The Flame Imperishable: Tolkien, St. Thomas, and the Metaphysics of Faerie

This article is about the scholarly book. For the the Flame in the legendarium, see Secret Fire.

The Flame Imperishable Tolkien, St. Thomas, and the Metaphysics of Faerie
Author	Jonathan S. McIntosh
Publisher	Angelico Press
Released	December 2017
Format	Hardcover/Paperback
Pages	306
ISBN	978-16213154

The Flame Imperishable: Tolkien, St. Thomas, and the Metaphysics of Faerie is a 2017 study of J.R.R. Tolkien on Metaphysics.

Contents

• Introduction

• One: The Metaphysics of Eru
• Two: The Metaphysics of the Ainur
• Three: The Metaphysics of the Music and Vision
• Four: The Metaphysics of the Valar
• Five: The Metaphysics of Melkor
• Final theme: Of Metaphysics and Myth

• Bibliography
• Index of proper names

From the publisher

J. R. R. Tolkien was a profoundly metaphysical thinker, and one of the most formative influences on his imagination, according to this new study of his works, was the great thirteenth-century theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas. Structured around Tolkien’s Middle-earth creation myth, the Ainulindalë, The Flame Imperishable follows the thought of Aquinas as a guide in laying bare the deeper foundations of many of the more familiar themes from Tolkien’s legendarium, including sub-creation, free will, evil, and eucatastrophe. More than merely using Aquinas to illuminate Tolkien, however, this study concludes that, through its appropriation of many of the philosophical and theological insights of Aquinas, what Tolkien’s literary opus achieves is an important and unique landmark in the history of Thomism itself, offering an imaginative and powerful contemporary retrieval, interpretation, and application of Thomistic metaphysics for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.