Teaching Journey to the Imaginal Realm: Reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings through Nura Learning was such a wonderful success last autumn, that we are now offering a new course devoted to reading Tolkien’s less well-known and more mythic work, The Silmarillion. Having the opportunity to teach Tolkien’s works has connected me to an extraordinary group of students, a devoted community of learners who have loved Middle-earth as I have, and who have wandered the imaginal realm with courage and curiosity. Whether you were part of the course on The Lord of the Rings, or are a newcomer to Nura Learning’s extraordinary educational platform, it would be a joy to have you in this course on Tolkien’s The Silmarillion.
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Course Description
Before Bilbo Baggins and the dragon, before Frodo and the Ring, before the love story of Aragorn and Arwen, Middle-earth had already been the scene of innumerable tales: of Elves and Dwarves, Valar and Maiar, dragons and balrogs, and a struggle against evil that started before the world was even created. J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion begins with a cosmogony, and unfolds with an Elvish mythology and history that could rival the great myths and legends of the Norse, Greek, and Celtic traditions.
This course guides the reader through Tolkien’s sweeping saga of the First and Second Ages of Arda. The expansive vision and grand language can make The Silmarillion a more challenging read than The Lord of the Rings, so this course is designed to unpack the philosophical, spiritual, and literary meanings within Tolkien’s text. When Christopher Tolkien published the edited volume of his father’s writings in 1977, The Silmarillion was met with mixed reactions. Audiences had hoped for a book like The Lord of the Rings, but instead received a text that sounded, in the words of one disgruntled reader, like the Old Testament. Yet these stories were Tolkien’s most beloved—narratives that he had been writing and reworking since the First World War until nearly the end of his life. In this course we will view The Silmarillion through the lens of Tolkien’s theory of sub-creation, coming to understand the imagination and creativity that stands behind a full work of mythology written down by one man.
To learn more and register, please visit: Nura Learning: Sub-Creating Middle-Earth
By the way, if you missed the course Journey to the Imaginal Realm: Reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, we will be offering it again in Fall 2019!
Becca Tarnas 