The World of J.R.R. Tolkien with Christopher Mitchell

Peter Kreeft, Professor of Philosophy, Boston College
     • 9:30 AM  Monday, November 18, 2013   Chase Gymnasium

Christopher Mitchell, Professor of Christian Thought, Torrey Honors Institute
     • 9:30 AM  Wednesday, November 20, 2013   Chase Gymnasium
     • 9:10 PM  Wednesday, November 20, 2013   Sutherland Auditorium   
     • 9:30 AM  Thursday, November 21, 2013   Calvary Chapel

J. R. R. Tolkien

Tolkien was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.He served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Merton College, Oxford from 1945 to 1959. He was a close friend of C. S. Lewis—they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Owing to the influence of Tolkien and other Inkling members, Lewis embraced Christianity at the age of 32.

After his death, Tolkien's son Christopher published a series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about a fantasy world.

While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings led directly to a popular resurgence of the genre and a number of films released by New Line Cinema, directed by Peter Jackson. Tolkien is popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature—or, more precisely, of high fantasy.

Christopher Mitchell

Biola University is pleased that Dr. Christopher Mitchell has joined its faculty as a member of the Torrey Honors Institute, fall 2013. “The Torrey Honors Institute has always looked to the creative and intellectual legacy of C.S. Lewis as a model,” said Paul Spears, director of the Institute. “To have one of the premier C.S. Lewis scholars in Dr. Mitchell on our faculty will deepen our students’ appreciation for the sort of training that Lewis received.”

Prior to coming to Biola University, Dr. Mitchell was the director of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College in Illinois, a study center devoted to researching the lives and works of influential Christian writers, including C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and others. He is the author of numerous articles on C.S. Lewis, and will be releasing a critical edition of C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man with HarperCollins later this year.

Before Wheaton College he served as a missionary and pastor. Mitchell received his M.A. from Wheaton College, and a Ph.D. from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, where his concentration was Historical Theology. Mitchell has also written articles for Who's Who in Christian History (Tyndale), Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology (T&T Clark), the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, revised edition (Baker), and the New Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press).