April 2027 Modules

This four-week hybrid course reads Tolkien's beloved story as a work that repays sustained attention on several levels at once, moving from how the story came to be, to what it might mean, to how it actually functions as prose.

Week One situates the tale within Tolkien's biography, drawing on the wartime circumstances and the stalled composition of The Lord of the Rings that fed into its writing, and reads Niggle's confessed weakness for detail over completion as a form of self-portrait.

Week Two takes up the story's fraught relationship with allegory, exploring the tension between Tolkien's stated dislike of the mode and his own allegorical remarks about the tale, particularly the reading of Niggle's unfinished canvas as a figure for his sprawling legendarium.

Week Three traces the story's theological patterning, treating the Workhouse Infirmary as purgatorial space and the concept of subcreation as a lens on the Tree's transfigured ending, while remaining a literature course rather than a theology seminar throughout.

Week Four turns to craft, examining Tolkien's characterisation of Niggle and Parish, his distinctively self-doubting narrative voice, and the story's afterlife alongside "On Fairy-Stories" in Tree and Leaf.

The module will follow an 8-session structure and is shown by weeks:

Week	Topic
Week 1	Origins — Composition, Context, and the Man Behind the Leaf
Week 2	Allegory, Intention, and the Unfinished Work
Week 3	Theological Currents — Purgatory, Grace, and Subcreation
Week 4	Characterisation, Narrative Style, and Afterlife of the Text