In today’s episode, we go back in time, when the hippies discovered The Lord of the Rings, making J.R.R. Tolkien an icon for the counter-culture, from Joni Mitchell to Dungeons and Dragons. During the 1980s, the evangelical right-wing made Tolkien an avatar for evil in the Satanic Panic. And, in the second half of the show, we look at the first culture war waged over Tolkien by a bunch of obscure conservative intellectuals who instead declared Tolkien the avatar of their imagined white Christian homeland.

One correction from today’s episode: Queen Elizabeth II of the UK was buried on Talk Like a Pirate Day.

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Notes

GQ, “Why Were Rock Stars So into The Lord of the Rings?” Gabriella Paiella, 24 August 2022.

Further Reading

 Craig Franson, “The Perils of the Tolkien Course: Reading the Readings,” Approaches to Teaching J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Other Works. MLA, 2015, pp. 36-43.

Nicole Hemmer, Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

Sarah A. Hughes, American Tabloid Media and the Satanic Panic, 1970-2000. Springer Nature, 2021.

Nigel Walmsley, “Tolkien and the ‘60s,” J. R. R. Tolkien: This Far Land, edited by Robert Giddings, Vision, 1983, pp. 73-86.