These sessions will be co-sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Studies and the Tolkien Studies areas:
Bruce E. Drushel, Ph.D. Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Studies
Department of Media, Journalism, & Film
Miami University
Oxford OH 45056
drushebe@miamioh.edu
Robin Anne Reid, Ph.D. Tolkien Studies Department of Literature and Languages
A&M University-Commerce
Commerce, TX 75429
Robin.Reid@tamuc.edu
We wish to organize at least one paper session and one roundtable for the conference. PCA allows presenters to participate in one paper session and in one roundtable.
Submit a title and 100-word abstract with a working bibliography, a mailing address, institutional affiliation, and e-mail address to both area chairs by September 28, 2017. Please indicate clearly whether your proposal is for the paper session, or for the roundtable. If you wish to participate in both, you must submit two different proposals.
Presentations may focus on any aspect of textual production, audience reception, or textual coding that challenge established categories of gender and sexuality including but not limited to:
Gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans* or queer readings of Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts;
Readings that focus on non-normative but not clearly marked expressions of gender and sexuality in Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts;
Transformative or derivative works that queer Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts;
Intersectional queer readings of Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts;
Queer Theories/Theorists and Tolkien studies (including historical and biographical aspects as well as fiction and scholarship).
Plans for a Queer Tolkien Studies anthology (co-edited by Robin Anne Reid, Christopher Vaccaro, and Stephen Yandell) will be discussed at the PCA sessions.
Organizer Robin Reid has sent out a call for papers for the Tolkien Studies area at the 2018 Popular Culture Association conference, to be held March 28-31 in Indianapolis, IN, US.
Below is a copy of the CFP, also available for download here: PCA 2018 CFP [pdf]
PCA/ACA 2018 NATIONAL CONFERENCE TOLKIEN STUDIES AREA CFP J.W. MARRIOTT INDIANAPOLIS DOWNTOWN, INDIANAPOLIS, IN MARCH 28-31, 2018
The Tolkien Studies Area welcomes proposals for papers or sessions in any area of Tolkien Studies (the Legendarium, adaptations, reader reception and fan studies, source studies, cultural studies, tourism studies, literary studies, medieval and medievalist studies, media and marketing) from any disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspective. Sessions are scheduled in 1½ hour slots, typically with four papers or speakers per paper session. Roundtables may have five-seven speakers. Currently proposed sessions we are especially interested in filling are: Queer Tolkien Studies and The Future of Tolkien Studies.
To submit your paper or panel proposal, go to http://ncp.pcaaca.org and follow the instructions for creating an account and making your submission. ALL submissions must be made through the conference submission site.
For individual papers, please submit a title and 100-word abstract with a working bibliography. For roundtables or complete paper sessions, please submit titles and abstracts for all papers, along with a paragraph describing the central theme and the names of chairs, participants, and respondents (if any). For each participant, please provide a mailing address, institutional affiliation, and e-mail address.
Key Dates:
Jul 1. Database Opens for Submissions
Oct 1. Registration Opens
Oct 1. Deadline for Paper Proposals
Oct 15. All Sessions Entered into the Database by Area Chairs
Nov 15. Early Bird Registration Rate Ends
Dec 1. Preliminary Program Available
Dec 15. “Drop Dead” Date: Participants Not Registered Removed from Program
Jan 1, 2018. Final Program to Publisher
I’ve filed away my course notes and given out the final grades. ENGL 4475: Tolkien & Myth-making is officially over for the 2016-17 academic year. The project proposals, annotated bibliographies, abstracts, research papers, and exams are all done now. What’s left is my delight at the many ways my students found to explore Tolkien’s fiction in relation to adaptation, medievalism, and fandom.
Gift of lembas by a student from ENGL 4475
Our last class of the year is a celebration of the work students have done. We set up in a party room with snacks and drinks and read excerpts from each other’s essays. After all, it’s more interesting if you’re writing for your peers and not just for your teacher. My students then present their research projects to the rest of the seminar. I give them a range of general options for these projects, from studying Tolkien’s adaptations of texts such as Beowulf to producing their own adaptations based on Tolkien’s fiction. Because this is a senior-level English course, all of the projects require a written researched analysis of the texts and, if relevant, of the students’ process of adaptation or their participation in fandom.
On presentation day, the class had assembled around the seminar table but for one student, who at the last moment made quite an entrance in full costume, much to our delight. Gavin Rollins’ project was about cosplay, but he didn’t just write about it; he arrived as a living example of his research. (He also brought us some delicious lembas).
Part of Gavin Rollins’ cosplay project
Gavin’s paper dealt with the immersive, communal experience of cosplay and the intertextuality of Tolkien’s fiction and Jackson’s films.
A couple of other students were thinking along the same lines when they conducted their study of Dungeons and Dragons gaming. Andrew Potter used his and his friends’ experiences to investigate the question, can a D&D adventure feel like a “faerian drama“? Andrew’s answer is maybe, and certainly more likely than the experience of playing a video game or watching a film.
Luke Hammond (centre) and his D&D research team
Luke Hammond created his own D&D-style adventure based on Tolkien’s Mines of Moria episode and experimented with his friends in a campaign lasting several hours to see how Tolkien’s place descriptions worked (they worked well) and what kind of choices would be made by players who didn’t know the books or the movies. (Turns out the Frodo-character put on the Ring every chance he could get!). Luke’s analysis also considered how the role-playing genre could fulfill Tolkien’s ideas expressed in his essay “On Fairy-Stories” about fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation.
Image from diceaholic.wordpress.com
It would take too long to summarize every student’s project, but at least I can give you a taste of the variety we enjoyed. Courtney Francis wrote about Legolas/Gimli fanfiction; Megan Bruce about surveillance in The Lord of the Rings, including her poem about Galadriel’s mirror as a surveillance tool. Nicole Martina tackled Tolkien’s descriptive landscapes and his artistic style. And Allyson Roussy adapted the Old English poem “Widsith,” in which a widely-travelled poet recounts all the great rulers and places he has been, thus recording legends and histories in his verse. Allyson transposed the style of “Widsith” to the history of Middle-earth, beginning with Silmarillion tales and ending with The Lord of the Rings. Her speaker is Gandalf, someone who has travelled widely and seen a great deal in Middle-earth. Although she does not attempt to write consistently in alliterative verse, she typically captures the four-beat style of her Old English model. Here is a passage spoken by Gandalf:
…I acted as guide in the war against Sauron. I counselled men and elves and exiles, sought those who desired to aid our cause, who strengthened the armies of Middle-earth. I was with Aragorn, of the House of Isildur, Beren’s mirror, with Barahir’s ring, last heir to the throne of Gondor and Arnor, A true leader with patience and humility, The hands of a healer and the hands of a king….
Film adaptations of Tolkien’s work also provided fertile ground for analysis. Kimia Nejat studied Jackson’s film representations of Frodo and Sam. Samantha VanNorden, starting with the premise that Middle-earth is a character in The Lord of the Rings, analyzed Jackson’s representations of certain landscapes. And Alexandra Rudderham examined Tolkien’s representation of Galadriel along with the film adaptations by Ralph Bakshi and Peter Jackson. Tolkien’s handling of gender and women has long been a topic of debate, and Alex further asked, have filmmakers captured all of Galadriel’s qualities as a beautiful, perilous, powerful queen? Compare for yourself; first, Bakshi’s animated 1978 version:
and then Peter Jackson’s 2001 Fellowship of the Ring:
Fan Studies in the Classroom
I’ve had an opportunity to write about the kind of work I ask my students to do in this course. My essay “Adaptation as Analysis: Creative Work in an English Classroom” is forthcoming in the book Fan Studies in the Classroom, edited by Katherine Howell, to be published by the University of Iowa Press. In this essay I discuss the theory behind my ENGL 4475 assignments, the practical details of how they’re done, and why I think the assignments encourage intertextual engagement, creativity, and textual analyses. I’ll post more when the book is published. In the meantime, some of my former students’ assignments can be seen on the ENGL 4475: Studies in Medievalism – Tolkien & Myth-making course page.
Selected Bibliography
This is not meant to be a complete bibliography by any means, but I thought that a few readers might like to sample some of the sources, especially those dealing with fandom and adaptation, that my students have read as part of their research. I’ve culled one or two sources from each essay in case anyone wants to look further into some of the topics my students have written about.
Abrahamson, M.B. “J.R.R. Tolkien, Fanfiction, and the Freedom of the Reader.” Mythlore, vol. 32, no. 1, 2013, pp. 53- 72.
Allington, Daniel. “‘How Come Most People Don’t See It?’: Slashing The Lord of the Rings.” Social Semiotics, vol. 17, no. 1, Mar. 2007, pp. 43–62.
Amendt-Raduege, Amy. “Dream Visions in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.” Tolkien Studies, vol. 3, 2006, pp. 45-55.
Barker, Martin. “Envisaging ‘Visualisation’: Some challenges from the international Lord of the Rings audience project.” Film-Philosophy, vol. 10, no. 3, 2006, pp. 1-25.
Battis, Jes. “Gazing upon Sauron: Hobbits, Elves, and the Queering of the Postcolonial optic.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 50, 2004, pp. 908-26.
Clark, George. “J.R.R. Tolkien and the True Hero.” J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-Earth, Greenwood Press, 2000, pp. 39–52.
Cohen, Cynthia M. “The Unique Representation of Trees in The Lord of the Rings.” Tolkien Studies, vol. 6, 2009, pp. 91-125.
Croft, Janet Brennan and Leslie Donovan, editors. Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien. Mythopoeic Press, 2015.
Enright, Nancy. “Tolkien’s Females and the Defining of Power.” Renascence, vol. 59, Issue 2, 2007, 93-108.
Ewalt, David M. Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons and Dragons and the People Who Play It. Scribner, 2013.
Gygax, Gary. “The Influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on the D&D and AD&D Games.” Dragon, vol. 95. March 1985. pp. 12-13.
Hammond, Wayne G. and Christina Scull. J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator. HarperCollins, 2004.
Haydock, Nickolas. The Imaginary Middle Ages: Movie Medievalism. McFarland, 2008.
Hellekson, Karen and Kristina Busse, editors. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays. McFarland, 2006.
Hutcheon, L. with S. O’Flynn. A Theory of Adaptation, 2nd ed, Routledge, London and New York.
Pugh, Sheenagh. The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context. Bridgend, Seren, 2005.
Rahman, Osmud, Liu Wing-Sun, and Brittany Hei-Man Cheung. “’Cosplay’: Imaginative Self and Performing Identity.” Fashion Theory-The Journal Of Dress Body & Culture, vol. 16, no. 3, Sep 2012, pp. 317-342.
Rateliff, John. “Tolkien Moot 2008 MerpCon IV John D. Rateliff solo speech History of the Hobbit author.” YouTube, 28 Jun 2012.
Reid, Robin Anne. “Thrusts in the Dark: Slashers’ Queer Practices.” Extrapolation, vol. 50, no. 3, 2009, pp. 463–483.
_________. “Tree and flower, leaf and grass: The Grammar of Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings.” Fantasy Fiction into Film. Edited by Stratyner, Leslie and James R. Keller. McFarland, 2007.
Russell, Gary. The Lord of the Rings: Art of the Fellowship of the Ring. HarperCollins, 2002.
Shank, Nathan. “Productive Violence and Poststructural Play in the Dungeons and Dragons Narrative.” Journal of Popular Culture, vol 48, no.1, 2015.
These calls for papers in fan studies have recently come my way.
The first is for a special issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research, The editors, Kristine Larsen and Robin Reid, have put out a call for proposals “for fan studies scholarship on any aspect of fan production, creation, or activities relating to J. R. R. Tolkien’s Legendarium and/or Peter Jackson’s live-action film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.” Read more in the Call for Papers: Tolkien Jackson fan studies [pdf].
The other call is for a special issue of the Journal of Fandom Studies on disability, pedagogy, and identity in fan studies classrooms. The guest editor, Katherine Howell, summarizes the aims of this special issue: “to investigate the intersection of disability studies and fan studies. We welcome all explorations of this intersection, but are especially excited about discussions of how the pedagogy we employ, as well as the texts we teach and identities we embody, impact our students and our teaching.” For more details, see the Call for Papers: Disability Pedagogy and Identity. [pdf]
The Tolkien in Vermont conference will take place this coming weekend. This is a small, friendly conference that brings together every year a group of faculty, independent scholars, and students. This year’s theme is Tolkien and Popular Culture.
If you look at the program below, you’ll see a couple of pretty long titles! This is all in the spirit of fun — Kris Larsen has been devising longer and longer titles every year, and when the keynote speaker Robin Reid saw Kristine’s title, she decided to go one better with her own lengthy title. In reaction, I’ve decided to stick to one-word titles!
April 8-9, 2016
University of Vermont
Burlington, Vermont
Lafayette L207
—Yvette Kisor (Ramapo College) “Queer Tolkien: State of the Field”
—Anna Smol (Mount Saint Vincent University) “Sister-sons” read the abstract here [pdf]
—Chris Vaccaro (University of Vermont) “Saruman’s Sexual Otherness”
Session 2: 10:00 – 11:45. Undergraduate Voices
—Christopher Kelm (U. of Vermont) “Magic and Sorcery: Good and Evil in Tolkien’s Middle-earth”
—Kit Loomis (U. of Vermont) “Not Dead, Legally: Necromancy, the Vyne Ring Curse, and Oath Limitations”
—Liam McAuliffe (U. of Vermont) “Lost in the Lens Flare: Tolkien’s Many Shades of Evil”
—Ryan Quinn (U. of Vermont) “Iarwen Ben-Adar: The Ancient Evil of Arda”
Lunch break 11:45-1:00
Session 3: 1:00-2:30
Keynote: Robin Reid (Texas A&M University – Commerce)
Tolkien and popular culture: Being the Chronicle of Quests from Fandom to Academia and Back Again as the Island of Anglophone Literary Studies in the United States underwent Transformations During the 1970s to 2000s of the Fourth Age of the World Due to Progressive Movements of the Twentieth Century Challenging Oppressive Hierarchies Relating to Gender, Race, and Sexual Identification (Though not so much Class because “America” and Its Weird Obsession with Bootstraps) as Cultural Studies Swept like a Wave Over the Ivory Towers (Keep in Mind It’s a Simile not an Allegory). Plus Tattoos.
Session 4: 2:30 – 4:00
—Kristine Larsen (University of Connecticut) “Kind People!!!: The Adventures of Svetlana Snape Down the Hobbit Hole; Being a (Semi) Serious and Scholarly Dissertation on The Thread ™ That Ate the Tolkien Society Facebook Page (And Judged it to Strangely Taste Like Bacon); In Which the Author Endeavors to Answer Two Great Primordial Questions, Namely (1) What Do Palindromes, Trebuchets, Quantum Physics and Hello Kitty Have to Do With the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien (Clearly a Rhetorical Question Given That the Obvious Answer is – Very Little), and (2) What Exactly is a Pant of Thong Ale? (The Answer to Which Promises to Shed Great Light on the Gestalt of the Tolkien Fandom)”
—Andrew Peterson (Independent Scholar) “Hobbit Forming: How the Animated Versions of The Hobbit and The Return of the King by Rankin / Bass introduced Middle-earth to a Generation of Wanderers”
—James Williamson (University of Vermont) “Tolkien and Popular Publishing: the Creation of the Fantasy Genre”
Session 5: 4:00 – 5:30
—Gerry Blair (Independent Scholar) “Tolkien Fandom and Pop Culture: The Polite and the Vulgar”
—Leonard Neidorf (Harvard University) “Creation from Literary Criticism in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur”
Looking over the schedule of Tolkien Studies sessions at the Popular Culture Association conference, held annually in the US, certainly makes me wish I could be there this year. The conference will be held in Seattle, Washington, March 22 – 25, with all of the Tolkien sessions on the 24th and 25th. Robin Reid has once again put together a healthy program of eight Tolkien panels.
Of course, everyone will have different interests that attract them, but for me, one of the highlights of the conference would be presentations by Martin Barker and others about the World Hobbit Project. There’s also the Editors’ Roundtable discussing the “nuts ‘n bolts of Tolkien studies” which will include well-known book and journal editors Leslie Donovan, Janice Bogstad, Brad Eden, Janet Croft, and Martin Barker — a great opportunity for researchers to hear about the state of Tolkien scholarship and any new publishing developments. As usual, the PCA sessions will offer a broad range of papers, from historical and interdisciplinary approaches to pedagogy to reception studies — including a fascinating paper topic on fans’ participation in Chinese translations of books and films.
I list the session titles below. If you want to know more, you can read presenters’ names and their abstracts here.
March 24. Session 3038. Tolkien Studies I. Reception: The World Hobbit Project
March 24. Session 3138. Tolkien Studies II. Pedagogy: Teaching Tolkien’s Middle-earth in the 21st Century. (Roundtable)
March 24. Session 3238. Tolkien Studies III. Reception: Fans, Translations, and Connections
March 24. Session 3338. Tolkien Studies IV. Adaptation: Film Studies
March 24. Session 3438. Tolkien Studies V. Historical Approaches
March 25. Session 4138. Tolkien Studies VI. Scholarship: Editors’ Roundtable
March 25. Session 4238. Tolkien Studies VII. The Silmarillion
March 25. Session 4338. Tolkien Studies VIII. Interdisciplinary Approaches
I understand that a Meet ‘n Greet will be held on one of the evenings as well. To connect with people going to the conference or for more news about the PCA Tolkien Studies group, you can join the Facebook group: search for “Tolkien Studies at Popular Culture / American Culture Association.”
After Robin Reid organized the first successful round of Tolkien Studies sessions two years ago at the Popular Culture Association conference in Chicago, Tolkien Studies has become a regular part of the PCA/ACA annual conference. In 2016, the conference will be held in Seattle, from March 21-25. Paper proposals can be submitted from July 1st to October 1st.
I had originally announced “Talks on Tolkien” as a winter series, and even though the snow is still slowly melting in my corner of the world, we have passed the spring equinox and the Fall of Sauron, which should be bringing us into a new age. So this post will present the last video in my series for this winter. That doesn’t mean that I won’t post a video here every now and then in the coming months, but I do have to move on to focus on other things.
The previous seven videos I’ve presented here have all featured established scholars who have published books in the field of Tolkien Studies (Flieger, Shippey, Drout, Croft, Garth, Fimi, Rateliff). I thought that for the last video, I would turn to a new scholar — though she is someone with plenty of experience in the area of fandom: Dawn Walls-Thumma, known as Dawn Felagund to some. Dawn’s talk, “Transformative Works as a Means to Develop Critical Perspectives in the Tolkien Fan Community,” was presented at Mythmoot III in January. If you’re wondering what the term “transformative work” means, here is the definition offered by the Organization for Transformative Works: “A transformative work takes something extant and turns it into something with a new purpose, sensibility, or mode of expression” — in other words, fanfic, vids, artwork by fans can all be classified as transformative works.
In her presentation, Dawn talks about the rise of Tolkien fandom and the development of different fan communities with the advent of Internet fandom. She presents the results of a survey asking people about their experiences in fandom and why they write fanfiction. You can follow along with the super handout that accompanies the talk.
If you’re interested in responding to Dawn’s Tolkien Fan Fiction Survey, she is keeping it open until December. A couple of other sources that she mentions include the OTW Fanlore wiki, which has a Timeline of Tolkien Fandom. She also made use of data from another fan survey by centrumlumina, which you can consult here.
Dawn is currently a Master’s candidate in the Humanities at American Public University where, following Tolkien’s inspirations, she is working on a thesis on Beowulf. She has presented at the Mythmoot II and Mythmoot III conferences, and will be at the New York Tolkien Conference in June speaking about the historical bias in Tolkien’s works and how this motivates the creation of fan fiction. She recently published an article in Mythprint. On her fan side, Dawn Felagund is the founder and owner of the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild, which just celebrated its tenth anniversary, and a moderator on the Many Paths to Tread archive and Back to Middle-earth Month, an annual event that seeks to promote the creation of Tolkien-based fanworks. You can also find her on Tumblr: dawnfelagund; Twitter: @DawnFelagund; or her blog, the Heretic Loremaster.
If you have a favorite Tolkien fan community or transformative work (or want to mention any other matter) please let us know in the comments!
Other Tolkien videos and podcasts
In selecting the few talks that I’ve featured in the last two months, I’ve had many videos and podcasts to choose from. If you’re looking for more, there are excellent talks in the Tolkien at Oxford podcasts featuring recorded lectures by Dr. Stuart Lee and Dr. Elizabeth Solopova and others. Tolkien in Oxford: A Symposium held at Merton College last November has now posted audio recordings of most of their presentations.
Of course, no series of Tolkien videos or podcasts is complete without the work of Corey Olsen, aka “The Tolkien Professor,” whose Mythgard podcasts are available from his website or iTunes. Mythgard has also recently instituted an online guest lecture series — an excellent idea, especially for people who can’t get to conferences. The first lecture in the series delivered just last week by Dr. Michael Drout on “Lexomic Analysis of Beowulf and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Scholarship on the Poem: A Confluence” is now available in video or audio files. You can also find occasional videos of Mythgard lectures online by Dr. Olsen and others.
This list by no means covers all that there is. For example, I’ve just discovered this audio recording of a lecture delivered in January at Wheaton College by Dr. Olga Lukmanova: “Tolkien in Russia: There and Back Again.” Or you can try a lecture by Dr. Alaric Hall on “Tolkien in Leeds.” There’s so much more out there, but I have to stop myself now as this is getting far too long to be a postscript! Hope you enjoyed the Talks on Tolkien series.
The Popular Culture Association national conference is just around the corner. After a successful trial run of Tolkien Studies as a special area last year, the organizers have included Tolkien Studies as a regular topic in the annual program. This year features another packed program, once again organized by Robin Reid.
The conference will be held in New Orleans from April 1 – 4. The Tolkien sessions are all on Friday, April 3, with a business meeting on April 4. If you’re interested, you can join the Facebook group, “Tolkien Studies at Popular Culture/American Culture Association” and/or read my summary of a couple of roundtables last year here and here. And please note that the list of panels below is subject to change — if you plan to go, always check the official program to make sure you have accurate and updated information. As you can see, the Tolkien Studies sessions occupy a whole day, but if you’re around for the rest of the conference, there’s a huge range of other sessions on popular culture to take in.
TolkienStudies I: Literary Studies 1
Friday, April 3, 2015 – 8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.
Room: Studio 7
Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State University
“Ore-ganisms”: The Myth and Meaning of ‘Living Rock’ in Middle-earth
Victoria L. Holtz Wodzak, Viterbo University
Tolkien’s Gimpy Heroes: Trench Fever, Missing Limbs, and the Crippling Long-Term Effects of Injury
Margaret Sinex, Western Illinois University
“Nay, not Níniel”: The Wounded Psyche in the Prose Tradition of TheChildren of Húrin
TolkienStudies II: Literary Studies 2
Friday, April 3, 2015 – 9:45 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.
Room: Studio 7
Megan Whobrey, University of Central Oklahoma
Middle-earth’s Eddaic Hierarchy of Music
John Rosegrant, private practice
The Man-Maiden and the Spider with Horns: Galadriel, Shelob, and the Dyamics of Loss and Gender
Rich Cooper, Texas A&M
From Folk Tale to Fantasy: J.R.R. Tolkien, Madame D’Aulnoy, and the Evolution of a Literary Form
Janet Croft, Rutgers University
The Name of the Ring: Or, There and Back Again
Tolkien Studies III: Film and Literary Studies Friday, April 3, 2015 – 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Room: Studio 7
Steven Kelly, Kansas State University
Forget the Gold: Unpacking Conservative Ideology in Peter Jackson’s Film Adaptations of The Hobbit
Peter Grybauskas, University of Maryland
The Devil’s Due: Sporting Enemies in the Legendarium
David Bratman, Mythopoeic Society
“Smith of Wootton Major and Genre Fantasy”
Michael Wodzak, Viterbo University
Utumno Born and Utumno Bred, Strong in t’Arm and Thick in t’Ead:Who are Tom, Bert and Bill Huggins?
Tolkien Studies IV: Film Studies Friday, April 3, 2015 – 1:15 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.
Room: Studio 7
Alicia Fox-Lenz, Independent Scholar
The Union between The Two Towers and the Twin Towers: Contemporary Audience Reception and the influence of war on The Lord of the Rings
Jennifer Spirko, Blount County Public Library
Extraordinary Orcs: Distorted Bodies in the films of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit
Janice Bogstad, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
Lineage, Family, and the Absent Mother: Comparing Tolkien’s The Hobbit to the Jackson/Walsh/Boyens Cinematic Renderings
Robin Reid, Texas A&M University-Commerce
Conflicting Audience Receptions of Tauriel in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit
Tolkien Studies V: Cultural Studies Friday, April 3, 2015 – 3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Room: Studio 7
Phillip Fitzsimmons, Southwestern Oklahoma State University
The palantíri Stones in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as Sauron’s Social Media: How to Avoid Getting Poked by the Dark Lord
Devena Holmes, Kent State University
Narration and Description: A Marxist Analysis of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
Helen Young, University of Sydney
Playing in the Shadow of Middle-earth
Tolkien Studies VI: New Approaches to Tolkien Studies Friday, April 3, 2015 – 4:45 p.m. – 6:15 p.m.
Room: Studio 7
Brad Eden, Valparaiso University
Preliminary thoughts on the library of Michael H.R. Tolkien
Quinn Gervel, University of Manchester/Ashbury University
Tolkien in Context
Jerem Painter and Michael Elam, Regent University
Orwell and Tolkien: Language and Survelliance in Middle-earth and Oceana
Michael Elam, Regent University
Storming the Ivory Tower: Tolkien’s Graduate-Program Possibilities
Tolkien Studies VII: Roundtable
Friday, April 3, 2015 – 6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Room: Studio 7
“In a hole in the ground there lived a fangirl”: The Complications of Tolkien, Fandom, and The Hobbit Cait Coker Texas A&M; Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State University; Robin Reid, Texas A&M, Commerce
TolkienStudies VIII: Viewing of Desolation of Smaug extended edition
Friday, April 3, 2015. 8:15 p.m.
Room: Studio 7
Tolkien Studies IX: Business meeting
Saturday, April 4, 2015. 9:45 a.m.-11:15 a.m.
Room: Galerie I
I enjoy many things about Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films – the material realization of various Middle-earth cultures, the creation of the best movie dragon I’ve ever seen, Martin Freeman’s Bilbo, to name only a few – but of course Jackson is not making the films specifically for me, a medievalist with a love of Tolkien’s work. As such, I had hoped that Jackson would have given us a resonant scene focusing on an uncle and his nephews — Thorin, Fili, and Kili — making their heroic last stand in battle together. There is a long tradition of the special relationship between “sister-sons” and their uncles in medieval literature that Tolkien refers to in The Hobbit. Working out that relationship to its traditional end would have inserted Jackson’s scene more firmly in a body of stories about these deeply embedded emotional relationships that are a part of western Europe’s cultural history.[1]
Now wait a minute, you might be saying to yourself. Jackson [2] clearly indicates a strong relationship between Thorin and his nephews, and their death scenes in The Battle of the Five Armies are somewhat connected and set apart from others. Yes, but not exactly in the traditional way I’m talking about.
In The Hobbit, Tolkien simply reports, “Of the twelve companions of Thorin, ten remained. Fili and Kili had fallen defending him with shield and body, for he was their mother’s elder brother.” (“The Return Journey,” The Hobbit 268).[3] Yes, they defend each other because they’re family, but more specifically because Fili and Kili are Thorin’s “sister-sons” (sweostor sunu in Old English).
Fili, Kili. Lisa’s Video Frame Capture Library. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Image 235
Uncle-nephew relationships, and sometimes even more precisely maternal uncle-nephew relationships (therefore, “sister-sons”), are frequently represented as a special bond in medieval literature. In Beowulf, the poet alludes to the story of Sigemund, êam (maternal uncle) to Fitela (line 881), and how they fought together in times of need. In line 115 of the Old English poem “The Battle of Maldon,” Wulfmær, one of the fallen warriors, is identified as the lord’s swuster sunu. Tolkien recognizes the appropriateness of Wulfmær’s place near his uncle in the verse drama “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son,” which is based on “The Battle of Maldon.” In this play, two men are searching after the battle for the body of their lord when one of them finds Wulfmær:
This head we know!
Wulfmær it is. I’ll wager aught
not far did he fall from friend and master.
His companion answers:
His sister-son! The songs tell us,
ever near shall be at need nephew to uncle. (“Homecoming” 127)
Other uncle-nephew relationships can be found in Charlemagne and Roland, Hrothgar and Hrothulf, Arthur and Gawain. The relationship isn’t always positive; in some stories, Mordred is Arthur’s sister-son, which makes his treachery even worse. Théoden and Éomer or Turgon and Maeglin provide some other examples in Tolkien’s work. Verlyn Flieger explains how we can even see the Bilbo-Frodo relationship in this light. [4]
So what does Jackson do with the uncle-nephew bond? In The Battle of the Five Armies, Thorin welcomes Fili and Kili to the kingdom of Erebor, addressing them as his “sister’s sons.” In Jackson’s movies the young dwarves Fili and Kili refer to Thorin as their uncle, and in The Desolation of Smaug Thorin tells Fili that one day he will be king.[5] In The Battle of the Five Armies, when Thorin finally bursts out of the mountain gate to join the battle, the two warriors running closest to him on either side are Fili and Kili. In their last fight, Thorin calls Dwalin, Fili, and Kili to go with him in an attempt to take down Azog. Gandalf comments that Thorin is taking his best fighters with him. In Old English they would be called his heorð-geneatas, his “hearth-companions,” a small group of noble, well-trained fighters who are closest to their lord, and it is reasonable to think that the young and courageous nephews would be among them. Fili and Kili, then, are appropriately represented as sister-sons in most of Jackson’s Hobbit.
But the uncle-nephew bond dissipates in their final scenes. While Tolkien recognizes in “The Homecoming” that “ever near shall be at need nephew to uncle,” in The Battle of the Five Armies the nephews end up nowhere near their uncle in a time of need. Instead, Thorin sends Fili and Kili away to hunt for Azog, and then the two nephews split up in separate searches as well. Fili is killed in the sight of both of his kinsmen (we don’t see him fighting heroically to the end; he’s just skewered and then thrown over a cliff) but both Thorin and Kili are too far away to do anything about that attack. Uncle and nephew cannot stand and defend each other. The killing of Fili enrages Kili, who runs off in a passionate Orc-killing spree, but his end is complicated by the arrival of Tauriel.
Now, I have to make clear that I do not object in principle to the creation of new characters like Tauriel. But her involvement in Kili’s last fight obscures the uncle-nephew bond that defines Thorin and his sister-sons. Instead of Thorin, Fili, and Kili fighting side-by-side until they are cut down, we get a different trio: Kili-Tauriel-Legolas defending each other. Kili’s last look is not to his uncle but to Tauriel; his uncle is too far away to be part of the scene. The special bond of an uncle with his nephews who “had fallen defending him with shield and body,” is nowhere to be seen.
Peter Jackson knows how to film emotional battle scenes, as he demonstrated in The Return of the King: sweeping music, slow motion, the melee of battle, the depiction of personal anguish.
from Lisa’s Video Frame Capture Library. Return of the King. Aragorn, Image 1808; Eowyn with Theoden, Image 1811; Eomer with Eowyn, Image 1846
Had Jackson completed the Hobbit story with a heroic last stand of uncle and nephews fighting side-by-side on the battlefield, their tale would have participated in a long tradition of sister-son stories and allowed us to feel the emotional impact of that relationship in a visceral way.
Thorin, Kili. Lisa’s Video Frame Capture Library. The Hobbit: trailers. Image 326.
Too bad the opportunity was lost so close to the end of the movie.
Endnotes
[1] These uncle-nephew relationships are important in other cultures beyond the European, but I am only familiar with the northern European literary uncle-nephew motif. It is likely that the practice of fostering high-born children – having a son educated in his uncle’s home, for example – contributed to the motif in medieval literature.
[2] I use “Jackson” throughout as shorthand. Although he was the director of the Hobbit movies, he was not the only writer. The full writing team consists of Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, Fran Walsh, and Guillermo del Toro, who gets a writing credit for his involvement with the project in its earlier stages.
[3] Tolkien inserted this line about Fili and Kili dying in defense of their uncle late in the process of composition. According to John Rateliff: “The idea that the two most likeable of all Bilbo’s companions should also die in the battle…first appears in the continuation of the typescript that eventually (autumn 1936) replaced the Third Phase manuscript” (684, n. 11). Rateliff also points out that Thorin was originally Fili and Kili’s great-uncle, but Tolkien later moved him one generation closer. (See, for example, Rateliff 444 – 445, note 11). In Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings, in the section on “Durin’s Folk,” Thorin appears in the genealogy as Fili and Kili’s uncle (1418).
[4] Verlyn Flieger discusses the Bilbo-Frodo kinship in the light of the uncle-nephew motif in her essay, “Frodo and Aragorn: The Concept of the Hero.” The essay has been reprinted in a couple of places, including Flieger’s collected essays in Green Suns and Faërie: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien. Kent State University Press, 2012 and in the 2004 volume, Understanding the Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism, edited by Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs, published by Houghton Mifflin and partly available as a Google e-book.
[5] Rateliff comments on the line of succession in Tolkien’s conception of the Dwarves’ patriarchal line of kings which excludes the maternal nephews (704). In the early Middle Ages, young relatives in the maternal line might succeed a ruler; it is interesting that in this detail Jackson is closer to early medieval practice than the book.
Works Cited
Flieger, Verlyn. “Frodo and Aragorn: The Concept of the Hero.” Green Suns and Faërie: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien. Kent State University Press, 2012. 141-58. Print. Also available in Understanding The Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism. Ed. Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. 122-45. Print and Google e-book.
Jackson, Peter, dir. The Battle of the Five Armies. New Line Cinema, 2014. Film.
____. The Desolation of Smaug. New Line Cinema, 2013. Film.
Klaeber’s Beowulf. Ed. R.D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles. 4th ed. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2009. Print.
Rateliff, John D. The History of the Hobbit. 2 Vols. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Print.
Tolkien, J.R.R. “Durin’s Folk.” Appendix A.iii. Return of the King, being the third part of The Lord of the Rings. London: HarperCollins, 2007. 1406-19. Print.
_____. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. London: HarperCollins, 1999. Print.
_____. “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.” Tree and Leaf, including the poem Mythopoeia. London: HarperCollins, 2001. Print.
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MLA citation of this post: Smol, Anna. “Jackson’s Lost Opportunity: The Death of Sister-Sons.” A Single Leaf. 16 Jan 2015. Web. [insert date of access here without brackets].
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What did you think of these final scenes in the film? Any other examples of sister-sons that you want to discuss or add? Please feel free to comment!
The Tolkien in Vermont conference will take place this coming weekend. This is a small, friendly conference that brings together every year a group of faculty, independent scholars, and students. This year’s theme is Tolkien and Popular Culture.
