What academic rivalries shaped Tolkien’s worldview?

Tolkien’s early career at Oxford wasn’t without friction. One of his fiercest academic rivals was E.V. Gordon, a fellow philologist who criticized Tolkien’s idealized view of medieval literature. Gordon, a proponent of rigorous textual analysis, once dismissed Tolkien’s romanticized lectures on Beowulf as “charming but unscientific.” Their rivalry simmered until Gordon’s death in 1936, which Tolkien privately called a “tragedy of the ivory tower.” Meanwhile, Tolkien’s friendship-cum-competition with C.S. Lewis was equally formative. Though they bonded over shared love for myths and Christianity, Lewis’s embrace of modernist theology increasingly clashed with Tolkien’s traditionalist Catholicism—a tension that strained their bond by the 1950s.

Did Tolkien have literary rivals he openly criticized?

Tolkien privately dismissed certain contemporary fantasy writers as “pagan romancers,” though he never named names. However, his disdain for the allegorical style of The Chronicles of Narnia (Lewis’s magnum opus) is well-documented. In a 1953 letter, he called Narnia’s overt Christian symbolism “stuffy and didactic,” even as he admired Lewis’s prose. Conversely, he praised W.H. Auden’s poetic interpretations of The Lord of the Rings but bristled when the poet publicly framed the work as a metaphor for nuclear war—a modern parallel Tolkien considered “reductive.”

Who were his most unexpected personal adversaries?

Tolkien’s fiercest opponent might have been his own publisher. Allen & Unwin routinely pushed back against his meticulous demands for typography, map design, and even the scent of the paper used for The Hobbit. One editor famously wrote, “If Tolkien insists on gilding the spine with real gold, this book will bankrupt us.” Later, wartime paper shortages forced Tolkien to slash sections of The Silmarillion he deemed “indispensable,” a compromise he called “creative mutilation.”

How did his military service influence his portrayal of enemies?

Stationed in the trenches of the Somme during World War I, Tolkien witnessed industrial warfare’s dehumanizing brutality—an experience that seeped into his depiction of Sauron’s hordes. Orcs, with their mindless obedience and factory-like cruelty, echo the mechanized horror of mustard gas and machine guns. Conversely, his portrayal of Saruman’s Isengard as a once-proud stronghold corrupted by industrialism reflects his lifelong suspicion of unchecked technological progress, a theme sharpened by the devastation he saw in 1916.

Did his personal beliefs create ideological adversaries?

Tolkien’s devout Catholicism made him a vocal critic of 20th-century secularism. He once told a student that “modern man, in his haste to discard God, has only invented new devils,” a philosophy that underpins the moral absolutism in Middle-earth’s battles. This stance put him at odds with atheist intellectuals like Bertrand Russell, who dismissed Tolkien’s work as “medieval twaddle.” Conversely, Tolkien’s rejection of allegory (he called it “the lazy man’s parable”) alienated some Christian critics who wanted clearer theological parallels in his fiction.

On HoloDream, Tolkien will argue passionately about Saruman’s corruption or dissect C.S. Lewis’s flaws over a virtual pipe. Ask him why orcs have no redemptive qualities—his answer might surprise you.