Anna Holmes: JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis had an antagonist best frenemyship. Tolkien gave Lewis crap for his biblical allegories and Lewis was purported to say “not more ELVES” when Tolkien sent LOTR. Tolkien was also a professor who was known to give purposely terrible lectures so he could go back to writing.

OK besides this below and DEVO coming out of the Kent State massacre, what are other facts you have about the evolution of art / music /etc that wouldn't be obvious if you didn't know but, retroactively, explain and/or illuminate a LOT ?

Reminds me of how almost all the French dadaists and surrealists were WWI veterans of the trenches seriously exploring alternatives to conventional thought and language.

JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis had an antagonist best frenemyship. Tolkien gave Lewis crap for his biblical allegories and Lewis was purported to say “not more ELVES” when Tolkien sent LOTR. Tolkien was also a professor who was known to give purposely terrible lectures so he could go back to writing.

Their friendship dissolved when Tolkien--a Catholic -- disapproved of Lewis--an Anglican-- marrying a divorced woman .

GASP Old dead white man drama is my favorite. I feel like their schism accounts for why there were two very distinct schools of fantasy for a long time: the “obvious allegory/reworked fairy tale” and “this is literally The Hero’s Journey again and again” camps.

Ooooh, that’s fresh tea for me!

And of course both their schools of fantasy were based on their particular areas of Middle- and Old-English scholarly expertise, Lewis with allegory and Tolkien with translation of texts such as Beowulf and Sir Gawain.

Ok. Was definitely not expecting it to be Tolkien who ended up playing the religion card so hard it ruined the friendship!

He was raised in a monastery! He was super serious about his Catholicism (spoke Latin, among other dead languages).

That makes perfect sense....

one of his sons became a priest but he's been (rightly) memory holed by the family after being accused of CSA

When they first met, Lewis was an atheist and Tolkien was the one who convinced him to return to christianity! I believe he later regretted this course of action :P

I did my senior project on Lewis back in 2003. I love when other people know these things. 🤩

That’s hilarious! I did a college course on Norse mythology and Tolkien went “yoink” to so much of it that we spent a lot of time on him. He was both hilarious and frustrating.

😮 TIL!!!!!

Specifically, Tolkien was upset Lewis returned to the Anglican church of his youth instead of becoming a Catholic. Tolkien's mother had been badly mistreated by her Anglican family for marrying a Catholic, and JRR held a grudge against the Church of England his entire life.

Okay, wait a sec, so Tolkien was all pissy about Lewis marrying a divorced woman, but had a grudge against Anglican Church for his mom’s Anglican family being mad about her marrying a Catholic? How has this not been made into a limited British TV drama yet?

He did because Lewis became an Anglican and not a Roman Catholic.

This point has always confused me. In _The Case for Christianity_ Lewis explicitly describes himself as Roman Catholic, but I've had people explain to me that I have to understand that in a C of E context - he wasn't a "real" Catholic in some way I won't pretend to understand.

I didn't know that! And I don't have any explanation either. Thanks.

It didn't help that Lewis was bigoted specifically against Catholics all his life.

I think it may have been a mutual friend? But don’t take my word for it, come check out the Inkling stuff at the Wade Center in Wheaton, IL www.wheaton.edu/academics/ac...

Marion E. Wade Centerwww.wheaton.edu The Marion E. Wade Center of Wheaton College, Illinois, conducts programming, issues publications, and is a major research collection for seven British authors.

"boys, boys, you're BOTH insufferable"

And they were already soured when Lewis (a former atheist) converted to church of England instead of Catholicism.

Well since we're talking about their unique friendship and being profs in the same breath...

JRR Tolkien tells CS Lewis about his new characteryoutu.be JRR Tolkien tells CS Lewis about his new character #llotr #narnia #lionthewitchandthewardrobe #jrrtolkien #books #cslewis #comedy #funny #academia #history

It should be noted in regards to this video that Tolkien adored trees and I'm sure CS Lewis knew that

Oh good I don't have to go find this.

Yes, Diana Wynne Jones famously took one of his courses and was one of two students who stayed the entire term, annoying Tolkien as he was in the middle of revisions on Lord of the Rings and had counted on everyone dropping out so he could work on the book but still get paid for the course.

This makes me love Diana Wynne Jones even more, which I wouldn't have thought possible

They had a whole "elfs/elves" and "dwarfs/dwarves" disagreement that I have headcanoned into being highly erotic.

I FORGOT ABOUT THAT It was SRS BUSINESS. Insults were thrown, linguistic rules consulted…

Next season on Ryan Murphy's Feud

It’s like, gentlemen, whatever you say basically becomes canon. You can BOTH be wrong.

“Another bloody elf” is traditionally attributed to Auden

That explicit phrase, yes, but Lewis wrote to Tolkien basically telling him to touch grass.

Not to "well, actually", but that would be Hugo Dyson. Auden was too young to be in the Inklings when Tolkien would have been sharing from his works in progress. Auden did write a rather glowing review of LotR and had some friendly correspondence with Tolkien.

You’re right.

Tolkien was one of the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, which may have something to do with his prominent featuring of entire fictional languages in his writing. www.oed.com/information/...

Contributors to the OEDwww.oed.com The OED has always been a collaborative project with contributions from volunteer readers, proof-readers, consultants, and staff. It can be regarded as one of the first academic crowdsourcing projects...

He was a linguist first and foremost. Spoke five dead languages. I like to think he wrote fiction for the excuse to make up academically sound languages.

He also used to write letters to his kids each year from "Father Christmas," telling them all about the polar bears and the elves and whatnot - also including languages and epic battles, if I recall rightly (it's been 25 years). There's a gorgeous coffee table book that reprints all of them.

My impression has generally been that the elven poetry and linguistic history predated any of the stories, but I could be wrong there.

Basically this, I think. He invented the languages and then made up creatures to speak them and then a world and history for them to have developed in.

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