Tolkien is famous for being one of the writers who popularized the genre known as "fantasy".
However his philosohpy of "fantasy" and why it is so necessary to mental health, and a good relationship with reality, is less publicized.
Tolkien was from a wealthy family who had lost a great deal of their fortune when the Mother converted to Catholicism.
He was a professor of ancient languages at Oxford.
Oxford is a very old and well known University in England that had once been Catholic prior to the bloody wars of religion that plagued Europe for many centuries.
People are so familiar with the world Tolkien created but not so much with hiw own personal world and why it led him to wish to create what he called. a 'cahtolic mythology for his own people."
In the faeirie mini course we look at his essay "on faerie stories, and also his short story Smith of Wooten Major where Tolkien portrays himself as a non descript kid named Smith.