Tolkien and the Inklings

The Inklings were, to be sure, the most important literary group of the twentieth-century, rivaling and surpassing the much touted Bloomsbury Group. They influenced not just the direction of literature—especially through fantasy, science fiction, and biography—but the very direction of western civilization itself. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to note that former Communist countries rebelled using the language of the Inklings, but that the free west—from the United Kingdom to Italy to the United States—has been deeply influenced by the group as well. Though much has been written about the Inklings, almost all Inklings scholarship has revolved around the truly brilliant figure of C.S. Lewis. While Lewis was critical to the formation and maintenance of the group, he was not alone.  In particular, J.R.R. Tolkien’s larger mythology, out of which The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion arose, informed the group, as did Owen Barfield’s path-breaking senior thesis at Oxford, Poetic Diction. As such, this book focuses on the Inklings from Tolkien’s point of view.  As with Lewis, Barfield, Charles Williams, and Lord David Cecil, Tolkien wanted the group to serve as a bardic defense of Western civilization, Socrates through Dante.  Having fought in the trenches of World War I, the Inklings were more than aware of the fragility of civilization.  They witnessed not just the first world war, but the rise of fascism, national socialism, and communism, as well as sent their sons off to fight World War II.  Perhaps, just perhaps, myth and legend might reawaken the West to what it could be and to what it once aspired.