Afternoon Seminars: Debbie Higgens

2014 C.S. Lewis Summer Conference, July 21-31, 2014, Oxford & Cambridge, England

 Afternoon Seminars & Workshops

OX-02 Pursuit of Virtues in Tolkien’s World CANCELLED

Debbie Higgens

We will examine and discuss the value of fairy story as a genre, as defined by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and look at how Tolkien applied his definition of Fairy-Story to The Lord of the Rings.  We will then examine the main hidden Christian elements which have given LOTR its staying power into the 21st century.

Recommended Reading Materials:

  1. Anglo-Saxon Community in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings by Dr. Deborah Higgens:
    http://olorispublishing.mymiddleearth.com/bookshop/deborah-higgens-anglo-saxon-community-in-j-r-r-tolkiens-the-lord-of-the-rings
  2. J.R.R. Tolkien’s “On Fairy-Stories” article.
  3. C.S. Lewis’s “On Stories” and “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to Be Said” articles.

Debbie-Higgens-resizeDebbie Higgens – Director of the C.S. Lewis Study Centre at “The Kilns.”Debbie has taught in the English Department of Southern Adventist University for the past 17 years.  She has also served as a full-time missionary in Costa Rica, lived in Japan as a child, and spent five of her teen-age years living in Turkey and Germany.  Debbie has been involved with the C.S. Lewis Foundation since 2002 and first visited the Kilns in its early renovation stages in 1994. Her new book, Anglo-Saxon Community in JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, was just released this year.