no, leave

14:42

that to the priests and the theologians.

14:45

And so Lewis was doing stuff that

14:47

sometimes made him uncomfortable, not that

14:49

he disagreed with Lewis. He just thought, well,

14:51

Lewis, you're not an expert on that stuff.

14:53

Stick to the media of a literature. That's

14:55

what you're an expert on. But

14:58

when I started this project, I had two

15:00

things kind of that I

15:02

had identified. The first that I had for

15:04

a long time that I had been teaching

15:06

The Hobbit and that is a Hobbit philosophy.

15:09

Is there a Hobbit philosophy or is there a philosophy

15:12

that Tolkien gives us that's connected, The Hobbits?

15:14

And I thought, oh yeah, there absolutely is.

15:17

And it's in the most serious

15:19

part of the book, The Death

15:21

of Thorin Oakenshield. When Bilbo is

15:24

brought to Thorin's bedside, the dying

15:26

king says, forgive me. And

15:28

Bilbo speaks very seriously and solemnly to

15:30

him. And then Thorin says, there's more

15:33

good in you than you know, child

15:36

of the kindly West. And if more

15:38

people enjoyed good food and good

15:40

cheer and fellowship and so on and books,

15:42

then the world would be a merrier place.

15:45

And to me, that's a

15:47

virtue. That's a philosophy rather. And

15:51

in that speech, Thorin also

15:53

says, there's wisdom and courage

15:56

in you, blended in good

15:58

measure. And the other that

16:00

defines Aristotle's virtue ethics is they're

16:02

not extremes. They're a point on

16:05

a scale and they're usually somewhere

16:07

in the middle or not too

16:09

far to the extremes of two

16:12

things. Like, for example, bravery, the

16:14

extremes would be cowardice on

16:17

one end and foolhardiness on the other. So

16:19

bravery is obviously closer to probably foolhardiness

16:22

than it is to cowardice, but it's

16:24

on that scale what Aristotle

16:26

is known for is the golden mean,

16:29

right? Where is that kind of

16:31

moderate position? That's the best position to be

16:33

in. And so I think Thorin is saying

16:35

that to Bilbo, that you're not the wisest

16:37

person in the world, you're not the bravest

16:39

person in the world, but for a little

16:41

person, you've been able to display these virtues.

16:44

And so I think he's saying that, you know,

16:46

oh, yeah, there's Aristotelian virtue

16:48

in Bilbo. And then the other thing

16:51

I saw in Tolkien eventually

16:53

is in one of his letters, I

16:55

saw him say that he was using

16:57

fiction to teach virtue ethics, in essence,

16:59

that he would embody virtuous

17:02

behavior in characters. So

17:05

it's not allegory, which is something

17:07

different, but having characters represent

17:10

certain virtues or maybe multiple virtues

17:12

is something that really interested him

17:14

using literature for sort of moral

17:16

teaching purposes. And a lot of

17:18

modern academics would be uncomfortable with

17:20

that, but not Lewis and Tolkien,

17:23

they would absolutely be comfortable and

17:25

understood that most ancient medieval and

17:27

Renaissance literature did exactly that. But

17:30

what makes Tolkien different from other maybe

17:32

fiction writers who had the aim to

17:34

teach virtue is that he wanted to tell

17:36

a good story first, right? You got to tell the good

17:38

stories. If you don't, it's going to be ham fisted and

17:40

everyone's going to roll their eyes. You're like, Oh my gosh,

17:42

you're just, you're really trying

17:45

to preach to me here, but you can

17:47

read the Hobbit series

17:49

and you're not hitting the face with

17:51

the virtue stuff. It's there, but you're

17:53

so captured with a story that the

17:55

focus is on that. And then

17:57

the virtue ethics as consequence

18:00

gets transmitted into you

18:03

indirectly? Pete

18:05

Yeah, it isn't heavy-handed. And so,

18:07

a lot of people who come from a

18:09

faith tradition would say, read

18:11

The Lord of the Rings especially, and

18:15

say, this is a religious work. Well, what

18:17

makes you say that? If you're looking at organized

18:20

religion in things like churches and

18:22

liturgy, ritual, and so on, there

18:25

are almost no examples of that in The Lord of

18:27

the Rings. That's obviously

18:29

not because Tolkien was an atheist, he

18:31

was a devout Catholic, but he wanted

18:33

to write literature that was a mythology

18:36

that didn't directly compete with Christian mythology,

18:38

that has stories told within a purely

18:40

Christian context like the Arthurian legends, at

18:42

least the medieval ones that he was

18:44

familiar with were sort of overtly Christian

18:46

stories like the Quest for the Holy

18:48

Grail. So, he wanted to do something

18:51

different, and so he gives us

18:53

this world that's almost a pre-Christian

18:56

pagan world where the pagans

18:58

understand the concepts,

19:01

some of them theological and some

19:03

of them virtue-based, that are in

19:05

organized religions and especially in Christianity.

19:08

It's kind of like wanting to have

19:10

your cake and eat it too. Lewis

19:12

and Tolkien both loved pagan cultures and

19:15

they were both devout Christians, at least

19:17

Lewis was eventually. So, how do you

19:19

kind of stay true to your principles

19:21

and also your first loves? And I

19:23

think they both found out very effective

19:25

ways to do that. So, you start

19:27

off Hobbit Virtues talking about how the

19:30

Hobbits were gardeners and that Tolkien himself

19:32

was also an avid gardener and he

19:34

appreciated the gardens in England. How

19:36

is garden-keeping a good metaphor for what

19:39

it means to live a life guided

19:41

by virtue ethics? Yeah,

19:43

so I kind of came up with

19:46

that notion because I know gardening appears

19:48

a lot in the Hobbit and the

19:50

Lord of the Rings and Samwise Gamgee

19:53

is such a central character, some

19:55

would argue, the hero of the Lord of the

19:57

Rings and he is... occupation

20:00

is Gardner, is Frodo's

20:02

Gardner, just like his

20:04

father had been Bilbo's Gardner. So

20:07

it was kind of there already. And then

20:09

when I started writing, all of a sudden, Voltaire

20:11

came out. The last

20:13

line, or nearly the last line in Candide,

20:16

is a novel searching

20:18

for a philosophy of life, and

20:20

they keep coming up with bad ones.

20:23

And finally, Candide says, you just

20:26

need to tend to your own garden. And

20:29

that is a really profound statement, if you

20:31

think of it in terms of

20:34

virtue ethics, right? We need

20:36

to take care of ourselves. Like Plato

20:38

and Aristotle wrote about the inner regime.

20:40

We need to tend our own gardens.

20:43

We need to make sure that we

20:45

are grounded, that we are examining our

20:48

behaviors, we're asking questions about

20:50

how we treat other people. And

20:53

that's very down-to-earth stuff. And

20:55

so I kept finding these little connections,

20:58

often literary connections, to gardening,

21:00

that the Hobbits were

21:02

small people who lived

21:05

underground and esteemed

21:07

gardeners, that humility is tied

21:09

to homeless, which is the

21:11

earth in Latin, right? They're

21:14

literally down-to-earth in

21:16

their size and their living habits, but

21:18

they're also down-to-earth in that they don't

21:20

think too much of themselves. They have

21:22

kind of a natural humility. And

21:25

so Frodo and Samwise are maybe the

21:27

best examples of it in their quests,

21:29

but just a general characteristic, I think,

21:31

of the Hobbits is that they're humble

21:34

people. And Tolkien really

21:36

was fond of the common English

21:40

village, especially the Midlands, where

21:42

his family was from. He loved

21:45

the kind of middle-class values

21:48

and the small-town values of

21:50

that English society, and

21:53

though he pokes fun at it a little

21:55

bit in the Hobbit, he still really feels

21:57

comfortable there, much more comfortable than he

21:59

would say in a book. posh aristocratic circle

22:01

in Britain. Yeah, Tolkien even

22:04

said that he based the hobbits

22:07

off of soldiers that he

22:09

met in World War I. Not the officers,

22:11

which sounded like the common everyday... Samwise, for

22:13

sure. Yeah, Samwise, for sure. Yeah, he's thinking

22:16

back to when he was an officer.

22:18

So if you were an Oxford student

22:20

and you went off to war, you would

22:22

usually get some training and then

22:24

be commissioned as an officer. And

22:26

those people were often infantry

22:29

and artillery and were killed at

22:31

an enormous rate, a disastrous

22:33

wiping out of that generation of

22:36

young men, including the Dons, including

22:38

the younger Tudors and Dons

22:40

at Oxford. And

22:42

so Tolkien and Lewis both narrowly

22:44

escaped World War I with their lives. And

22:47

Tolkien's time in the trenches

22:50

are very important to him. In his

22:52

time there, he said, he just didn't

22:54

get on with the other officers. He

22:57

didn't kind of enjoy their jokes and

22:59

their outlook on life, which you get,

23:01

for example, in a lot of the

23:03

war poetry that comes out of World

23:05

War I. The famous poems of Wilford

23:07

Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, the more celebrated

23:10

kind of authors of the day, were

23:12

more dark and

23:15

cynical about war. Tolkien wasn't that way

23:17

at all. And he really

23:19

associated with the enlisted man and

23:22

especially the Batman, which

23:25

is the name for the servant that

23:27

is given to the officers in the

23:29

British Army. That's a very British thing,

23:31

right? To have a servant. He

23:33

had a lot of fondness for

23:36

his own Batman. And so he says that

23:38

Samwise was very much based on his

23:40

Batman. What does it

23:42

say about Tolkien? That he made these

23:44

humble creatures who loved a garden, loved

23:47

to drink a drink. They

23:49

just wanted to relax, enjoy

23:51

good food. They weren't ostentatious.

23:54

But the Hobbits were the heroes. What

23:57

was Tolkien trying to convey there? Yeah,

24:00

so if you look at the lifestyle

24:02

of Lewis and Tolkien, neither

24:04

of them liked to travel much. Neither

24:07

of them ever came to America, where

24:10

at least by the 1950s, both

24:12

of them were celebrities. By

24:14

a couple years into the publication of

24:16

Lord of the Rings, Tolkien was really kind of

24:18

a cult hero, and in the 60s he was

24:21

very much so. And Lewis was

24:23

on the cover of Time Magazine in

24:25

the 1940s. So they

24:27

would have been treated like real celebrities

24:30

in America. They never came to

24:32

America. Tolkien traveled to

24:35

France before the war, and after the war

24:37

didn't really want to go back. He

24:40

traveled to Ireland a little bit, but other than that,

24:42

he never left home. Lewis and

24:44

his wife Joy went to Greece on a

24:47

vacation, but again, other than that, he never

24:49

really traveled. They had what they needed here

24:51

in Oxford, right? They

24:53

had their fellowship, a fellowship

24:55

of scholars. They had great

24:58

students. They had great pubs with

25:00

great beer. They had food that

25:02

they liked. Neither of them liked

25:04

French food. They didn't like continental food. They

25:06

liked simple English food. And

25:09

they had the countryside, and they were

25:11

both great walkers. They both loved country

25:13

walks. And so they really felt

25:15

like they didn't have to leave. And

25:17

that's, I think, who you get in the hobbits, right? That's

25:20

why it's so hard for Gandalf to get Bilbo

25:22

out the front door and onto

25:24

this quest, is because he's typical, you

25:26

know, probably of Tolkien and his friends

25:29

that they just didn't like to

25:31

travel a whole lot. And they had

25:33

prejudices about people in the greater world

25:35

outside. And Bilbo

25:37

has to overcome those prejudices through

25:39

travel, but he has to come

25:42

back home. And so the

25:44

most simple formula in this

25:46

kind of a fairy tale is the

25:48

same formula you see in

25:50

Sword in the Stone by T.H. White,

25:52

the Arthurian story. It's a

25:55

formula you see in almost every Harry Potter book.

25:57

It's there and back again. That's

26:00

it. You leave home, it's uncomfortable, you

26:02

go do something, and then you come

26:04

back again. And when you come back,

26:06

you're either a changed person or you

26:09

appreciate home more. And so the

26:11

last words in the Lord of the Rings, of course,

26:14

is Samwise saying, I'm back. That's

26:17

it. It's that simple. Dave

26:20

That's it. So yeah, Tolkien wasn't a fan of

26:22

travel or adventure just for travel or

26:24

adventure's sake. The Hobbits went on the

26:26

venture because there was a reason to.

26:28

They got called to it, and they

26:30

needed to do something, and then they

26:32

stepped up to the challenge. But

26:35

again, you had to come back home. That was the most

26:37

important thing for Tolkien. Dave Yeah. I mean, Freddo

26:39

and Sam certainly weren't warriors, and really

26:42

neither were Merry or Pippet. So they

26:44

were kind of forced into those roles

26:46

by their commitment to this quest. So

26:48

it's the reluctant hero, I think we see in admire

26:50

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And now back to the show. So

31:04

Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings and in

31:06

The Hobbit makes courage a

31:08

primary virtue that he explores. What's

31:10

Tolkien's theory of courage? I

31:13

think in The Hobbit, the

31:15

courage that we see is

31:17

the courage of the small person. And

31:20

so we're kind of used to that now

31:22

in American culture. We have lots of children

31:24

who do great things and small people who

31:27

do great things. But if you think about

31:29

it in the early 20th century, there's not

31:31

a lot of great literature written about heroic

31:33

quests by small people. And

31:35

so Bilbo is this person who's

31:37

not trained as a warrior. He

31:39

really doesn't even have a training. He doesn't

31:42

have a job. He's just, he's kind of

31:44

English gentry who's inherited property. And

31:47

he just putters around in the garden and

31:49

smokes his pipe and eats and just really

31:51

doesn't do anything. But yet there's something inside

31:53

him. And Gandalf says, we just need to

31:55

bring it out of you. You need to

31:57

prove to yourself that it's in you. And

32:00

so I'm going to kick you out the door. I'm

32:02

going to put you on this quest and it's going

32:04

to be good for you and amusing for me, which

32:06

is a great line. So Bilbo keeps being

32:09

put in these situations with the trolls

32:11

and with golem and with

32:13

the spiders and then smog in which he

32:16

displays increasing amounts of

32:18

courage, he fidgets, you

32:21

know, he, he faints, he does

32:23

all these things, but eventually he

32:25

becomes a person who's

32:27

courageous enough to crawl towards a dragon and

32:30

so all the great courageous moments for

32:32

Bilbo Tolkien says, that's the

32:34

big moment that he, he knows

32:37

there is a horrendous evil power on

32:39

the other end of this tunnel and

32:41

he has to keep crawling towards it.

32:44

Now think about, you know, men in

32:46

the trenches, men who are going over

32:48

the top and into no man's land

32:50

as soldiers in war war one, you

32:52

know, that's little people in a big

32:54

story, right? Facing a big evil.

32:56

And so I think you can relate to that. If

32:58

you are someone with military experience,

33:01

your wartime experience, you can relate to

33:03

that feeling that Bilbo has only, he

33:05

doesn't have the military training, the

33:07

physical trainings. That's why it's even

33:09

greater for him because he's a

33:11

small person without those physical characteristics.

33:14

He just needs to figure

33:16

out a way to stay alive and

33:18

he does and uses his wits to do.

33:20

Yeah. And you, you mentioned that essay that

33:23

he wrote about Beowulf, the monsters and the

33:25

critics, and he talked about

33:27

this idea that the early

33:29

Northern literature is a creed

33:32

of unyielding will it's

33:34

fighting and continue to fight, even though

33:36

you're not on the side that wins.

33:39

You see that in the Lord of the rings, there's

33:41

all these moments when you think, boy, it's

33:44

over for these people. They're goners, but

33:47

they still keep going and they still

33:49

keep fighting. I think Tolkien really admired

33:51

that. Yeah. This, you

33:53

know, keep calm and carry on. That's become

33:55

a kind of a popular phrase resurrected in

33:58

the last couple of decades. when

34:00

you think of the Brits, you know, stiff

34:02

upper-lamp and all of that. So Tolkien did

34:04

believe that there was something inherent to

34:07

the makeup of an English

34:09

person. And this goes

34:11

back to when they were, you know,

34:14

gardeners themselves back in

34:16

pagan Anglo-Saxon times. There

34:18

must have been something in them that

34:20

gave them this ability to keep moving

34:22

forward. And sometimes there

34:24

are warriors in Anglo-Saxon or Norse epics

34:27

that, you know, have the ability to fight and

34:29

they just keep fighting even though they know they're

34:31

going to lose the battle. And

34:33

sometimes he's critical of that. There's an

34:36

Anglo-Saxon term called Ophir mode, which is

34:38

similar to hubris or overwhelming pride that

34:40

makes you want to just keep fighting

34:43

for your own personal glory, even though your

34:45

sight is going to lose. The Song

34:47

of Roland is another example in medieval literature of this.

34:50

But the Hobbits aren't really like that.

34:52

The Hobbits don't have glory.

34:54

They don't have these great heroic

34:56

figures in their culture. And

34:59

yet something makes Frodo and

35:01

Sam especially keep moving

35:04

up the mountain, right, of Mount

35:06

Doom, keep pushing through with

35:08

the weight of the ring and

35:10

this responsibility on them and

35:13

no food and run out of

35:15

water and what makes them keep moving. And

35:18

Tolkien really thought that was something about the

35:21

English character. Well, you talk about the elves

35:23

in Middle-earth kind of represent this Tolkien

35:26

tenacity. You talk about the elves

35:28

fighting the long defeat. The

35:31

elves knew that their time was

35:33

over in Middle-earth. So they were leaving and it was going to be

35:35

the age of man. But they

35:37

nonetheless kept doing what they could do

35:39

no matter what. Yeah,

35:42

so the elves are very different.

35:44

The Hobbits have characteristics. The dwarves

35:46

have different characteristics and the elves

35:48

have different characteristics and the elves

35:50

are the elder children. So

35:52

they were created first as

35:55

tall, beautiful, strong,

35:57

wise. They have all

35:59

of these kind of natural things.

36:01

natural characteristics that the Hobbits don't

36:03

have. And yet they're cursed with

36:05

long life. They live for

36:07

a long, long time, and they see other

36:10

people die, and they see Middle Earth change,

36:12

and they know that Middle Earth is eventually

36:14

going to die, and they love it so

36:16

much. So fighting the long

36:19

defeat means that you're fighting

36:21

these battles and these great wars,

36:24

and if you don't die in battle, you

36:26

will continue to live. But

36:28

if you stay in Middle Earth, you will get to

36:30

watch Middle Earth die. That's

36:33

the long defeat, and that's the kind

36:35

of dark pessimism side of

36:37

Tolkien that some people don't

36:40

really kind of see, I think, is that there

36:42

is a lot of darkness, especially

36:44

in the latter parts of The

36:46

Lord of the Rings. Is there

36:48

a scene from any of the books

36:50

from Tolkien that really exemplify his ideal of

36:52

courage, you think? Well,

36:55

again, in The Hobbit, I would say that

36:58

Bilbo crawling through the tunnel facing Smaug, and

37:01

Bilbo's fighting the spiders.

37:03

Again, without any training, he has this

37:05

little sword. So those are

37:07

kind of his moments. In The

37:09

Lord of the Rings, Samwise, trying

37:12

to rescue Frodo, who's been stabbed

37:15

by Shelob, and trying to get

37:17

Frodo's body back, fighting orcs, turning

37:20

into this kind of vision of the

37:22

brave Samwise that he was daydreaming about.

37:24

I mean, that's definitely a great moment

37:26

of courage for Sam. No, my favorite

37:28

scene with Sam is when he puts

37:30

Frodo on his back and carries him

37:32

up. And Sean Austen,

37:34

he does such a great job portraying that

37:37

scene. It's better in the movie than in

37:39

the book, I think. Yeah,

37:41

I think so too. There are some

37:43

moments like that, I think, Boromir's death and

37:46

his conversation with Aragorn in the movie.

37:49

That is our original dialogue, most of

37:51

it written by Fran Walsh, who I

37:53

got to meet and talk to her

37:55

about just how great that speech is

37:57

that Boromir gives. Eragorn's

38:00

response to it. I think that's better than

38:02

the way Tolkien does it in the book,

38:04

which is basically another version of the death

38:07

of Roland from the Song of Roland. But

38:09

it's changed a little bit in the movie, and

38:11

yeah, it brings a tear to my eyes almost

38:13

every time to see Sam put Frodo

38:16

on his back. And then the other moment in

38:18

the movie that's not in the book that

38:20

really, really makes me tear up is

38:23

when Eragorn's coronation, when he

38:25

comes to greet the hobbits,

38:28

and they kneel to him,

38:30

and he looks pained and

38:32

says, my friends, you

38:34

kneel to no one, and

38:37

then he kneels to them. And everybody

38:40

there follows the

38:42

king, kneeling to the hobbits. That

38:45

just shows you why Eragorn is just

38:47

the best king, right? That's an act

38:49

of humility. Yeah, I'm getting teary-dye

38:51

just thinking about it. Come, Mr. Frodo! Oh, man, I'm

38:54

just thinking about it. So

38:56

Lord of the Rings, the first book is called The

38:58

Fellowship of the Ring, and this idea of fellowship is

39:01

really important to Tolkien. What did

39:03

he mean by fellowship, and how does it

39:05

differ from friendship? I think friendship, he

39:07

explores sort of, you know, individual

39:10

friendships. I think that

39:12

Sam and Frodo is one

39:14

of the greatest. It's a real love, a

39:17

filos, and so is in a

39:19

different way the friendship between

39:21

Gimli and Legolas, I think is

39:23

really interesting. But fellowship is a

39:25

little different. Fellowship is a gathering

39:27

of enough people that you can kind

39:30

of entertain each other, never be bored,

39:32

you know, with that group of people,

39:35

and feel comfortable around one

39:37

another, enough that you

39:40

can both encourage each other, and

39:43

you can criticize each other as

39:45

writers and artists. You

39:47

can criticize each other's work. Of

39:49

course, that's exactly what we get

39:51

in the Inklings, but that was

39:53

not the first of Tolkien's fellowships.

39:55

Tolkien had a fellowship of friends

39:57

at King Edward's school before university.

40:00

when he was in Birmingham, his high school friends,

40:02

as we would say, are very

40:05

close, and they call themselves the

40:07

TCBS. The Tea Club

40:09

and Barovian Society met in

40:11

these tea rooms and had this

40:13

kind of banter that you see a

40:16

bit of in the inklings later. Well,

40:18

all except for two of the major

40:20

TCBS members died in the

40:22

First World War, and that left a

40:24

lasting imprint on Tolkien in a lot of ways. One

40:28

thing was that he missed that fellowship. And

40:31

so he tried to start clubs at

40:33

Leeds and at Oxford, but it wasn't

40:35

until Lewis and Tolkien joined a student

40:37

club that already existed called the Inklings

40:40

that it really fit their temperament.

40:43

And so the students graduated, left

40:45

Oxford, they kept the name and invited

40:48

more and more of their friends on

40:51

Tuesday mornings, usually at the Eagle and

40:53

Child Pub, and Thursday evenings,

40:55

usually in C.S. Lewis' rooms at

40:57

Modelling College. And they

40:59

sometimes just drank and told stories and jokes,

41:02

and sometimes they had very serious

41:04

discussions and sometimes they read work to each

41:06

other, work that eventually became

41:08

the Lord of the Rings, for

41:11

example. All right, so the fellowship, you get together

41:13

with people for a purpose, right? For the fellowship

41:15

of the ring, the purpose was we got to get this

41:17

ring back to Mordor. And for

41:19

Tolkien, his fellowships are like, I want to

41:21

be around a group of people where we

41:23

can support and criticize our

41:26

work and become better writers.

41:29

Yeah, and that we like the same type

41:31

of literature and history, I think, as well.

41:34

And that was important, certainly for the

41:37

Inklings, because they were mostly were Christian

41:39

group, but in a lot of ways

41:41

they had different temperaments and different interests.

41:44

But the thing they had

41:46

in common most was that

41:48

they appreciated traditional forms of

41:50

storytelling, right? So epic poetry,

41:53

the romances of the 19th

41:55

century, like William Morris' works

41:58

and fairy tales. some

42:00

periods of history. They all liked

42:02

that stuff. They did not like

42:05

modernist writers, for example, T.S. Eliot,

42:07

who Lewis at least did not

42:09

like at all. And so

42:11

there were people that would kind of

42:13

be excluded because they were writing a

42:15

type of literature that the English wouldn't

42:17

like. So you do have to have

42:19

enough in common, usually cultural tastes. It

42:21

wasn't for them so much politics, because

42:23

they never really talked a lot of

42:25

politics. Most all of them were

42:27

conservatives culturally, but politically

42:30

they just didn't really talk much about

42:32

politics. But I think most fellowships do

42:35

form around that kind of first thing

42:37

that you share in common. Maybe that

42:39

is politics, or maybe that is

42:41

religion, or maybe it's an interest in a certain

42:44

type of music or literature. So

42:46

the Hobbits, we talked about this earlier, they like

42:48

to enjoy themselves. They like to eat good food.

42:50

They like to drink. They like to laugh and

42:52

dance, smoke a pipe. And Tolkien

42:55

himself, he said, I'm in fact

42:57

a hobbit in all but

42:59

size. Tolkien like gardens and trees and unmechanized

43:01

farmlands. He says that I'm fond of

43:03

mushrooms out of a field. He says I

43:05

have a very simple sense of humor. I

43:08

go to bed late and get up late when

43:10

possible. I do not travel much. So

43:13

this idea of merrymaking and

43:15

just enjoying life, how is

43:17

that virtuous? What role does that play in living

43:20

a virtuous life? I'm

43:23

not a good singer, but a lot

43:25

of people who sing tell me how

43:28

healthy it is to do so. And

43:30

I think singing and laughing

43:32

and dancing do have these

43:35

kind of biological pluses to them.

43:37

I think they do raise

43:40

the endorphins and all of that. But I

43:42

think that there are some studies

43:44

that would suggest that those things are actually kind

43:46

of good for you physically, as

43:48

well as the fellowship or the spiritual

43:51

side of what you're doing. And

43:53

then comes the food and drink. And

43:55

that is maybe the more controversial part

43:57

of Hobbit Virtues. My book is that

43:59

I'm trying to make a defense for

44:01

living well by eating and drinking well.

44:04

C.S. Lewis and J.R. Tolkien did not

44:06

abstain. They were not tea toddlers. They

44:08

liked beer, and they liked to smoke

44:10

pipes. And, you know, I don't

44:13

know if they were around today whether they

44:15

would still be smoking pipes, but

44:17

they would certainly still be drinking beer. And

44:19

so I don't think they saw anything wrong

44:21

with that. And, you know, I give some

44:23

examples in the book about the history of

44:25

Christianity and Judaism and other religions where

44:27

there are times of the year in certain places

44:29

in which it's not just okay to drink,

44:32

but in some cases even to overindulge, for

44:34

example, the Catholic Church and the Middle Ages

44:36

and the Renaissance felt that at certain times

44:38

of the year it was good to have

44:41

a Mardi Gras, right, to kind of get

44:43

the bad humors out of you by having

44:45

this kind of good time. And so they

44:48

let people blow off steam, as we would

44:50

say. So there's a little bit of that.

44:52

But I don't think it's complete overindulgence. I

44:54

think it's just appreciating the

44:56

taste of beer, the taste of

44:59

food, but also that those things you

45:01

can appreciate better in fellowship, right,

45:04

as opposed to drinking alone,

45:06

right, is one thing. But if you're

45:08

having that same glass or two of

45:10

wine with someone you love,

45:12

with a fellowship, then it takes on

45:15

other meanings. And I don't know

45:17

if that's physically better for you, but

45:19

I think that Tolkien and Lewis think

45:22

that is entirely appropriate. I

45:24

think they see Jesus behaving that way

45:26

in the Gospels, and they

45:29

would think it's fine, if

45:31

not virtuous behavior. So

45:33

another thing that Tolkien talks about is

45:35

the theme is this

45:37

idea of mercy being

45:40

a virtue. Nietzsche famously

45:42

derided mercy. He did. The

45:44

Karate Kid, the sensei there,

45:46

sensei crease, says

45:49

that mercy is for the weak. Tolkien

45:51

has a different take on mercy. What was his take on

45:53

it? Yeah, it's really

45:55

interesting that you went to Karate Kid,

45:58

because I remember seeing that movie. when

46:00

I was young and then went back to

46:02

the reboot of the series. I love it. I

46:04

love most of it, not all of it, but I love

46:07

a lot of it because it is a spiritual

46:09

journey for a lot of the characters there. And

46:12

Daniel, the original karate kid, he's

46:14

trying to stick to Mr. Miyagi's

46:17

virtues, and Mercy is a virtue that

46:19

he was taught by his sensei. And

46:21

so he thinks that the Cobra Kai

46:23

way is wrong because it's

46:25

no mercy. And so Johnny has to

46:28

kind of learn that from Daniel, and

46:30

then Daniel learned some other things from Johnny. I

46:32

think that's what made that last season of that

46:34

good. But Mercy is not

46:37

a virtue that you see

46:39

early in the Greco-Roman tradition.

46:42

Again, the heroes are people

46:44

who seek individual glory, and

46:46

that's often military, glory, and

46:49

political power. Those

46:51

classical virtues are challenged by

46:53

the historical figure of Jesus

46:55

of Nazareth. He on

46:57

the Sermon of the Mount challenges these

47:00

notions by saying, no, it's

47:03

the humble, it's the peacemakers, the

47:05

merciful. Those are

47:08

the exalted ones. And

47:10

I think that's his maybe most revolutionary

47:12

sermon, and part of his philosophy is

47:15

that you have to reverse these things.

47:18

From that moment on, then it becomes a

47:20

struggle between in the Roman world these classical

47:24

heroic virtues and the Christian

47:26

principles, which says that the slave has

47:28

a soul that is just as

47:30

important as the emperor's soul. To

47:33

God, they're just both beautiful souls.

47:36

And so it really... I

47:38

love the Middle Ages because it's

47:40

kind of trying to work this

47:43

out, and it really does take

47:45

mercy seriously. Nightly codes develop that

47:47

say that you have to fight

47:49

in a certain way, usually one-on-one,

47:52

and if your enemy falls, then

47:54

you have to offer

47:56

him mercy and not take advantage

47:58

of his... disadvantaged position,

48:01

that you don't fight

48:03

women and children and

48:05

priests, non-combatants. Those were all

48:07

laws that were instituted in church law that

48:10

were some of the first international laws in

48:12

the Middle Ages. That's

48:14

what makes the Middle Ages, I think,

48:16

so great. And C.S. Lewis has a

48:18

wonderful essay called The Necessity of Chivalry

48:21

in which he argues that we need

48:23

more chivalry today because what

48:26

we get today are wolves and

48:28

sheep. We have people who

48:30

are—he doesn't really like pacifism, and

48:32

he says they're just sheep. They're

48:35

too docile. And

48:37

then we get the killers who have no mercy.

48:40

And what we need is more Lancelot's who

48:43

have the physical abilities of an

48:45

Achilles. So they can do just

48:48

as well on a battlefield, but

48:50

they're trained, they're training

48:52

themselves to refrain

48:55

from unnecessary violence,

48:57

to restrain themselves

48:59

so that they do not attack

49:02

non-combatants. They offer mercy to fallen

49:04

opponents. That's part of the

49:06

chivalric code in the Arthurian legends that

49:08

then becomes a cultural code.

49:10

Not that every real-life knight lived up

49:13

to that, for sure, but at least

49:15

it's a measuring stick that's out there

49:17

that is not in the classical virtue

49:20

world. And it's not really,

49:22

I would say, in the modern world

49:24

either. Is there a scene in the

49:26

Florida the Ring series that really shows

49:28

this idea of mercy? Yeah,

49:33

I mean, the great acts of

49:35

mercy towards Gollum. First

49:37

in The Hobbit, in which Tolkien didn't

49:39

originally write it this way, so he

49:42

had to tinker with this episode. But

49:45

when Bilbo has the ring and he

49:47

turns invisible and he has the sword,

49:49

Gollum is in the tunnel. In between

49:51

him and his freedom, he

49:54

could have killed Gollum and says, yeah,

49:56

that's what I need to do. I

49:58

just need to poke his eyes. out

50:00

to kill this miserable creature. And

50:02

then he starts to imagine Gollum's

50:05

life. So he has empathy

50:07

for Gollum because he imagines what it

50:09

would be like living for, you know,

50:12

hundreds of years in this, you know,

50:15

sunless dark cave. And because he

50:17

has empathy, he decides

50:19

to jump over Gollum and

50:21

run instead of killing him. And

50:24

Tolkien eventually kind of says, oh, that works out really

50:26

well with what I'm trying to do in The Lord

50:28

of the Rings. And a lot

50:30

of my friends, especially Christian friends, will say

50:32

that that's the key to the whole Lord

50:34

of the Rings, that everything

50:37

would have changed if Bilbo would have killed

50:39

Gollum, because he would have obtained the ring

50:42

in an act of violence, he would have

50:44

simply become a dark lord. And

50:47

then Frodo just echoes these

50:49

acts of mercy towards

50:51

Gollum and several points in the book,

50:53

he has opportunity to kill Gollum and

50:55

he doesn't. And Sam in the

50:57

book is a little more like wanting to

51:00

kill Gollum than he is in the movies. And

51:02

so that's the one kind of failure with

51:05

Sam. It's like, he can't empathize

51:07

with Gollum the way Frodo can. And

51:10

Peter Jackson's interpretation of that is it's

51:12

because Frodo had had the ring for

51:14

that long. And so he understood addiction

51:17

to this kind of power that Gollum

51:19

had. And that empathy led to these

51:21

acts of mercy. And that's beautiful.

51:23

And it's wonderful. And it gets us all

51:26

the way up to the crack of doom,

51:28

right? And you think, Oh yeah, that's an

51:30

easy answer. And then Frodo

51:32

refuses to destroy the ring.

51:35

And you're thinking, Oh, you got that close and you

51:37

can't do it. That's that

51:39

darkness in Tolkien, right? That says, no,

51:42

even our best champions can't ultimately

51:44

do at the last minute, the

51:46

right thing all the time. And

51:48

in the face of evil, Frodo

51:50

becomes selfish and gives in. And

51:52

so Gollum jumps up and bites

51:55

his finger and they fall into the crack and

51:57

that's how the ring is destroyed. So Tolkien is

51:59

obviously saying there that it's not

52:01

Frodo's action at that point, it's

52:04

what this off-screen power does with

52:06

Frodo and Gollum's actions that creates

52:08

the eukatastrophe, the happy ending of

52:10

the Lord of the Rings. Well,

52:12

yeah, and there's that famous scene

52:14

between Frodo and Gandalf where they're

52:16

having a conversation where Frodo's like,

52:19

it's a pity Bilbo didn't kill Gollum when he had the

52:21

chance. And then Gandalf, the wise,

52:23

he's saying, it's a pity

52:25

that stayed Bilbo's hand. And then

52:27

he goes on, he says, the pity

52:30

of Bilbo may rule the fate of many. And

52:33

that's the scene, right? Like the Bilbo's pity

52:35

in The Hobbit is what saved

52:37

the day at the end of the Lord

52:39

of the Rings series. Because Gandalf senses

52:41

that Gollum is going to have some role

52:43

to play in this and that

52:46

he needs to keep Gollum alive. He

52:48

can't kill Gollum because he's got some

52:50

role in all of this because Gandalf

52:53

has these kind of angelic abilities

52:55

even before he's Gandalf the White. He

52:58

kind of senses this. And yeah, he's absolutely right. None

53:00

of this would have been a

53:02

happy ending had it not happened exactly

53:04

this way. But it is

53:06

also Tolkien's really theological point

53:08

there that we need grace, that

53:11

human action, sort

53:13

of humanism is not enough. At the

53:16

end, in the face of

53:18

the greatest evil, we need help. Well,

53:20

Chris, this has been a great conversation. Where can people

53:22

go to learn more about the book and your work? Well,

53:26

so they can read Hobbit Virtues, which

53:28

came out a couple of years ago.

53:30

Hobbit Virtues, Rediscovering Virtue Ethics in the

53:33

Work of Gerhard Tolkien. Or

53:35

they can read my first Tolkien book,

53:37

which came out in a revised edition

53:39

just this past year called The Making

53:41

of Middle-Earth. And that's a

53:43

more comprehensive book, which I talk a

53:46

lot about history and archaeology of ancient

53:48

medieval worlds and how understanding

53:50

that better helps us understand Tolkien

53:53

better. So those are two to start

53:55

with and basically read anything by

53:57

Tom Shippe on Tolkien. Probably

54:00

our greatest living Tolkien scholar. There are a

54:02

lot of people a lot more people

54:04

now doing really good books on Tolkien Then

54:07

there were say, you know 10 15 years ago. Well,

54:09

Chris Snyder. Thanks for time. It's been a pleasure Thanks,

54:12

Brett My guest it was

54:14

Chris Snyder. He's the author of the book Hobbit

54:16

virtues It's available on amazon.com check out our show

54:19

notes at a whim is slash Hobbit virtues We

54:21

find links to resources read all deeper into this

54:23

topic Well

54:31

that wraps up another edition of the a whim

54:33

podcast make sure to check out our website at

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