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Anna Smol

~ Department of English, Mount Saint Vincent University

Anna Smol

Tag Archives: Marquette Tolkien Archive

Tolkien Fandom Oral History Collection

08 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by Anna Smol in Fan studies, Tolkien

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Marquette Tolkien Archive, Marquette University, Tolkien fandom, Tolkien Fandom Oral History Collection

Three minutes, three questions – that’s all it takes.  The Tolkien Fandom Oral History Collection is looking for more volunteers to record their experiences as Tolkien fans. I did it! It was fun and informal, though the three minutes were up before I knew it.

You can schedule an interview by following the link on this page. There are three questions you’ll be asked: When did you first encounter the works of J.R.R. Tolkien? Why are you a fan? What has he meant to you? The goal is ambitious: to collect 6,000 interviews, the number of Théoden’s riders who came to the aid of Gondor.

This digital collection is a project led by William Fliss, the Tolkien Archivist at Marquette University in Milwaukee and is just one part of their Tolkien collections, which include original manuscripts, a vast collection of fanzines, and other Tolkien-related materials. Why all this Tolkien stuff in Milwaukee? Read the story behind the archive and what it contains here: https://www.marquette.edu/library/archives/tolkien.php

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Last-minute Tolkien CFPs: Kalamazoo and Leeds

30 Friday Aug 2019

Posted by Anna Smol in Calls for Papers, Conferences, Medieval, Medievalisms, Research, Tolkien

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International Congress on Medieval Studies, International Medieval Congress, Marquette Tolkien Archive, Tales after Tolkien, Tolkien at Kalamazoo group, Tolkien at Leeds, Tolkien Society, Tolkien Society Seminar, Tolkien Symposium, University of Glasgow Fantasy Research Hub

With the summer conference season in Tolkien studies barely over, it’s time to plan for next year. Here are the calls for papers for Tolkien sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, May 7-10, 2020 and for the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, July 6-9, 2020.

ICMS Kalamazoo May 7-10, 2020

You can find the submission guidelines here. Different sponsoring groups have different deadlines. For example, the Tolkien at Kalamazoo group would like proposals by September 1st (tomorrow!) while the final deadline for ICMS proposals generally is September 15th — though no one is advised to wait that long. You can search the complete call for papers for the Congress here.

Tolkien at Kalamazoo is sponsoring 3 sessions:

Tolkien’s Paratexts: Appendices, Annals, and Marginalia (Roundtable)
Following the medieval manuscript tradition, Tolkien’s literary fiction includes charts, maps, annals and other paratextual elements, many found in the Appendices. These elements deserve further critical study. Taking his father’s lead, Christopher Tolkien has been meticulously editing J.R.R. Tolkien’s manuscripts, supplying commentary and emendations concerning the many cruxes within the notes and typescripts. As medievalists, we will bring this often ignored back matter and marginalia to the foreground.

Tolkien and Se Wyrm
Tolkien admits to being influenced by the dragons of Beowulf and the Volsungasaga. In those medieval epic texts, the dragon is monstrous but somewhat uncanny and familiar to human kind; distinctions are blurred. Something similar happens in Tolkien’s fictions, presenting exciting new considerations on the subject of monstrosity. Papers could explore the interdisciplinary relationships between the dragons of medieval legend and those of Middle-earth.

Tolkien’s Chaucer
With the upcoming publication of Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer (edited by John M. Bowers, Oxford University Press, 2019) readers of Tolkien have the opportunity to explore how Tolkien read Chaucer as well as how that reading influenced his fiction. This paper session might explore fourteenth-century ideas of romance, neoplatonism, self in relation to society, constructions of gender, etc., as they related to Tolkien’s texts.

Proposals for the above sessions should be sent to:

Dr. Christopher Vaccaro
Email: cvaccaro@uvm.edu

You can also send Chris a proposal for the Tolkien Symposium which takes place on the Wednesday before the start of the conference. While the official CFP will come out later with a January deadline, the Symposium usually has an open theme and you can propose a paper now.

University of Glasgow, Fantasy Research Hub

Medieval World-Building: Tolkien, his Precursors and Legacies
The recent volume Sub-creating Arda: World-building in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Works, its Precursors, and Legacies (2019), edited by D. Fimi and T. Honegger, examines the importance of invented story-worlds as spaces for primary-world social commentary, or as means for visualizing times and places not accessible to the reader. Tolkien was one of the foremost proponents of literary world-building, what he called “sub-creation,” and his Middle-earth has had unrivaled influence on subsequent world-building efforts. Yet, Tolkien’s own sub-creations were born from medieval story-worlds such as Beowulf, Kalevala, Volsungasaga, and others. This paper session examines the emergent, interdisciplinary research field of world-building through Tolkien’s Middle-earth, its medieval precursors, and/or its modern legacies. Papers might be on such topics as mythopoeia, design, systems of magic, geology, geography, cartography, cosmology, ecology, sociology, demographics, cultural anthropology, materiality, religion, philosophy, language—literally anything that goes into world-building—in conjunction with the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien, or his medieval/medievalist precursors, or his worldbuilding legacy in literature or other fields. Papers on interdisciplinary topics are welcome.

Download this session CFP here.

Please send your proposals with “Tolkien World-Building” in the subject line to: Dimitra Fimi (Dimitra.Fimi@glasgow.ac.uk) AND Kris Swank (KSwank@pima.edu).

Marquette University Archives

Tolkien and Manuscript Studies
J.R.R. Tolkien the scholar studied and taught medieval manuscripts. In imitation of these, Tolkien the author incorporated fictional manuscripts into his tales. He produced an enormous quantity of his own manuscripts in the course of crafting his Legendarium, which his son Christopher and others have closely examined. In his influential essay “The Great Chain of Reading: (Inter-)textual Relations and the Technique of Mythopoesis in the Túrin Story” (2002), Gergely Nagy explains that Tolkien’s mode of narrative development was akin to that of the medieval European tradition, writing, redacting, and expanding of numerous versions.

This session proposal invites papers on the role of manuscripts (as mise-en-page and mise-en-scène) in the life and works of Tolkien.

Contact: William Fliss
Phone: (414) 288-5906
Email: william.fliss@marquette.edu

Tales After Tolkien Society

2 sessions:

Deadscapes: Wastelands, Necropoli, and Other Tolkien Inspired Places of Death, Decay, and Corruption (A Panel Discussion)

Legacies of Tolkien’s Whiteness in Contemporary Medievalisms (A Roundtable)

Contact: Geoffrey B. Elliott
PO Box 292970
Kerrville, TX 78028
email: geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com

IMC Leeds July 6-9, 2020

The deadline for Tolkien proposals is September 6.

Sessions 1-3: Borders in Tolkien’s Medievalism – paper sessions
These sessions will directly address the overall theme of the conference (“Borders”). Papers in these sessions can explore all aspects of borders in Tolkien’s works in its broadest sense. These can be explorations of geographical, conceptual, political and linguistic borders in Tolkien’s work as well as the role and impact of borders on the peoples and cultures of Tolkien’s world-building and in his other creative and academic explorations. 

Sessions 4-5: Tolkien: Medieval Roots and Modern Branches – paper sessions
These sessions can accommodate wider topics and new approaches to Tolkien’s medievalism, ranging from source studies and theoretical readings, to comparative studies (including Tolkien’s legacy).

Session 6 – New Sources and Approaches to Tolkien’s Medievalism
This roundtable discussion provides a forum to explore new sources and approaches to Tolkien’s work. This can explore new academic work drawn from the most recent published editions of Tolkien’s work including The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (ed. Verlyn Flieger, 2017), The Tale of Beren and Lúthien (ed. Christopher Tolkien, 2017), The Fall of Gondolin (ed. Christopher Tolkien, 2018) as well as new academic works such as Tolkien’s Library – An Annotated Checklist (Cilli, forthcoming August 2019) and Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer (OUP: Bowers, forthcoming September 2019).

If you are interested in participating:

Please submit a paper/round table contribution title and abstract to Dr. Dimitra Fimi (dimitrafimi@gmail.com) and Dr. Andrew Higgins (asthiggins@me.com) by 6th September

Length of abstracts: 100 words.
(Papers will be 15-20 minutes long while roundtable contributions will be 10-12 minutes long).
With your abstract, please include name and details of contributor (affiliation, address, and preferred e-mail address).

A note on how Kalamazoo and Leeds organizers select papers differently: for the ICMS in Kalamazoo, the session topics are first approved by the Congress organizers and then the session sponsors select presenters to fill the sessions. At Leeds, the session sponsors select presenters and send in the full session proposal to the Congress organizers to await approval. Sometimes, sessions are not approved.

On the day before the Congress begins (Sunday 5 July), the Tolkien Society sponsors a Tolkien Seminar, a full day of presentations. The call for papers will be available later this year.

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Tolkien as Artist and Writer

15 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by Anna Smol in Publications, Research, Tolkien

≈ 6 Comments

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Jeffrey J. MacLeod, Marquette Tolkien Archive, relationship image and word, Tolkien as artist and writer, Tolkien Birthday Toast, Tolkien Society, Tolkien Studies (journal), Visualizing the Word

Tolkien Toast 3 Jan 2018Family and friends joined me in the Tolkien Birthday Toast on January 3rd, a global event sponsored by the Tolkien Society. It’s a wonderful feeling to know that your own toast is part of a continuing wave of glasses raised around the world every hour at 9 p.m. local time. This year, I was fortunate to be sitting by a warm fire while the winds blew with hurricane force and the air dropped to bitterly cold temperatures outside. I had another reason to celebrate: close to the end of December, the latest volume of Tolkien Studies arrived in my mailbox, with an article that I co-authored with my colleague Jeff MacLeod: “Visualizing the Word: Tolkien as Artist and Writer.”

I have spoken on this topic at a few conferences over the last few years (for example, at the 2015 New York Tolkien conference). One especially pleasurable part of the research was the opportunity to look at some microfilm and digital images of Tolkien’s drawings in the Marquette University Archive. Archivists and the Tolkien Estate are quite rightly wary of allowing direct access to Tolkien’s original artwork even though every scholar and fan interested in Tolkien’s art would love to handle his pictures; however, I soon realized that when examining digital copies, I could expand the image and see it even more closely than I might have just by eyeing the original. That ability led to some interesting observations, as I hope you’d agree if you have a chance to read our essay.

That research trip contributed one part to the overall argument that Jeff and I are making in this article.  I’ll quote a section from the opening paragraph that summarizes our four main points:

[We begin by citing a number of critics who discuss Tolkien’s artwork, and then continue:]  All of these critics make a strong case for the importance of Tolkien’s “encounters with art and imagery” (Organ 117), but their focus is on the influence of other artists and artistic movements on Tolkien’s art and writing. We propose to turn our attention to Tolkien’s own practice and knowledge of visual art in order to examine how it is an integral part of his writing craft, his creativity, and his ideas. We look at four main ways in which the visual image and the written word merge in Tolkien’s creative work. First, we examine how his visual practice aids in the drafting of his stories. Second, we look at how it influences him on a stylistic level in his descriptive prose choices — our focus is on landscapes in The Lord of the Rings for an analysis of these first two elements. Third, and more generally, we find that Tolkien’s visual imagination and skill combine with writing in inventive ways, as in his alphabets, his calligraphy, and his monogram. Fourth, we explore how Tolkien’s artistic practice influences his theories about fantasy and illustration. We contend that Tolkien’s art and his visual imagination should be considered an essential part of his writing and thinking. (pp. 115-116)

I can’t copy the whole article here, but let me give you a taste of some of our ideas and show you a few of the images we discussed but couldn’t reproduce in our essay.

Tower of Kirith Ungol sketch

Tower of Kirith Ungol sketch, Sauron Defeated, p. 19.

If you flip through the pages of Christopher Tolkien’s volumes of The History of Middle-earth or examine the books on Tolkien’s artwork by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull, you’ll see some of Tolkien’s sketches that appear as anything from a squiggle in the middle of a line, to diagrams and maps, to sometimes more developed pictures, such as his Tower of Kirith Ungol (still spelled with a “K” in the earlier manuscript). We discuss the interplay of text and image in the example shown here. (This isn’t the best version of the image that you can find; check out Hammond and Scull’s The Art of The Lord of the Rings for that).

A manuscript sketch like the Tower of Kirith Ungol poses intriguing questions: when did the drawing start taking over the page? Were the words written after the drawing? Did the sketch guide the wording of the passage? Was the sketch revised after the pencilled text was written over in ink?  We examined only this page in detail, but it would be interesting to expand this kind of study to other sketches in Tolkien’s manuscripts that bring us closer to an understanding of his process of composition.

From looking at Tolkien’s process of drafting in this part of The Lord of the Rings, we move on to consider his prose descriptions of landscapes to discuss what we call his “painterly” style. In this, we were influenced by Brian Rosebury’s analysis of Tolkien’s prose, in which he declares that Tolkien describes like a painter. Although Rosebury then qualifies his claim, we agree with the initial assessment. We also ground our analysis on insights from a 1981 article in Mythlore by Miriam Y. Miller on Tolkien’s use of colours. What we found typical of Tolkien’s landscape descriptions is the use of some basic colours modified by qualities of light, along with an artist’s attention to the composition of the image.

Here is an example of that painterly style: Tolkien’s description from the “Fog on the Barrow-downs” chapter, in which he describes the land “in flats and swellings of grey and green and pale earth-colors, until it faded into a featureless and shadowy distance.”  From here, our eye moves to the horizon, where there’s a “guess of blue and a remote white glimmer blending with the hem of the sky”  (FR, I, viii, 147). This impressionistic prose style describes the land entirely in painterly colours, lights, and shapes. A visual analogue (though not meant to be an illustration of the Barrow-downs) can be found in one of Tolkien’s early watercolours, “King’s Norton from Bilberry Hill” (Artist 21, fig. 16).

Tolkien, King's Norton from Bilberry Hill

Tolkien, “King’s Norton from Bilberry Hill.” Artist & Illustrator, fig. 16

This is only one example of many that we could point to in Tolkien’s landscape descriptions that demonstrates the eye and imagination of a visual artist.

A couple of other main points in our essay extend our view of how the verbal and the visual intersect in Tolkien’s creative imagination. His monogram, his invented writing systems, his calligraphy all demonstrate ways in which the visual and verbal cohere to make meaning. And of course, some of his theoretical discussion of subcreation in “On Fairy-stories” is delivered in visual terms. For example, when talking about the recovery afforded by fantasy, Tolkien states, “We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red” (OFS p. 67).

Tolkien, King's Letter second version. Art of LotR 187

Tolkien, “The King’s Letter” second version, Art of Lord of the Rings fig. 187

Our concluding paragraph:

Tolkien’s special talent, in so many facets of his creative life, was the ability to combine the written word with the observational skills of a visual artist. Although he is renowned as a philologist and creative writer, his artistic practice and visual imagination, we contend, should be seen as more than just a life-long hobby or a secondary skill. While his artwork is beginning to gain some critical attention on its own, our study suggests that the literature-art connections made by earlier critics such as Brian Rosebury and Miriam Y. Miller can be significantly expanded. Our examination of Tolkien’s composition process, his descriptive prose style, his monogram and other forms of calligraphy, and his theories about fairy-stories and illustration demonstrate the interplay of the visual with the verbal throughout his work. We believe that Tolkien’s artistic vision and skill should be acknowledged as an integral and crucial part of understanding his imagination, writing, and ideas. (pp. 127-28)

Selected references

Full details for our article:

Jeffrey J. MacLeod and Anna Smol. “Visualizing the Word: Tolkien as Artist and Writer.” Tolkien Studies, vol. 14, 2017, pp. 115-131. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/tks.2017.0009.

Tolkien Studies is an annual publication that can be purchased from West Virginia University Press. If your library has a subscription to Project Muse, you can get a copy that way. If you don’t have the means to get a copy of the article, please let me know.

Our bibliography contains a number of resources on Tolkien’s art and prose style. The ones that I’ve mentioned in this post are:

Hammond, Wayne G. and Christina Scull. The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. London: HarperCollins, 2015.

_________.  J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator. London: HarperCollins; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995.

Miller, Miriam Y. “The Green Sun: A Study of Color in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.” Mythlore 7.4 (Winter 1981): 3 – 11.

Organ, Michael. “Tolkien’s Japonisme: Prints, Dragons, and a Great Wave.” Tolkien Studies 10 (2013): 105-22.

Rosebury, Brian. Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon. 2nd ed. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien On Fairy-stories. Extended edition, ed. Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson. London: HarperCollins, 2008.

_______________. Sauron Defeated. The History of Middle-earth, vol. 9. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins, 1992.

Acknowledgements

It’s hard to trace the development of this article. Some of it was inspired by a discussion in The Reading Room discussion boards on TheOneRing.net many years ago. Many discussions with Jeff over the years, himself an accomplished artist, took us in this direction. We are both grateful to our university for providing us with research grants and sabbatical leaves and to the Tolkien Estate for allowing us access to some of Tolkien’s papers. I am especially indebted to archivist William Fliss at Marquette University for listening to my theories and allowing me a glimpse of the real thing!

I’ll post more on other resources for studying Tolkien’s art later this week.

 

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Talks on Tolkien: John D. Rateliff, the Hobbit manuscripts, and Tolkien archives

19 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by Anna Smol in Medievalisms, Talks on Tolkien, Tolkien

≈ 5 Comments

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A Brief History of The Hobbit, Bodleian Library, Dr. John D. Rateliff, Marquette Tolkien Archive, Marquette University, Oxford, Sacnoth's Scriptorium, The History of The Hobbit, Weston Library, William Fliss

One of the most exciting parts of scholarly research, in my opinion, is having the opportunity to read an original manuscript. This week’s “Talk on Tolkien” features the work of Dr. John D. Rateliff, who is an expert in Tolkien’s Hobbit manuscripts. Dr. Rateliff has studied Tolkien’s drafts and revisions of The Hobbit and these versions, along with Rateliff’s commentaries and notes, have been published in the two-volume History of The Hobbit. Recently, Dr. Rateliff announced that a shorter one-volume edition is forthcoming as well, a Brief History of the Hobbit. You can follow Dr. Rateliff’s work on his blog, Sacnoth’s Scriptorium, and on his website.

Although the video below is not a recording of a complete talk, it allows us to listen in on the question period after a presentation that Dr. Rateliff gave in 2012 at Marquette University, the home of The Hobbit manuscripts. You can hear all kinds of intriguing details in the video about Tolkien’s habits of revision, surprises in the manuscripts, different versions of The Hobbit, and more.

Dr. Rateliff talks about how Tolkien would often write on scraps of paper, including exam papers. Tolkien tells the story of how the first line of The Hobbit came to him one day as he was marking exams. Rateliff’s History of The Hobbit notes that this page does not survive, but here is Tolkien himself describing the moment in this brief clip:

I’ve found that people are sometimes surprised that all of Tolkien’s papers aren’t at Oxford where he was a professor for most of his life. But in fact, manuscripts of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Mr. Bliss, and Farmer Giles of Ham are all in the US at Marquette University (in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) in the J.R.R. Tolkien Collection  How did they get there, you might well ask? Listen to the Marquette archivist, William Fliss, explain:

I’ve spent a number of happy hours in the Tolkien archives at Marquette, although my experience is a mere glimpse compared to the years that Dr. Rateliff studied there. I’ve felt quite privileged being able to work in the bright and peaceful reading room of the archive, aided by the very helpful staff and surrounded by stacks of grey boxes filled with treasures.

Marquette Archives reading room

Marquette Archives reading room

For anyone wondering about what’s in the J.R.R.Tolkien Collection, you can check out their descriptive inventory of holdings. Aside from Tolkien’s manuscripts, the Collection is especially rich in periodical literature dealing with Tolkien. If you are interested in popular culture, the reception of Tolkien’s works, the history of fandom and zines, screen treatments and adaptations, take a look at this list of sources in the Collection’s periodical literature. I reported on a roundtable discussing various scholars’ experiences (including my own) with the archives at the Popular Culture Association last year.

The other major archive holding Tolkien materials, as might be expected, is at Oxford in the modern manuscripts collection. Here you can find some manuscript drafts of Tolkien’s work, such as The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, as well as lectures, notebooks, translations, letters. Anyone with a chance to visit Oxford should definitely take an opportunity to tour the old and wonderful Bodleian Library, including the Duke Humphrey’s reading room (better known as the library in the Harry Potter movies).

But Tolkien’s papers are actually held in what was called the New Bodleian across the street from the old library. Scholars used to work in a fairly cramped reading room. You would check your bags at the door and after showing your reader’s pass proceed down a rather dark corridor into a long, crowded room at the end of the hall. Rows of tables seemed to be squeezed into the space between bookshelves, files, microfilm readers, and librarians’ desks. I think I remember windows, but if I recall correctly, they were rather high up on the wall and did not provide a view. But who cared when you were sitting there and handed a Tolkien manuscript to read! I spent many an hour in that room squinting at Tolkien’s scrawl and then typing at a furious pace to transcribe as much of what I was reading as possible before closing time.

That library has undergone an extensive renovation and has just recently opened to scholars and now to the public, renamed as the Weston Library. From the look of some videos and news reports the rooms are light and spacious — and apparently you can even buy a cup of coffee there! I can’t wait to go back — I hope very soon. The following video presents the mind-boggling massive extent of the Bodleian’s operations and includes a look at the new Weston building:

Anyone have any experiences or memories of archival work they’d like to share? Has anyone visited these or any other archives holding Tolkien materials?

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Tolkien Studies at PCA 2014, part two

06 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by Anna Smol in Conferences, Fan studies, Tolkien

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Marquette Tolkien Archive, Marquette University, PCA/ ACA, Tolkien fandom, Tolkien Studies

Popular Culture Association logoIn my previous post, I wrote about one of the roundtable discussions in the Tolkien Studies special area introduced this year at the national Popular Culture / American Culture Association conference, which was held in Chicago in April. Today I have a summary of another roundtable discussion, this one on doing research in the Tolkien archives at Marquette University in Milwaukee. Because I was one of the panellists, I didn’t take as copious notes as I might have done as an audience member, but at least I can give you a taste of the discussion. My part will look disproportionately longer than the others, but that’s because I have notes on my own presentation!

The Tolkien Collection in the Marquette University Archives

It is not unusual to be met with surprise if you happen to mention that there’s a Tolkien archive – in Milwaukee. Many people assume that all of Tolkien’s manuscripts would be held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. And while the Bodleian has a rich collection of Tolkien papers – such as his lecture notes, drafts of some of his fiction, translations and glossaries for his teaching – the J.R.R. Tolkien Collection at Marquette University is where you will find his Lord of the Rings and Hobbit manuscripts, as well as Farmer Giles of Ham and the original Mr. Bliss.

Chicago buildingOur roundtable started off with William (Bill) Fliss, the Archivist in the Department of Special Collections, describing the history and scope of this collection, starting with William Ready, the head librarian in the 1950s who was the first to inquire if Tolkien would sell his literary papers, which is probably one of the reasons why they ended up at Marquette. Bill also pointed out that the collection extends beyond these manuscripts to secondary sources, including materials donated by Tolkien collectors. To get a full sense of these diverse materials, take a look at the online descriptive inventory. Another interesting development is that it is now possible to record various Tolkien-related websites so that they too will become part of the historical record.

Amy Amendt-Raduege spoke next about her experiences as a Marquette grad student —  the first in the history of the English Department there to complete a PhD on Tolkien – and the many happy hours she spent in the archives. Amy pointed out that the archives are a lovely place to work (and they are: large tables, a wall of windows, and a place of quiet concentration with librarians bringing riches to your desk). She commented on how it was fun to see other people there occasionally working on other aspects of Tolkien’s fiction, creating a sense of a scholarly community. She advised researchers to ask the librarians for help when needed, as they are the most valuable resource in the archives. She also described the thrill of looking at the manuscripts themselves – something that all the panellists agreed with. You can read Tolkien’s drafts of Lord of the Rings in The History of Middle-earth, but only in looking at the manuscripts will you see, for example, the other side of the page, with Tolkien’s comments on exams, or his doodles, or other notes that give you a sense of what he was doing at the time. And of course, there is the challenge of reading his handwriting when he was especially inspired.

While Amy spoke about reading the manuscripts, I pointed to various topics that could be pursued in a study of pre-internet Tolkien fandom using the vast array of periodicals, fan materials, and adaptations collected in the secondary sources. There is great potential there for fan studies, film studies, and reception studies by examining how, through the years, fans have expressed their ideas and opinions in numerous zines on topics such as the following:

  • fans’ perceptions of what it means to be a fan;
  • the beginnings of organized Tolkien fandom in science fiction fandom and the perceived relationships between these two fan communities;
  • the perceived relationship between fans engaging in activities for fun and those developing more serious academic interests as time goes on;
  • the prevalence of fan works – fiction, art, poetry, songs, plays – from the earliest days of fan publications, without derogatory comments on fanfic such as you might find today;
  • the way in which women were writing Lord of the Rings fiction from female points of view;
  • the various ways in which the collection supports film studies – for example, tracking fan reactions to the Ralph Bakshi film, or reading the Ackerman screen treatment (with Tolkien’s comments in the margins), or imagining John Boorman’s screenplay (if only it had been filmed!), or reading fans’ anticipations of what a live-action film by some guy named Peter Jackson might be like.
  • and finally, looking at the ways in which fans perceived the Lord of the Rings “cult” in the 1960s and 70s when Tolkien fandom was highly visible. Essays on the subject extend from early days in the 60s to retrospectives in the 1980s. An interesting range of opinions can be found, from conservative to liberal, as these zine article titles might suggest:  “Hippie Hobbits”; “Hippies or Hobbits?”; “Hippies versus Hobbits”; “Hippies relating to hobbits”; “On Behalf of the Half Hippy” and “Those hippity hobbits.”  (Clearly, the alliteration was too much to resist).

These suggestions by no means exhaust the possibilities of the secondary materials in the Marquette collection, but I hope they make clear that the history of organized Tolkien fandom is to be found in the archive in Milwaukee. I should add that I was commenting on North American and British sources, but other materials from around the world can also be found in the collection.

Chicago buildingOur final panellist was Richard West. He spoke of his long experiences and happy memories of discovering and using the Tolkien Collection over the years. He reiterated what Amy had said earlier: that there is nothing like looking at the actual manuscripts. Richard told the story of seeing Mr. Bliss and thinking that it was a lovely book that should be published, and of course it eventually was. He also spoke about how being able to consult manuscripts can complete the printed record: for example, in the published edition of Tolkien’s famous Letter 131 to Milton Waldman, Carpenter omits a small section, but it can be read in the original document in the collection.

I think the theme of our roundtable could be summed up simply by saying that the Marquette Tolkien Collection is an invaluable resource that all Tolkien researchers should know about.

If you’ve used the collection, I’d be interested in hearing about your experiences in the comments. If you were at our roundtable and have other notes to add, please feel free.

Areas of interest for future conferences

As I mentioned in my previous post, you can keep in touch by joining the Tolkien Studies at PCA open Facebook group. There you will find a report by organizer Robin Reid on the success of this trial run of the Tolkien Studies area. After a business meeting on the final day of the conference, participants identified a few areas of interest for future meetings that emphasized the multidisciplinary nature of Tolkien studies, including discussions of publishing opportunities and the state of Tolkien scholarship; teaching Tolkien; Tolkien linguistics; critical race studies; gender and queer studies; Tolkien in a modern context, including his knowledge of science and his relation to the genres of science fiction and fantasy; and creative presentations.

The next national PCA/ACA conference will be held in New Orleans in 2015.

Chicago night scene

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Dr. Anna Smol

This site includes my blog, "A Single Leaf," and webpages about my research and teaching in Tolkien studies, medievalism, Old English, and higher education pedagogy. Creative Commons License: <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>.

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