page_title: J. R. R. Tolkien
section_title: Views
hierarchical_section_title: J. R. R. Tolkien / Views
caption_attribution_description: English: Picture of the corner of the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford (England), where the Inklings met (1930–1950). Español: Fotografía de la esquina del pub Eagle and Child en Oxford (Inglaterra), donde los Inklings se reunían (1930–1950).
context_page_description: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE FRSL was an English writer, poet, philologist, and academic. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
  He served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, from 1945 to 1959. He was at one time a close friend of C. S. Lewis—they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Tolkien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972.
  After Tolkien's death, his son Christopher published a series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about a fantasy world called Arda and Middle-earth within it. Between 1951 and 1955, Tolkien applied the term legendarium to the larger part of these writings.
context_section_description: Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic, and in his religious and political views he was mostly a traditionalist moderate, with libertarian, distributist, localist, and monarchist leanings, in the sense of favouring established conventions and orthodoxies over innovation and modernization, whilst castigating government bureaucracy; in 1943 he wrote, "My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)—or to 'unconstitutional' Monarchy."
  Although he did not often write or speak about it, Tolkien advocated the dismantling of the British Empire and even of the United Kingdom. In a 1936 letter to a former student, the Belgian linguist Simonne d'Ardenne, he wrote, "The political situation is dreadful... I have the greatest sympathy with Belgium—which is about the right size of any country! I wish my own were bounded still by the seas of the Tweed and the walls of Wales... we folk do at least know something of mortality and eternity and when Hitler (or a Frenchman) says 'Germany (or France) must live forever' we know that he lies."
  Tolkien hated the side effects of industrialization, which he considered to be devouring the English countryside and simpler life. For most of his adult life, he was disdainful of cars, preferring to ride a bicycle. This attitude can be seen in his work, most famously in the portrayal of the forced "industrialization" of the Shire in The Lord of the Rings.
  Many commentators have remarked on parallels between the Middle-earth saga and events in Tolkien's lifetime. The Lord of the Rings is often thought to represent England during and immediately after the Second World War. Tolkien rejected this in the foreword to the second edition of the novel, stating that he preferred applicability to allegory. In his essay "On Fairy-Stories" he argued that fairy-stories are so apt because they are consistent both within themselves and with truths about reality, as Christianity itself is. Commentators have accordingly sought Christian themes in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien objected to C. S. Lewis's use of overt religious allegory in his stories. However, he wrote that the Mount Doom scene exemplified lines from the Lord's Prayer.
  His love of myths and his faith came together in his assertion that he believed mythology to be the divine echo of "the Truth", a view expressed in his poem Mythopoeia.
caption: The Corner of the Eagle and Child Pub, Oxford, where the Inklings met (1930–1950)
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