Holly Ordway is a professor of English atHouston Christian University. She is known also as aTolkien scholar. She won a 2022Mythopoeic Award for her bookTolkien's Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages.
Holly Ordway gained her bachelor's degree in English at theUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst in 1995. She took an MA in English at theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in 1997, and completed her PhD in English back at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2011. She took a further MA in Christian Apologetics atBiola University in 2011.[1]
In 2005 she joined the faculty atMiraCosta College, Oceanside, California, teaching English literature. In 2012 she became a professor of English atHouston Christian University.[1] She is also the Cardinal Francis George Professor of Faith and Culture at the Word on Fire Institute.[2]
Since 2010, when she became a Christian while already a lecturer,[3] Ordway has published several books onChristian apologetics, and two on theRoman Catholic novelistJ. R. R. Tolkien.[1]
Ordwayfenced competively for twenty years; she gave up after becoming a Christian.[4][5][page needed]
In 2021,Michael Ward and others publishedAn Unexpected Journal: The Imaginative Harvest of Holly Ordway: Celebrating the Difference a Teacher Can Make about Ordway.[6]
In 2022, Ordway won aMythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies for her bookTolkien's Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages.[2][7]
Janet Brennan Croft notes that Ordway's apologetics may interestMythlore readers, as Ordway credits theInkling authors Tolkien andC. S. Lewis for her conversion from being an atheist to a Roman Catholic.[8]
Hannah Bitner, forThe Christian Librarian, writes that as a child, Ordway longed to immerse herself in the imagined worlds ofAnne McCaffrey andGene Roddenberry. The joy of these worlds faded, but that of Tolkien did not, even though Ordway was an atheist, unwilling to acceptthe Christianity behind Middle-earth. She became a Catholic when a Christian friend enabled her "to seeThe Lord of the Rings andThe Chronicles of Narnia with fresh eyes."[3]
Maureen Mann, responding toTolkien's Modern Reading inJournal of Tolkien Research, called it "a surprising book", presenting authors that he had read "in some unexpected ways". Mann was surprised in particular by the "polemical style of rhetoric", including an "extended diatribe" against Tolkien's official biographer,Humphrey Carpenter. Further, Mann considers that Ordway has made an "exaggerated claim" to be the first to study "Tolkien's interest in modern literature". Mann acknowledges Ordway's "substantial" research, and finds "valuable" the study of children's books read by Tolkien: she notes that, like fantasy, the area has often been "dismissed in ... scholarly study". She wonders what Tolkien's "nod" toBeatrix Potter's "dark and ruthless animal fantasy" might mean, mere homage not being the only possibility. On authors of adult fiction mentioned later in the book, Mann writes that many are merely listed, and that Ordway does not attempt to show that they influenced "theMiddle-earth works or Tolkien's creative imagination" in any way. Mann suggests that "Not everything identified in this article is necessarily attributable to her[Christian] apologetics, but many things can be." Mann concludes that Ordway has the ambition to establish "a new narrative about Tolkien the man, the growth of the writer's mind". In Mann's view, Ordway's "polemical method tarnishes her work" and crosses the boundary "between literary criticism and apologetics".[9]
Kris Swank, reviewing the book forMythlore, praises Ordway for her "deep dive into sources" and for studying just a specific period (after 1850) and only books Tolkien certainly "read, owned, or mentioned", but regrets the book's limited fact-checking. Swank finds some claims of resemblance "unsubstantiated, such as Tolkien's andG. K. Chesterton's uses of the word "shire". Swank agrees there is "some similarity" between Tolkien's paintingThe Hill: Hobbiton-across-the-Water andWilliam Russell Flint'sThe Fir-Topped Hurst. Ordway notes that Tolkien took a print of this fromMatthew Arnold's 1910 bookThe Scholar Gipsy & Thyrsis and framed it. Swank observes however thatJohn Garth has shown its close resemblance toShell Oil's 1936 advertisement which depictsFaringdon Folly.[10][11] Otherwise, Swank writes, Ordway's conclusions will not come as "news to Tolkien scholars", though they may be of interest to fans.[10] The claim that Tolkien was significantly influenced by his modern reading was, Swank notes, demonstrated byAnna Vaninskaya in 2006,[10][12] and byRalph C. Wood in 2015.[10][13] On the other hand, Swank endorses at least part of Ordway's "welcome corrective to Humphrey Carpenter's outsized effect over Tolkien biography."[10]
Steven Umbrello, inLiterature and Theology, writes that Ordway "rigorous[ly] explor[es] Tolkien's spiritual development" to uncover how his faith influenced his writing. He writes that the biography provides "a holistic view of the man behind Middle-earth", incorporating evidence from Tolkien's letters, unpublished documents, and "the socioreligious context of his time". In Umbrello's view, the book "neither critiques nor endorses Tolkien's religious beliefs but presents them with an academic rigor that allows readers to form their [own] interpretations."[15]
TheProtestant minister Tom Emanuel, inJournal of Tolkien Research, writes that Ordway's earlier book,Tolkien's Modern Reading, gave him the strong impression that she was frustrated with Carpenter's depiction of Tolkien as "a staunch anti-modernist". Emanuel was therefore not as surprised as Ordway was that she would write a "Roman Catholic biography" of the author, in which she states up front that earlier scholarship played down Tolkien's faith, and her work is meant to counterbalance that, indeed to show that his faith was as he had indicated "central to his identity". She adds that she is writing a "work of biography, not a[n all-positive]hagiography". Emanuel writes that Ordway's intention already "expresses a particular perspective", assuming there is "onlyone kind of Catholicism", and opposing a major theme of both Carpenter andVerlyn Flieger: " that even as he was a staunch Roman Catholic, Tolkien was also [a] man of paradoxes, and it is his dynamic tensions which power his literary art."[14][16] Emanuel notes that Tolkien's friend, the Jesuit priestRobert Murray, cautioned that he "could not support an interpretation" which set Tolkien's Catholic faith as "the key to everything". Emanuel comments thatDimitra Fimi warned in her bookTolkien, Race and Cultural History that it was not safe to take Tolkien's own word about himself, since he was building a "biographical legend" to place literary criticism of himself in the frame he wanted.[14][17]
Emanuel writes that he "actually agree[s] with Ordway" that subjectivity on religion is inevitable, and it can be productive. He finds it so in parts of Ordway's book, where she has found aspects of Tolkien's life "which a non-Catholic would miss"; and he notes the "painstaking research" into Tolkien's time at theBirmingham Oratory from 1904 onwards. But he observes that Ordway does not consider whether the Oratory, andFather Francis Morgan's guardianship, was necessarily always "perfectly benign". He comments, too, that Ordway seemingly intentionally ignores evidence of anti-Protestant prejudice. She largely avoids the question ofTolkien's attitude to race, complete with higher and lower "human-like beings" on the lines of the medievalgreat chain of being, a matter clearly related to his faith. In Emanuel's view, the book largely fails "to acknowledge the wider social and political valences of Tolkien’s faith." He expresses "enormous sympathy" for Ordway and her feeling thatThe Lord of the Rings was for her "the Roman Catholic work of imaginative apologeticspar excellence". He interprets her biography of Tolkien as "an attempt to lead others" to the Catholic faith, whether consciously intended as such or not. Was Tolkien then "a plaster saint" for Ordway? She replies to that "No. A complex, fascinating, flawed, devout, funny and brilliant man"; in other words, Emanuel concludes, Tolkien was to Ordway a genuine saint; and the book is, despite Ordway's statement to the contrary, a hagiography.[14]
The Catholic priest Juan R. Vélez, inThe Downside Review, writes that Ordway proposes numerous possible sources for events inThe Lord of the Rings from Tolkien's personal experiences, giving as an example the way that the protagonistFrodo Baggins's act of mercy to the monsterGollum "is repaid":[18] Gollum turns out to be essential to the destruction of theOne Ring.[19] Ordway likens this to the adolescent Tolkien's learning of forgiveness from Father Francis Morgan.[18]
