Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

Carolyn Payne
Saginaw Valley State University
The Emerging Myth:
Christianity as the “True Myth” in Tolkien, Lewis, and Williams
**This paper is part of a far more extensive piece, which may account for some lack of clarity or
discontinued thought on some subject matters.
J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams are primarily associated by their membership in
the unofficial Oxford literary club, the Inklings, but what initially brought them together was a deeper
issue. While still unacquainted, Lewis and Williams read each other's work and the two men immediately
wrote to each other, expressing their own similar convictions on mythology and the “true myth.” This
concept refers to the notion that that all cultures undergo a Jung-like experience of collective unconscious
in regards to mythology, explaining the common archetypes and messages found in ancient texts. This
collective myth-experience was actualized in the life of Christ, making Christianity the “true myth.”
Tolkien and Lewis had previously discovered their mutual love of myth and curiosity of the “true myth” and
so it was through this commonality that the friendship of the three men was formed. The three came from
distinctly different religious backgrounds and their writings reflected those histories and beliefs. Tolkien, a
lifelong Roman Catholic, wrote vastly developed mythologies with subtle allusions to his faith. Lewis, a
middle-aged convert to Evangelical Anglicanism, wrote in a dogmatic and overtly allegorical fashion.
Charles Williams was a practicing, influential Rosicrucian whose writing was every bit as mysterious and
mystical as the rituals he performed on a daily basis. They shared an essence of faith, Oxford scholarship,
and notability as British authors in the twentieth century, but that is not their only common ground. These
men made their belief in the “true myth” and their different interpretations of it evident through their
various fictions.
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