Tolkien Among the Ruins: ”The New Transcendentalism”

Jonathan Geltner joins the show once again to discuss his essay, "The New Transcendentalism."

We ask, and attempt to answer the question: "What would Western society look like if it was rebuilt only around the works of Tolkien?"

We're not sure ourselves, but there would probably be a lot more smoking. 

Spoilers: We don't ever quite answer this question, but we do speculate about it quite a bit, covering topics from "How 'true' did Tolkien think his own legendarium was?" to "Is Tolkien's secondary world self-contained enough that no context is necessary to appreciate it?"

If you have more concrete ideas about what a Tolkien-based culture would look like, we'd love to hear them. Email the podcast at inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com

Check out Jonathan's stuff here, here, and here.

Next time: Sophie Burkhardt joins me to talk about the Shire!