Upreared from sea to cloud then sheer
a shoreless mountain stood;
its sides were black from the sullen tide
up to its smoking hood, 
but its spire was lit with a living fire
that ever rose and fell:
tall as a column in High Heaven’s hall,
its roots were deep as Hell;
grounded in chasms the waters drowned
and swallowed long ago
it stands, I guess, on the foundered land
where the kings of kings lie low

-J. R.R. Tolkien, Imram (The Death of St. Brendan) 

Each of the subcreative works of J.R.R. Tolkien displays a careful and thoughtful attention to the cultures and civilizations which populate his secondary reality. He drew deep and rich realities from the history of the Primary World and studying his invented histories can illuminate both philosophical and macro-historical themes with which Tolkien engaged. In particular, investigating Tolkien’s use of the West as a civilizational concept in his novel The Lord of the Rings, written between 1937 and 1954, reveals his appropriation of the Carolingian heritage of Europe, which transformed the work from what was originally intended as a “mythology for England” into what Bradley Birzer calls “a myth for the restoration of Christendom itself.” This appropriation was controversial, especially during the Second World War when the National Socialists in Germany attempted to usurp this European heritage for themselves. A close reading of The Lord of the Rings reveals the parallels between Tolkien’s restored Kingdom of the West and the Carolingian Holy Empire, the West as a source of spiritual renewal, and Tolkien’s defense of Western mythology against the Nazi usurpation of the European tradition.

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