“Maps,” My Map

During the Apologetics Research and Writing class I took and Dr. Ordway taught, the class was assigned her book Apologetics and the Christian Imagination. Though each chapter concluded with a […]

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Ordway’s Myth-Busting Research: Tolkien’s Modern Reading (A Review)

  In her monumental study, Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages (TMR), Holly Ordway debunks the popular misconception that J.R.R. Tolkien was an anti-modern medievalist whose inspiration came […]

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Some Real Magic: Taliessin Lectureth in the School of the Poets

Within the cadences of human speech  ……Attentive listeners can sometimes hear  ……The rhythm of the wave upon the beach  ……Or listen to the music of the spheres.  Within the small […]

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Learning Writing at Writespace

I met Dr. Holly Ordway and Writespace on the same day, at HBU’s 2015 Spring Writers’ Conference. I was new to Houston and my friend had invited me to come […]

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Contrary Winds: Tolkien’s Priority of Faith and Family as Presented in Tolkien’s Modern Reading

It is difficult to be immersed in a world of contrary winds and hold steady to one’s course. And yet, this is precisely what J.R.R. Tolkien did. Although he is […]

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An Interview with Holly Ordway

In order to detail Tolkien’s modern literary influences, you had to read as many of the books Tolkien had read as you could — which means first you had to […]

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Lost and Found

A Parable Retold[1]   Maddie leaned against the kitchen counter and sipped her coffee: black as the grief that threatened to overwhelm her once again. A pile of dirty dishes […]

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A Passage to Something Better

He [Tolkien] folded into his work something fresh and unexpected, something vital and important: a tear drop from his own flesh and blood. From one perspective, the change was minor, […]

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Peak Middle-earth: Why Mount Doom is not the Climax of The Lord of the Rings

Peter Jackson’s film version of Tolkien’s The Return of the King was a huge commercial and critical success, winning all eleven Academy Awards for which it was nominated. However, it […]

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Middle-earth and the Middle Ages

Arguably the most important literary influence on The Lord of the Rings, the Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf, helps us understand the way in which Tolkien both conceals and reveals the deepest […]

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