In J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth , Birzer reveals the surprisingly religious symbolism that permeates Tolkien's Middle Earth legendarium. He also explores the social and political views that motivated the Oxford don, ultimately situating Tolkien within the Christian humanist tradition represented by Thomas More and T.S. Eliot, Dante, and C.S.

Lewis. Birzer argues that through the genre of myth Tolkien created a world that is essentially truer than the one we think we see around us everyday, a world that transcends the colorless disenchantment of our postmodern age.