were preoccupied with the imaginative fruit of pre-Christian paganism, particularly what might be called enlightened paganism. Such paganism was, as it were, one large case-study for them of their view of imagination. The remainder of my article will explore this highly significant feature of their fantasy, and thus their apologetics. Most of Tolkien’s fiction is set in a pre-Christian world, as was his great model, the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, according to his own interpretation of that poem. Similarly,