LanceFormation wrote:

Predictable Matt wrote:

Ha! Fair point

And now I'm stuck wondering what fantasy novels have been inspired by the Bible... 🤔

How about Armageddon end of the world type stuff…and then there are exorcist stories…and then there is…😀

Some could be more horror/sci-fi than fantasy

Yes a rich vein of material! And one just occured to me - Narnia of course

Here's a fun (sorry, subjective term) little gathering of pieces under the heading "Auden on Tolkien" - it's not everything he wrote about him (absent is A Short Ode to a Philologist, for example) - but it does represent the lion's share of his criticism which spanned a 15 year period from the release of LOTR to the late 1960s:

The Hero Is a Hobbit (New York Times Book Review, 31 October 1954)

A World Imaginary, but Real (Encounter, November 1954)

At the End of the Quest, Victory (New York Times Book Review, 22 January 1956)

The Quest Hero (Texas Quarterly, Winter 1961)

Good and Evil in The Lord of the Rings (Critical Quarterly, Spring and Summer 1968)

To Auden's comments on Tolkien you could add the liner notes for the "Poems and Songs of Middle-earth" LP from Caedmon.