Tolkien the Realist

Glenn is back! And today he brings us the topic of the day--Tolkien and literary realism. Literary realism is one of those question begging movements which advance an argument by assuming the correctness of a particular answer to an unspoken question. Literary realism assumes that the level of the mundane, the prosaic, is what is truly Real, and everything else is just fancy which exists solely in our heads.  If that's your understanding of Reality then you are a modern person--and you're also a rather flat and wooden person too. You probably don't get Tolkien, or you think he's just a teller of adventure stories.  But is that what's truly Real? If Reality is something more--what is it, and how can Tolkien help us see it? Those are the questions addressed in today's show.