The Tree of Amalion by JRR Tolkien
Many of you may already know JRR Tolkien for his immensely popular fantasy novels, The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, which contain, alongside brilliant characters and adventure, many songs and poems. Tolkien was influenced by poetry his whole life, and poetry even became a defining interest in his career as a professor and philologist. He wrote an essay that revitalized scholarship on the ancient poem Beowulf, as well as publishing his own notes and translations of old English poetry, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
In Tolkien’s obituary, his friend and colleague CS Lewis described Tolkien as someone who had “been inside language”, who understood not only how languages were constructed, but how they move and breathe as living texts. Tolkien, who was himself a devout Christian, coined the term “eucatastrophe” in his essay “On Fairy Stories”, describing it as a moment of sudden and miraculous grace, witnessed in the weekly Eucharist, in the arrival of Gandalf the White, and in the resurrection of Christ.
By Annalise Wall