378 - Richard Rohlin - Tolkien and Universal History

The Symbolic World

Jonathan Pageau

Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 824 Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode Richard Rohlin goes solo to give us an introduction about JRR Tolkien's vision for Universal History. Later this month he will be teaching a course on this topic.
Register now for the Tolkien and Universal History course by Richard Rohlin on The Symbolic World website: https://www.thesymbolicworld.com/courses/tolkien-and-universal-history

Cost: $150
Discount: 10% off for all Symbolic World patrons at the Involved tier or higher. Apply your unique discount code at checkout.
Live classes: February 24 - March 24, 5 weeks, 10 hours of lectures.
Lecture recordings will be made available with downloadable audio.

=====Timestamps====
01:07 - Introduction
03:36 - What makes Tolkien unique?
07:53 - Tolkien & universal history
12:28 - The Arthurian legends
22:13 - Redeeming the elves
26:45 - Redeeming the gods
27:40 - Medieval genres: Chronicles
29:35 - Poetry
31:17 - The Silmarillion
34:10 - Retelling culture-founding narratives
36:09 - The Lord of the Rings
38:44 - The novel
42:16 - Writing assignment

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Transcript

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0:00.0	In that way, we can kind of see what Tolkien is doing as this great project to create a body of
0:07.3	stories for the English that has room for someone like him. So Tolkien begins this project. And what I
0:17.4	want to argue and lay out to you is that Tolkien's project is a perfect test case, a proofcase, a demonstration, a demonstration of how we as modern people can use the themes that we've been talking about in universal history to tell stories stories and kind of reclaim a mythical, cosmic vision of Christian storytelling.
0:53.4	This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world.
0:57.0	Hello.
0:59.0	Hello, my name is Richard Roland with Symbolic World Press, and you may be wondering a couple of things, like, for instance, where is Jonathan Peugeot?
1:16.6	Well, the answer to that question is that he's on the road and can't come to the camera right now.
1:21.6	You may also be wondering exactly where I am. I don't have my normal background here that you're probably used to seeing
1:28.5	if you watch the Universal History videos that Jonathan and I do together. Some people refer to it as
1:33.7	my Greek diner background. But actually, no, I'm in the new recording studio and it's not
1:41.8	finished yet. As you can see, I still have, well, you know,
1:45.8	it's got walls and that's about it. But I'm really excited about what this studio is going to allow
1:51.8	me to do for symbolic world. We're going to be taping and bedding walls and painting them and
1:58.4	installing studio lighting and there's going to be an awesome bookshelf back there.
2:01.6	And that's the only way that you'll know I'm actually an intellectual is if you can see the bookshelf behind me when I talk.
2:08.6	So in all seriousness, I am here today solo, not all nervous about it. Thank you for asking.
2:15.6	But I'm here today solo to talk about a subject that's
2:18.7	near and dear to my heart and then also a new course. It'll actually be our next course for
2:23.3	symbolic world courses and I'm going to be teaching it and it's going to be awesome. So without
2:29.3	beating around the bush, the course is called Tolkien and Universal History. And the tagline is a little, it's a little
2:41.0	cheeky actually in ways that most people won't catch because the tagline is the symbolic
2:46.1	world goes to Middle Earth. But of course, if you know anything about Anglo-Saxon culture, old Norse culture,
	...

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