That’s kinda my point really. You don’t immediately see “Christian” when you make your first run through the Trilogy. However, Tolkien was a very devout and may I say very
traditional Catholic.
People like Musicaladmirer and colmcille1 over there would then be hard pressed to prove
their claim because even someone such as him had a passion for something outside our religion. If the “richness of Catholicism” is so enough that you’ll have “no recourse to fiction whatsoever” then why did Tolkien put in dwarves? Elves? Wizards? The concept of knights and kings was really less of a Catholic concept and more of a medieval one. If the richness was truly, absolutely enough, then why did he not simply make another story of saints, angels, and the Blessed Virgin? Why did he not simply use Aramaic or Latin instead of inventing Elvish? Surely he wouldn’t care if people scoffed at such a work. The “richness” of our religion would have been good enough for him after all.
Well that is pretty much why I preferred Tolkien’s style over that of Lewis when it came to your religion influencing your work.
I totally see where you’re coming from, Wanderer. Really I do. But I wonder----where do you draw the line at deemphasizing or basically neutering a novel’s or any other work of art’s overt religious message simpoly because ot might not be “digestible” to certain sensibilities and ideologies?
Tolkien chose to insert his Catholic message subtly and in the background in the Ring Trilogy and The Hobbit. He also mixed it with Germanic and Nordic mythological symbolism and allegory to achieve a work of art that aimed to entertain, please and also make one think at the same time. It is a work of art FIRST with Christian Catholic symbolism and meaning in it.
Tolkien, was, first and foremost, a scholar and professor of Anglo-Saxon languages and writer who happened to be a devout Catholic; and who was NOT a “Defender Of The Faith.”
Lewis, on the other hand, was a Christian apologist and commentator who WAS a “Defender Of The Faith.” And as such, the Christianity in the Narnia books is overt and integral to the back ground and story. As I mentioned before, almost all agree that Aslan is Christ and that the books are an allegory of the Fall and the Second Coming Of Our Lord. They are, in short, CHRISTIAN works of art and were intended to be read and understood as such.
Therefore, in that sense----what is wrong with emphasizing this in the Movies?
Must “political correctness” and “sensitivity” trump neutering and ignoring a book’s Christian message for the sake of the “maximum amount of profits and relatability” that Hollywood seems to aspire to these days? Must “secularity” trump the “heart” of a book’s Christian or otherwise religious message?
Another example of this that comes to mind is the film version of P.D. James’s The Children Of Men. Anybody familiar with the novel knows of the work’s overt Christian symbolism and sensibility----this was taken out in the movie version with Clive Owen. The director of the movie even admitted he did it deliberately in an interview. While it does not totally dilute and obscure the book’s ultimate meaning, the movie version loses a lot of the “flavor” of the novel and some of its unique sensibility in the process.
So-----do you think ultimately the fact that you PERSONALLY may not like Overt Christian Symbolism in movies trumps overriding a Christian work’s meaning and worth for the sake of “scruples” about making folks like you and Non-Christians (and even Liberal Christians) uncomfortable?
But it wasn’t a great book. Not even a good book. I read one criticism that I think is very accurate; it described the author’s writing as more akin to a “find-yourself” magazine article style than an actual novel.