"The Ulsterior Motive" is an unpublished essay written by J.R.R. Tolkien in 1964. It originated as a response to C.S. Lewis's book Letters to Malcolm, which was published posthumously in that year,[1][2] and developed into a somewhat critical retrospective on Lewis, whose Protestantism put him at odds with Tolkien religiously.[3] The title is a reference to Lewis's Ulster Protestant background, to which Tolkien attributed his reluctance to embrace Catholicism.
A few brief extracts from the currently restricted manuscript were published in A.N. Wilson's C.S. Lewis: A Biography and Humphrey Carpenter's The Inklings.[4]
It was not for some time that I realized that there was more in the title Pilgrim's Regress than I had understood (or the author either, maybe). Lewis would regress. He would not re-enter Christianity by a new door, but by the old one: at least in the sense that in taking it up again he would also take up, or reawaken, the prejudices so sedulously planted in boyhood. He would become again a Northern Ireland protestant.
External links
- Jason Fisher, "'The Ulsterior Motive' and other unpublished writings of Tolkien" 22 June 2025, Lingwë - Musings of a Fish, accessed 23 June 2025
References
- ↑ Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings, p. 265
- ↑ Lisa Star, "A List of Tolkien's Unpublished and Slightly Published Manuscripts" August 2002, Tyalie Tyelellieva website (archived), accessed 10 July 2012
- ↑ Bradley J. Birzer, J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth, pp. 50–52
- ↑ Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond (2017), The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide (Second Edition): II. Reader's Guide, Part I
- ↑ Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings, p. 50 (see also pp. 51 f.)