By Campbell Collins

Much of Hillsdale has sojourned in Tolkien’s Shire, and many students count the Bagginses and the dwarves, Gandalf the Grey and dear Sam Gamgee among their childhood playfellows. In his new book, The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination, Ben Reinhard encourages us to return to Middle Earth with a more attentive eye, seeking out the influence of the Catholic liturgy in Tolkein’s work.

In his new book, The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination, Ben Reinhard encourages us to return to Middle Earth with a more attentive eye, seeking out the influence of the Catholic liturgy in Tolkein’s work.

Reinhard advances a claim that is strikingly bold yet intuitively familiar to anyone who engages in liturgical worship. He argues that the “prayer of the [Catholic] Church, [Tolkien’s] daily life, and his imaginative worlds exist on an unbroken continuum.” In Reinhard’s view, Tolkien’s “joys and sorrows, art and imagination — indeed, every human activity — could be grounded in and interpreted through the prayer of the Church.” As Reinhard partly acknowledges, The High Hallow strikes one as a voice cast into an already crowded field. Scholars have long and thoroughly explored the connection between Tolkien’s work and his Catholicism. Nevertheless, Reinhard’s is a particularly eloquent and persuasive voice. His prose is lithe, occasionally humorous, and precise without veering into the overly academic. And perhaps there is value in going over the same territory repeatedly in order to find new sparks to kindle the imagination; after all, that is how the liturgy itself kindles the soul.

Reinhard begins by describing the broad strokes of Tolkien’s liturgical life and presents him as a man shaped by the rhythms of his Church which believed in the power of the liturgy to “restrain the forces of the devil or…hallow a blessed spot.” From here he turns to Tolkien’s understanding of Faerie and its power to help us “better…see God” through the “eucatastrophe,” or unexpectedly joyous happy ending of the fairy tale. It is within this framework of prayer and fairyland that Reinhard examines Tolkien’s own work, finding there a suggestion that “connection with faerie is necessary for the proper functioning of religion.” To understand the nature of this connection, Reinhard traces the imprints of the liturgy throughout Tolkien’s oeuvre.

There are more things in Tolkien’s imagination than are dreamt of in literary criticism; as a result, The High Hallow exists in the realm of hints and echoes, without settling anywhere for long.

In doing so, he sets himself a difficult — and perhaps in some ways futile — task. He notes that the reader feels Tolkien’s work “was written to be experienced rather than analyzed; like faerie itself, its meaning cannot be caught in a net of words.” There are more things in Tolkien’s imagination than are dreamt of in literary criticism; as a result, The High Hallow exists in the realm of hints and echoes, without settling anywhere for long. Yet this approach seems appropriate for Reinhard, who seeks to bring together two mysteries: the depths of the liturgy and the hidden workings of a great man’s imagination. Reinhard concludes that the mysteries are inextricably linked — that Tolkein’s influence in “re-enchanting” the world is tied to the “cruciform pattern of his stories.” In one line I particularly love, Reinhard describes the way the “boundary between Tolkien’s fantasy and Tolkien’s faith becomes vanishingly thin, and his great fairy tale touches the hem of something greater still.” 

Perhaps the most appealing facet of Reinhard’s book is his love of both Tolkien’s work and the liturgy itself.

No matter how many have travelled the rich road to the Shire before us, there is room enough for another voice to tell of his journeys there, and the magic and mystery he has found. Perhaps the most appealing facet of Reinhard’s book is his love of both Tolkien’s work and the liturgy itself. This love animates his argument and infuses The High Hallow with an implicit praise of liturgy as the rich field whereby man’s imagination is shaped by God’s. In Tolkein’s fairylands, Reinhard finds traces of the liturgy that carry us not only down to the Shire but also up to a Kingdom higher than we have yet seen.

Campbell Collins is a sophomore studying English and Religion.