Join us on Wednesday April 7, 1pm Eastern, for a conversation with Dr. Holly Ordway, author of Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-Earth Beyond the Middle Ages. The discussion will include live audience questions, facilitated by Dr. Sara Brown and Dr. Gabriel Schenk.
About the Book
Tolkien’s Modern Reading addresses the claim that Tolkien “read very little modern fiction, and took no serious notice of it.” This claim, made by one of his first biographers, has led to the widely accepted view that Tolkien was dismissive of modern culture, and that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are fundamentally medieval and nostalgic in their inspiration.
In fact, as Holly Ordway demonstrates in this major corrective, Tolkien enjoyed a broad range of contemporary works, engaged with them in detail and depth, and even named specific titles as sources for and influences upon his creation of Middle-earth.
About the Author
Dr. Holly Ordway is Fellow of Faith and Culture at the Word on Fire Institute and Visiting Professor of Apologetics at Houston Baptist University. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
She is the author of Apologetics and the Christian Imagination: An Integrated Approach to Defending the Faith, and Not God’s Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms, and has contributed chapters to volumes such as C.S. Lewis at Poets’ Corner, The Inklings and King Arthur, The Story of the Cosmos, and The Pivotal Players.
She is also a subject editor for the Journal of Inklings Studies and a published poet. Her website is HollyOrdway.com.
