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Tolkien Society Seminar 2017

11 Tuesday Jul 2017

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Where do the months fly by? June was busy, as I was preparing my talk for the Tolkien Society Seminar in Leeds while also putting the final touches on our family vacation itinerary in Europe — we were given a very special opportunity this year to travel to France, Italy, and Scotland, with a stop in Leeds for the Seminar. Our schedule meant that I couldn’t stay longer for the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds, but maybe next year…. The Tolkien Society Seminar plus Dimitra Fimi’s organization of Tolkien sessions at the IMC certainly make Leeds a desirable destination.

Tolkien Society Seminar 2017 speakers

Tolkien Society Seminar 2017 speakers. L to R, back row: Michaela Hausmann, Szymon Pindur, Brad Eden, Andrew Higgins, Massimiliano Izzo, me!, Kristine Larsen, Irina Metzler. Front row, l to r: Penelope Holdaway, Aurelie Bremont, Dimitra Fimi, Bertrand Bellet.  Image from Tolkien Society Twitter account.

The theme of this year’s Seminar was poetry and songs, and we heard many different approaches, from individual word studies to language invention, to women in Tolkien’s works, and poetry as world-building, to individual poem analyses, to the new publication Aotrou and Itroun. You can find the program here.  I was impressed by how international this one-day conference was; we had speakers and attendees young and old from Germany, Poland, the US, the UK, France, Italy, New Zealand — and Canada, of course.

My talk, “Seers and Singers: Sub-creative Collaborators in Tolkien’s Fiction,” covered some of the ideas that I’ve written about in my article for Verlyn Flieger’s festschrift, A Wilderness of Dragons: Essays in Honor of Verlyn Flieger (edited by John D. Rateliff and forthcoming from Gabbro Head Press). There’s a lot more in that article that I didn’t have time to fit into my 20-minute talk, including some ideas from Tolkien’s unpublished manuscripts about alliterative poetry and his repeated use of the image of the Cook. For the Seminar, though, I outlined some of the similarities I have found in three of Tolkien’s texts that deal with sub-creation and Elvish dramas:  The Notion Club Papers, Leaf by Niggle, and Smith of Wootton Major. Below is a copy of my abstract for the Seminar talk:

In Tolkien’s creation myth in The Silmarillion, the Great Music sung by the Ainur gives rise to a vision of Arda and, attracted by what they have sung into existence, the Powers descend into the world to achieve its creation. Music and Light are of the essence of this created world, and as time goes on these primordial elements splinter into ever diminishing recapitulations. Music becomes manifest in song, in words, in voices, in the sound of waters flowing. Light illuminates the sky, the earth, the visions of creatures. As Verlyn Flieger points out, “Both words and light are agents of perception” (Splintered Light, p. 44) and both “can be instruments of sub-creation (p. 46). Light and Music become manifest as vision and language, or image and word – either or both acting as the catalyst in the sub-creative process as described by Tolkien.

In this presentation, I will turn to a few stories by Tolkien that are primarily concerned with the sub-creative powers of light and music, image and the word: The Notion Club Papers, Leaf by Niggle, and Smith of Wootton Major. The Notion Club Papers explores the struggles and experiments that its characters have with dream visions and languages as avenues of memory and connections with the past. Leaf by Niggle is the story of a visual artist who paints his way into what may be perceived as a faërian drama, and Smith of Wootton Major represents another sub-creator gifted with vision and music who penetrates deeply into the mysteries of the Perilous Realm.

The seers and singers in these stories represent a typology of sub-creators – a repeated categorization of types – who demonstrate the powers of splintered music and light, word and image. The stories function as meta-commentaries on collaborative sub-creation, exploring the entry into faërian dramas and the nature of what is experienced there.  For example, when the powers of word and image are combined, as in the collaborative pairing of Lowdham and Jeremy in The Notion Club Papers or in their combined presence in Smith, the results are an impressive entry into Faëry. Although each of the stories represents characters who function in different relationships, what becomes evident in each case is that Tolkien does not present a lone heroic poet or artist-figure; instead, some kind of a pairing helps each of his sub-creators. Lowdham and Jeremy, Niggle and Parish, Smith and Alf – in each case the sub-creator relies on another. Throughout, Tolkien also creates the idea of a genealogy of sympathy that enables a tradition to form that will pass on a taste for Faëry and an ability to enter into a faërian drama.

Tolkien Reading Day: 2 poems to memorize

25 Saturday Mar 2017

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March 25th is a significant date in Tolkien’s secondary world, the downfall of Sauron. Since 2003, the Tolkien Society has celebrated by naming March 25  Tolkien Reading Day. This year’s theme is Poetry and Songs in Tolkien’s Fiction. You can check out the Tolkien Society website to see what various individuals, groups, libraries, and museums around the world are planning for this day, or look for #TolkienReadingDay on Twitter, Instagram, or any number of other sites such as Facebook.

In honour of Tolkien Reading Day, I’d like to present two of my favourite poems from The Lord of the Rings to try to convince you that these are great poems to memorize: “Upon the hearth the fire is red” and “In western lands.”

Walking in Nova Scotia. copyright Anna Smol

Some of you may be wondering why you would want to memorize a poem when you can have it at your fingertips in a book or online. A number of reasons come to mind, but I think that the best one was summarized a few years ago in a New Yorker article, “Why We Should Memorize” by Brad Leithauser:

…you take the poem inside you, into your brain chemistry if not your blood, and you know it at a deeper, bodily level than if you simply read it off a screen.

A good example of a poem that you can know in both your brain and your body is the walking poem “Upon the hearth the fire is red” (in “Three is Company” in The Fellowship of the Ring ) — especially if you recite it while walking!

I find that the 4-beat lines make the perfect rhythm for a walk. Look at the first few lines, where I’ve put the stressed syllables in caps:

UpON the HEARTH the FIRE is RED

or

Still ROUND the CORner WE may MEET

a SUDden TREE or STANDing STONE

that NONE have SEEN but WE aLONE

If you lift and advance your foot on the unstressed syllable and place it down on the ground on the stressed syllable, you’ll feel the rhythm. Stand up and try it! The poem can adapt to your pace. Say it faster for a brisk walk; slow it down if you’re tired or would like to take in the scenery.

If we’re being technical, not all of the lines fit as neatly into this stress pattern. For example,

beNEATH the ROOF there is a BED

If you want to exaggerate the stress pattern and keep it consistent, you’d put more stress on “IS”  than it typically would hold. But if it feels right, go ahead. (Geoffrey Russom, in his article “Tolkien’s Versecraft,” identifies this replacement of a weak syllable where a strongly stressed one should be as fairly common practice in English poems. Read his article if you want to know about “pyrrhic substitution”).

Walking in Nova Scotia copyright Anna SmolNow, to walk and recite while looking about you, you’ll need to memorize the poem. I always find that writing out the poem by hand — not typing it — is the best way to start connecting the words to the body and the mind. Then it will require repetition. Saying the lines aloud helps. Let the rhymes remind you of what comes next. Repeat, repeat, repeat until you’ve made it your own. I admit that when I was memorizing this poem, I could be seen walking around town with a little card in my hand that contained the written poem, a memory aid for my repetitions until I could recite it confidently without props.

If you’re reading the poem aloud, you’ll notice that some lines are shorter than the opening lines in each stanza. For example, “Let them pass! Let then pass!” I find this just makes me pick up the pace a bit and fuels my energy.

It also helps to think about the structure of the poem when trying to remember what comes next. We start at home — “Upon the hearth the fire is red, / Beneath the roof there is a bed” (lines 1-2) but then we leave this comfortable place pretty quickly on a walking trip in the first stanza, heading out into the world. In the middle stanza, we realize that there are other paths that could be taken some day — “Still round the corner there may wait / A new road or a secret gate” (lines 11-12), and in the final stanza we return home to food and a good night’s sleep, “Fire and lamp, and meat and bread, / And then to bed! And then to bed!” (lines 29-30).

Elvenking's gate from across the river (detail) by Tolkien

Elvenking’s gate from across the river (detail) by Tolkien

Another reason to memorize a poem would be to have some beautiful words or images ready at hand to describe what you’re seeing or doing, or just because something reminds you of a line.  For me, “In western lands” (in “The Tower of Cirith Ungol” chapter in Return of the King) contains this beautiful image:

Or there maybe ’tis cloudless night
and swaying beeches bear
the Elven-stars as jewels white
amid their branching hair. (lines 5-8)

[the second and fourth lines above should be indented; my program is not co-operating]

I love the way the branches of the trees are seen as strands of hair — reinforced by the image of the trees as “swaying” — and the stars that you can see through the branches become the jewels in their hair. I remember sitting out in the backyard one summer evening and looking up to see exactly what Tolkien is describing in this passage, a beautiful sight that needed his words to complete the scene.

Of course, there’s more to this poem than just one striking image. This is a poem about hope; it goes from normal life to despair and then finds a reason for going on. Sam sings this song as he despairs of finding Frodo in the Tower of Cirith Ungol, and it leads to his discovery of his friend.

I like the movement of the poem. It starts by having us look down to the earth, “beneath the Sun” to see a world starting to grow and bloom. Then we look up through the trees to the stars. In the second stanza, we’re buried deep and far from all this loveliness — “Though here at journey’s end I lie / in darkness buried deep” (lines 9-10). But even so, we know that “above all shadows rides the Sun/ and Stars for ever dwell” (lines 13-14).  The poem ends with an affirmation that no matter how deeply buried in darkness we might be, we can find hope: “I will not say the Day is done, / nor bid the Stars farewell” (lines 15-16).

You can spend a lot of time contemplating a good poem, and there is much to say about this one that won’t fit into a blog post. If you’d like some good ideas to spur your thinking, you can try a couple of essays in the book, Tolkien’s Poetry, edited by Julian Eilmann and Allan Turner (Walking Tree Publishers, 2013).  In that book, Petra Zimmermann’s essay explores the development of “In western lands” through several drafts and discusses Sam’s creative process. And Lynn Forest-Hill’s essay looks at the connection of earthly and spiritual imagery in the poem.

If you have your own favourite poems for memorizing, let me know in the comments!

***

Works Cited

“Upon the hearth” can be found in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring and “In western lands” is in The Return of the King.

Tolkien’s artwork, “Elvenking’s gate from across the river,” can be found in The Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, HarperCollins, 2011, fig. 50, p. 79.

The other photos are copyright Anna Smol. They were taken in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Secondary sources:

Forest-Hill, Lynn. “Poetic Form and Spiritual Function: Praise, Invocation and Prayer in The Lord of the Rings.” Tolkien’s Poetry, edited by Julian Eilmann and Allan Turner. Walking Tree Publishers, 2013, pp. 91-116.

Leithauser, Brad. “Why We Should Memorize” The New Yorker  25 Jan. 2013. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/why-we-should-memorize

Russom, Geoffrey. “Tolkien’s Versecraft in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.” J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-earth, edited by George Clark and Daniel Timmons. Greenwood Press, 2000, pp. 53-69.

Zimmermann, Petra. “‘The glimmer of limitless extensions in time and space’: The Function of Poems in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.” Tolkien’s Poetry, edited by Julian Eilmann and Allan Turner. Walking Tree Publishers, 2013, pp. 59-89.

Tolkien events in Leeds

02 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by in Conferences, Medieval, Medievalisms, Tolkien

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If you’re in the vicinity of Leeds, you can attend a number of Tolkien papers over the next few days.  On Sunday July 3, the Tolkien Society Seminar will take place in the Hilton Leeds City.  This one-day series of presentations focuses on the theme of Life, Death, and Immortality.  You can read the full program here.

The Tolkien Society has cleverly scheduled the seminar a day before the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds, which runs from July 4 to 7, so anyone who is around can attend the IMC sessions on Tolkien.  You can explore the full IMC program here.  I’ve copied below the information on the sessions on Tolkien, organized by Dimitra Fimi.  Let me know if I’ve missed any others!

Session 331 J.R.R.Tolkien: Medieval Roots and Modern Branches

Oganiser: Dimitra Fimi;  Chair:  Chris Vaccaro
Monday 4 July 2016: 16.30-18.00

Abstract: This session will address the complexities of Tolkien’s modern Middle Ages. Andrew Higgins will explore Tolkien’s appropriation of Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon perceptions of the Finns in his legendarium. Aurélie Brémont will examine parallels between Tolkien’s and T.H. White’s medievalisms. Sara Brown will revisit Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings via the practice, philosophy, and symbolism of alchemy.

‘Those who cling in queer corners to the forgotten tongues and manners of an elder day’: J. R. R. Tolkien, Finns, and Elves
Andrew Higgins, Independent Scholar, London

J. R. R. Tolkien and T. H. White: Modern Brits and Old Wizards
Aurélie Brémont, Centre d’Études Médiévales Anglaises (CEMA), Université Paris IV – Sorbonne

Stirring the Alembic: Alchemical Resonances in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth
Sara Brown, Department of English, Rydal Penrhos School, Conwy

and one more session (updated on July 2, thanks to Kris Swank):

session 431
 ‘New’ Tolkien: The Story of Kullervo and A Secret Vice – A Round Table Discussion

Monday 4 July 2016: 19.00-20.00
Organiser and Chair Dimitra Fimi

Abstract This round table discussion will focus on works by J. R. R. Tolkien published during the last 12 months. Participants will comment on The Story of Kullervo, edited by Verlyn Flieger, a creative retelling of a tragic episode from the Finnish Kalevala; and A Secret Vice, edited by Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins, an extended edition of Tolkien’s essay on invented languages together with new material on philology, contemporary language theories, and language as art.

Participants include Brad Eden (Valparaiso University), Kristine Larsen (Central Connecticut State University), and Goering Nelson (University of Oxford

 

I wish I could be there, but at least I’m hoping that we’ll see some blog posts and tweets to give us an idea of what was discussed (I’m looking at you, Dimitra, Andrew, Sara, and Aurelie!).

Tolkien Reading Day 2016

25 Friday Mar 2016

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In the calendar of Middle-earth, March 25 marks the fall of Sauron; it’s also the date chosen by the Tolkien Society to celebrate an annual Tolkien Reading Day.  Not that I need a special day to ensure I’m reading Tolkien —  I think I must read something by Tolkien on many days in any given week. But still, I like to mark the occasion and to think about the special theme chosen each year by the Tolkien Society. This year’s theme is “Life, Death, and Immortality.”

Most of my published research deals with this theme by looking at how Tolkien writes about war experiences  — the friendships, the trauma, the impairment — but today I sought out something different: Appendix A in The Lord of the Rings, the tale of Aragorn and Arwen. It’s the passage in which Aragorn tells Arwen that the hard hour has arrived in which he will use “the grace” he’s been given as the last of the Númenoreans “to go at my will.”

‘I will speak no comfort to you, for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world. The uttermost choice is before you: to repent and go to the Havens and bear away into the West the memory of our days together that shall there be evergreen but never more than memory; or else to abide the Doom of Men.’

‘Nay, dear lord,” she said, ‘that choice is long over. There is now no ship that would bear me hence, and I must indeed abide the Doom of Men, whether I will or I nill: the loss and the silence. But I say to you, King of the Númenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive.’

‘So it seems,’ he said. ‘But let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory. Farewell!’

….And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.

But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star. Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lórien and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came….

There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth, and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and elanor and niphredil bloom no more east of the Sea.

The Lord of the Rings. Return of the King. Appendix A (v)

The end of this glorious love story is uncompromising. Although Aragorn asks Arwen not to despair, he knows there is “no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world.”  And although Arwen knows the stories and the beliefs about the “Gift of Men,”  — she made her choice knowing all this full well — when the moment comes she also realizes just how  “bitter” it is.  Although they hold to the hope of an unknown after-life, she finds the personal experience of death an unprecedented sorrow — “the loss and the silence” afflict her, in spite of the fact that Aragorn had led a long and successful life and could even choose the time of his going.

And the sorrow of the passage extends further, locating Arwen in a long span of time in which even she is “utterly forgotten” and the world changed. The littleness of our lives in the course of time and the way in which all trace of our existence is eventually obliterated is something Tolkien does not shy away from.

Their story is one that illustrates well what Tolkien believes can be found in fairy-stories: “both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords” (“On Fairy-Stories”).

This post is written with my stepfather-in-law Gordon in mind, who at the age of 99, on this very day is hoping finally to “go at his will” outside the “circles of the world.”

 

Tolkien conference season 2016

31 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Calls for Papers, Conferences, Medieval, Medievalisms, Tolkien

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Here are some Tolkien conferences coming up in the spring and summer — prime conference season! I can’t claim to list every event that’s going on, so if you’d like to add something to the list, please let me know in the comments section. If you want to know about Tolkien-related events around the world, not necessarily just conferences, I’d suggest the public Facebook group International Tolkien Fellowship List of Events. Also, Troels Forchammer’s monthly Tolkien Transactions usually catches more items than I’m aware of. But here are the conferences that I do know about:

Popular Culture Association (PCA)

Popular Culture Association logo

Seattle, Washington
March 22 -25, 2016

The preliminary program, organized by Robin Reid, can be viewed here. The speakers include Martin Barker presenting on the World Hobbit Project; an academic editors’ roundtable discussion with Leslie Donovan, Janet Croft, Brad Eden, Janice Bogstad, and Martin Barker; and numerous other papers on adaptation, translation, reception, and more. The nice thing about the online PCA program is that you can dig down into each session and read the abstracts of all the papers. There are eight sessions in the Tolkien Studies area, another successful year for this new subject area at the PCA national conference.

 

13th Annual Tolkien in Vermont conference

Tolkien in Vermont conference

Burlington, Vermont
April 8 – 9, 2016

This year’s theme is “Tolkien and Popular Culture,” with keynote speaker Robin Reid. A program will be available on the Tolkien in Vermont website. This small conference, organized by Chris Vaccaro, is always a friendly mix of faculty, students, and independent scholars.

 

Tolkien’s Philosophy of Language

13th Seminar of the Deutsche Tolkien Gesellschaft (DTF)
The Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Walking Tree Publishers
May 6 – 8, 2016

A link to more conference information can be found here.

 

Tolkien at Kalamazoo

Kalamazoo campus swan pond

International Congress on Medieval Studies
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo Michigan
May 12 – 15, 2016

I’ve already posted a schedule of sessions on Tolkien and medievalism as they appeared in the preliminary program. There are seven sessions dealing with Tolkien, mostly organized by Brad Eden and a few others. This year, one of the plenary speakers will be Jane Chance talking about “How we read J.R.R. Tolkien reading Grendel’s mother.” The ICMS is a huge conference, usually drawing around 3,000 participants in sessions on all aspects of the Middle Ages and medievalism.

 

Tolkien Among Scholars: 7th Unquendor Lustrum Conference 2016

Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society and the Dutch Tolkien Society Unquendor.
June 18, 2016

The keynote speakers for this international conference will be Thomas M. Honegger and Paul Smith. The program will be posted on the conference website.

 

Tolkien Society Seminar 2016

Tolkien Society

Leeds, UK
July 3, 2016

The theme of this year’s seminar is “Life, Death, and Immortality,” and if you’re interested in giving a paper, there’s still time: March 25 is the deadline for submissions. You can find the Call for Papers and more information here. The Seminar takes place the day before the International Medieval Congress begins at Leeds University, where you’ll find more Tolkien sessions (see below).

 

International Medieval Congress

medieval

Leeds University
July 4 – 7, 2016

Dimitra Fimi has organized two sessions on Tolkien for this conference. Like Kalamazoo, the Leeds conference draws thousands of medievalists every year. The program will be posted on the conference website.

 

New York Tolkien Conference

cropped-logo-art.jpg

Baruch College, New York City
July 16, 2016

This conference, organized by Jessica Burke and Anthony Burdge, is back again after last year’s successful inaugural event. The special theme for this year’s conference is “The Inklings and Science,” with guests of honour Kristine Larsen and Jared Lobdell. The call for papers has not yet been posted, but keep checking the conference site for information as it becomes available.

 

Mythcon 47

Mythopoeic Society

Mythopoeic Society
San Antonio, Texas
August 5 – 8, 2016

The special theme for this year’s conference is “Faces of Mythology: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern.” The Scholar Guest of Honour is Andrew Lazo and the Author Guest of Honour, Midori Snyder. You can find a call for papers here; the deadline is May 1st to send proposals to Jason Fisher, the papers co-ordinator for this conference.

 

That’s my list for now. Clearly, the field of Tolkien Studies is thriving. I wish I had unlimited funds to travel to every one of these meetings!

 

 

Life, Death, and Immortality in two authors

29 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Publications, Tolkien

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Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis

Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis

During the holiday break I can usually enjoy the leisurely reading of a novel or two other than the ones I need for my teaching and research. Fifteen Dogs, by André Alexis, is one of those books I’ve read for sheer pleasure, although I initially picked it up because I thought it might suit my Classical Traditions in English Literature course, where we read works from Greek and Latin antiquity alongside later adaptations. A review I had seen mentioned that the story begins with the gods Apollo and Hermes in a Toronto bar, an intriguing enough idea to make me take a further look. I wasn’t the only one – the book has received a lot of attention lately, as it was named the winner of Canada’s largest literary award, the Giller Prize, as well as the Writers’ Trust Prize.

I enjoyed the book immensely – it’s imaginative, thought-provoking, surprising, brutal, tender, moving. The action begins with Apollo and Hermes betting on whether bestowing human intelligence on animals would make the creatures even more unhappy than humans already are, or whether even one of the animals could live a happy life. On a whim, the gods decide to give some dogs human consciousness and a language.

It’s a little like Ovid’s Metamorphoses, except that Ovid usually represents humans who are metamorphosed into animals or plants while retaining their human minds. Alexis starts with the animals as animals; his dogs retain their essential “dogginess,” though their canine nature is modified by language and the consciousness that goes with it. It’s as if Alexis has reversed the Ovidian transformation by having the animals metamorphose into almost-humans. (Although I’m drawn to comparisons with Metamorphoses, probably because I’ve just finished teaching it, Alexis identifies another genre, subtitling the book An Apologue, a type of story derived from classical literature in which animals are used to point a moral or satirize humankind). Throughout the story, the dogs interact with their own kind, with various humans, and with the gods who, as in classical stories, watch, argue, and intervene, capriciously helping or harming earthly creatures.

As I was reading, I was struck by the following passage (on page 170) in which Hermes contemplates the difference between gods and mortals:

And yet, a divide existed between them, one that the god could not breach, despite his power, knowledge and subtlety: death. On one side, the immortals. On the other, these beings. He could no more understand what it was to live with death than they could what it was to exist without it. It was this difference that fascinated him and kept him coming back to earth. It was at the heart of the gods’ secret love for mortals. Death was in every fibre of these creatures. It was hidden in their languages and at the root of their civilizations. You could hear it in the sounds they made and see it in the way they moved. It darkened their pleasures and lightened their despair. Being one of those who longed for death, Hermes found the earth and all its mortals fascinating, perhaps even at times worthy of the depths he allowed himself to feel for them.

As any Tolkienist would recognize, this is a central idea in Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories as well; death is the “Gift of Ilúvatar” to human beings, who come to fear the gift, in contrast to the deathless elves who sometimes envy the human ability to escape the created world through death. The Silmarillion legends contain many instances in which this difference plays out in the stories. Tolkien identified this theme precisely in The Lord of the Rings: “The real theme for me is about something much more permanent and difficult: Death and Immortality: the mystery of the love of the world in the hearts of a race ‘doomed’ to leave and seemingly lose it; the anguish in the hearts of a race ‘doomed’ not to leave it until its whole evil-aroused story is complete” (Letter 186).

Tolkien also identified “death” as the “key-spring” to The Lord of the Rings in a 1968 BBC interview:

In fact, the Tolkien Society has chosen “Life, Death, and Immortality” as the theme for the 2016 Tolkien Reading Day on March 25.

Fifteen Dogs is a very different kind of book from, say, The Lord of the Rings; for one thing, Alexis does not create a complete Secondary World with its own inhabitants. But he does write a mythical story. Of course, authors in all genres can write about themes of life, death, and immortality, but the fact that both Alexis and Tolkien do so by contrasting death-full and death-less characters makes me think that mythopoeic fantasies are particularly well suited to an exploration of these themes.

There are a lot of other fascinating elements in Fifteen Dogs, such as meditations on love, power, language, the desire to communicate with other beings, the experience of time — ideas that Tolkien readers will find familiar. But read it for yourself and let me know what you think! To whet your appetite, here is André Alexis with a preview of his story:

André Alexis, Fifteen Dogs : An Apologue. Toronto: Coach House Books, 2015. The book is available from Amazon as a paperback and ebook in Canada, the US, and the UK.

Tolkien’s nod to the medieval homage ritual in LotR

27 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in Conferences, Medieval, Medievalisms, Publications, Research, Tolkien

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As I indicated in a previous entry, I wanted to post some of the images that I used when delivering my Tolkien 2005 conference paper. That paper (without the images) is included in the proceedings now on sale by the Tolkien Society.

Back in 2005, my presentation, “Male Friendship in The Lord of the Rings: Medievalism, The First World War, and Contemporary Rewritings,” discussed the Frodo and Sam relationship in both medieval and modern contexts. I wanted to show that a tradition of male friendship, especially in war, stretches far back in time.

For example, just as Roland has his Oliver in the Song of Roland (here pictured in a 14th-century manuscript):

Roland and Oliver

and Beowulf has his Wiglaf (by J.H.F. Bacon, c. 1910):

Death of Beowulf

so too, Frodo has his Sam:

Sam Frodo Mount Doom LotR Framecap Lib

While I wanted to show how a tradition of male friendship can be traced back to the early medieval period (and I could have gone beyond that, of course, but I only had 20 minutes for my talk!), I also tried to place the Frodo-Sam relationship in a modern and contemporary context. I looked at the nature of World War One friendships, then at how Peter Jackson had portrayed Frodo and Sam in his films, and finally at how subsequent fanfic writers have generally represented the two.

But as I was thinking about the medievalized elements in Frodo and Sam’s friendship, I was struck by one moment in Return of the King when the two of them are near the end of their climb up Mount Doom. Consider this passage:

 ‘Help me, Sam! Help me, Sam! Hold my hand! I can’t stop it.’ Sam took his master’s hands and laid them together, palm to palm, and kissed them; and then he held them gently between his own.

At this point, Frodo and Sam are very close to the end of their climb. As the Eye moves to gaze at the Captains of the West, Frodo falls to the ground as if he’s “stricken mortally.” Sam is kneeling beside him. Of course, it’s completely natural for Frodo to ask Sam to hold his hand to keep it from reaching for the Ring around his neck. And it’s quite in keeping with Sam’s previous attempts to comfort his Master by holding his hands, as he does several times before this in various situations.

But the specific actions that are described here are also reminiscent of the medieval ceremony in which a vassal pays homage to a lord. Typically, the vassal places himself in a lower position than his lord by kneeling before him. He offers his hands in a prayer gesture, palm to palm, to his lord, who places his own hands over them as a sign that he will offer protection to his vassal.

medieval homage ceremony

From a 12th-century manuscript. Act of homage

On Mount Doom, Frodo is in the lower position on the ground and Sam is kneeling above him. Frodo offers his hands as a vassal would do, and Sam takes them between his own, as if he were the superior in the relationship. I find this reversal very telling. Sam has always directed his loyalty to his “Master,” acting as his servant. Now, Frodo is acknowledging Sam’s leadership role by putting himself into Sam’s hands, both literally and symbolically. He is becoming Sam’s man, as if he were a vassal pledging himself to a lord.

This reversal only acknowledges what has already happened in the story by this point. Sam has increasingly taken the lead in their journey and made decisions for both of them in his effort to protect Frodo.

The ceremony of homage between vassal and lord existed in many European countries and over centuries in the medieval period, so it should not be surprising that variations occurred. In my 2005 article, I interpreted the scene in the light of one of these versions, in which a vassal kisses his lord’s hands in the ceremony. Because it’s Sam who kisses the clasped pair of hands, I had read that as a sign of  “a reciprocal exchange in which Frodo acknowledges the need for Sam’s leadership and protection, and Sam acknowledges his willingness to be both vassal and lord” (324). Since writing this, though, I’ve read that in some instances the lord did kiss the vassal’s hands and in others, the kiss did not occur until an oath of fealty was sworn after the homage ritual. In any case, some historians do point out that the ceremony of vassalage created a reciprocal relationship between the two parties, with equal demands on both sides.

Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth 1969

Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth 1969.

However we interpret the details, I can’t help but see the basic homage ritual (hands clasped together and enfolded in another person’s hands) as reflected in this moment between Frodo and Sam. In that light, the scene looks forward to the time when Sam will become the Master of Bag End; in fact, to me it makes that conclusion seem inevitable.

Bibliography

The original article in the 2005 proceedings did not have a bibliography attached. For the sake of completion, you can look at the Works Cited list here [pdf].

Images:

Roland and Oliver. Illustration from the Song of Roland. 14th century. Wikimedia Commons Image; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARoland_Kleine.jpg

Frodo and Sam. Peter Jackson, Return of the King. Image from The Lord of the Rings Image Library.

From a 12th-century manuscript, Liber Feudorum Major. Wikimedia Commons Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ermengol_II,_Count_of_Urgell#/media/File:LiberErmengol_Arnau.jpg

Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth 1969 investiture ceremony. https://www.royal.gov.uk/ImagesandBroadcasts/Galleries/Royalresidences/TheQueeninWales.aspx

 

A Look Back at The New York Tolkien Conference

15 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Conferences, Medievalisms, Research, Tolkien

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New York Tolkien Conference banner. Image by Luke Spooner

banner image by Luke Spooner

When I heard that a Tolkien conference was going to be held in New York City last month, of course I paid attention, as I find any reason to visit New York a welcome one. When I investigated further and saw the list of presenters — Janet Brennan Croft, Kristine Larsen, Nicholas Birns, Laura Lee Smith, Chris Vaccaro, Dawn Walls-Thumma, and others who kept getting added to the roster —  I was convinced I had to go. The conference gave me a great opportunity to talk about my research on Tolkien’s art, and I was also pleased to be invited to participate in the Women in Middle-earth roundtable (more on my sessions below). Plus, as with most conferences, it was a chance to catch up with friends and meet new people.

Organized by Anthony Burdge and Jessica Burke, the conference featured Janet Brennan Croft as the Scholar Guest of Honour. Janet’s keynote, “Barrel-Rides and She-Elves: Audience and ‘Anticipation’ in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit Trilogy,” started off the day’s proceedings. Janet pointed out the challenges that Jackson faced in making The Hobbit, which is supposed to be a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, but was made after what is supposed to be its sequel. Following me? If not, you can always look up a version of Janet’s talk, complete with diagrams illustrating the internal and composition chronologies of versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, here.

Janet Brennan Croft

Janet Brennan Croft, Scholar Guest of Honour. photo K. Larsen

Janet used Tolkien’s criticisms of Zimmerman’s screenplay as a way of discussing some of Jackson’s issues in trying to make The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings a seamless sequence, including problems of tone, audience, plot structure, and characterization.

After the plenary, it was time to disperse to various sessions. The conference call for papers had elicited so many presentations for this one-day event that the speakers had to be divided into four or five concurrent sessions for every timeslot. I found myself wishing that I could be in two or three places at any one time throughout the day. Luckily, two of the sessions were taped and posted online, so if you were in another room or just stayed at home, you can still listen to Dawn Walls-Thumma talking about “The Loremasters of Feanor: Historical Bias in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien and Transformative Works.” This link will take you to a page that also includes the text of her talk and the slides that she showed. The other taped session was “History and Technique: Sourcing the Arms, Armor, and Fighting Techniques of Middle-earth” featuring Rebecca Glass and Kat Fanning (if you follow the link, you’ll have to scroll down the page to their video).

Kristine Larsen in the Women in Middle-earth panel. photo C. Vaccaro

Kristine Larsen in the Women in Middle-earth panel. photo C. Vaccaro

Chris Vaccaro NY Tolkien Conference 2015

Chris Vaccaro talking about Beowulf. photo K. Larsen

I attended two regular sessions other than my own. First up was Kristine Larsen‘s paper, “‘While the World Lasted’: End Times in Tolkien’s Works.” Kristine talked about Tolkien’s references to the end of the world, mainly in The History of Middle-earth, The Fall of Arthur, and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, and commented on the prevalence of this theme in his work in the 1930s. Chris Vaccaro‘s presentation on “Affection Between Men in Tolkien’s Beowulf” took a look at the way in which a phrase from Beowulf, “dyrne longath,” has been rendered by many different translators, with interpretations varying widely: do the words refer to deep feelings? secret longings? affection? Chris looked at departure scenes in Beowulf and in Tolkien’s work in the light of this phrase.

Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien

Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien

It was certainly a day packed with ideas and events. I was part of the Women in Middle-earth roundtable discussion along with Janet Brennan Croft, Jessica Burke, Rebecca Glass, and Kristine Larsen. We had a free-ranging discussion about various characters, our first-time reactions as readers and/or movie-goers, and critics’ views of women in Tolkien’s works. One of my points (based on a lecture I had heard recently) echoed the concerns that Janet and her co-editor, Leslie Donovan, express in their recently published anthology, Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien  — that any literary critic who wants to talk about women in Tolkien’s life and work should be informed about previous and current research on the topic. That doesn’t mean that they have to agree with other critics’ opinions, but they shouldn’t just repeat cliches or make statements as if they are the first to look into the question without investigating further. I recommend this book for its combination of older essays and new research for anyone interested in the topic of women.

I was scheduled to give my paper in the last regular session, and thankfully even near the end of a very full day some people showed up and offered interesting comments and questions. My presentation, “‘If you’re a vivid visualizer’: Words and Images in Tolkien’s Sub-creative Process,” extends some of the research that my colleague Jeff MacLeod and I have been doing on Tolkien’s artwork and his visual imagination and style. (We have one essay published, “A Single Leaf: Tolkien’s Visual Art and Fantasy,” and another one on Tolkien’s painterly style that has just been submitted to a journal). My basic question for this presentation was: what can a manuscript sketch such as the Tower of Kirith Ungol (still spelled with a “K” at this point) tell us about Tolkien’s process of composition? How do words and images interact in Tolkien’s drafting of the story?

Tower of Kirith Ungol sketch

Tower of Kirith Ungol sketch

You can find this image in Hammond and Scull’s book, J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, and in The History of Middle-earth, the Sauron Defeated volume. I’ve also been fortunate enough to look at a digital scan of the manuscript at the Marquette University Tolkien archive. In my presentation, I talked about the placement of the sketch on the page, the sequence of pencil and pen drafting, and the effect on the wording of Tolkien’s draft of the story at this point.

Here I am talking about Tolkien's painterly style

Here I am talking about Tolkien’s painterly style (though it looks like I’m demonstrating the height of Durin’s folk)

To set up the ideas for this manuscript examination, I showed examples of Tolkien’s artwork and talked about how he is a “vivid visualizer.” This opening quotation in my presentation title comes from “The Notion Club Papers,” an unfinished story that you can find in Sauron Defeated. In this time-travel story, Tolkien describes characters with different talents: some are vivid visualizers, others have a predilection for words and languages. Sometimes in the story those two abilities working together enhance the characters’ understanding. I talked about how a sketch like the Tower of Kirith Ungol shows this close interplay of words and images in Tolkien’s creative process.

To round off our busy day, we had one closing plenary session. A copy of the 2005 Ring Goes Ever On conference proceedings * was given to Baruch College librarian Chris Tuthill as a gift from the Tolkien Society’s Tolkien to the World program. Then we sat back and listened to the Minstrel Guest of Honour, John diBartolo and The Lonely Mountain Band, who provided some lively music to close out the fellowship of the day. You can sample their music from the links on the conference blog. By the end of it all, Anthony and Jessica’s question about whether they should make this a regular event was met with an enthusiastic yes.

at the New York Tolkien Conference, Baruch College

New York Tolkien Conference, Baruch College

You can read abstracts of all the presentations here. For accounts of different paths through the program from mine, you can read Myla Malinalda’s description of the sessions that she attended on Middle-earth News or Dawn Walls-Thumma’s report for the Signum Eagle newsletter, “The New York Tolkien Conference: Friends and Fellowship.“ And if you’re interested in knowing about future meetings, you should subscribe to the conference blog, follow @herenistarion on Twitter, or join the Facebook group.

Although the conference was only a one-day event, I did extend my stay in New York by a few days. Accompanied by my daughter, we took full advantage of the city: we visited museums (the Frick, the Guggenheim, a few galleries in the Met); we went boating in Central Park and walked on the High Line; we saw a play, Skylight; a musical, An American in Paris; a performance by the Alvin Ailey dance company; and we took advantage of free Shakespeare in the Park tickets to see The Tempest. Add to that a day of Tolkien fellowship — well, that’s not bad for a four-day trip.

*Among the many essays in the 2005 Ring Goes Ever On volumes donated to Baruch College you can find an essay by Kristine Larsen, “‘A Little Earth of His Own’: Tolkien’s Lunar Creation Myths” and one by me: “Male Friendship in The Lord of the Rings: Medievalism, the First World War, and Contemporary Rewritings,” which you can read here.

Please feel free to comment on your own experiences at the conference or to provide links to any other accounts of the event that you know of. Or just tell us your thoughts!

International Tolkien Reading Day: Theme of Friendship

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Medievalisms, Publications, Research, Tolkien

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Today, March 25 (the date of Sauron’s downfall) is Tolkien Reading Day, which originated with the Tolkien Society and finds readers around the world. The Tolkien Society has chosen “friendship” as the theme for 2015.

I hope you will read some Tolkien today. The theme of friendship can be explored in many ways in Tolkien, but if you’re interested in reading more about Tolkien’s handling of male friendships, you can take a look at a couple of articles I’ve written about the subject. The first is titled “ ‘Oh…Oh…Frodo!’: Readings of Male Intimacy in The Lord of the Rings” which was published in the scholarly journal Modern Fiction Studies in 2004. If you have a library subscription to Project Muse you can get it that way, but it’s also available on my Research webpage, or as a pdf download from the link above.

Another essay on the theme is the paper I delivered at the Tolkien 2005 conference in Birmingham, which was published in the Proceedings, The Ring Goes Ever On. A slightly expanded and revised version of that paper is available from my university’s digital repository (the Mount e-Commons) here: “Male Friendship in The Lord of the Rings: Medievalism, The First World War, and Contemporary Rewritings”.

Both of these articles place Tolkien’s representation of friendship in the context of World War I writers and include a look at contemporary fan fiction as an extension of some aspects of that.

A more recent piece has been published in a book edited by Christopher Vaccaro titled The Body in Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on Middle-earth Corporeality (McFarland, 2013). My essay, “Frodo’s Body: Liminality and the Experience of War” focuses on the psychological and physical state of Frodo, once again in the context of war writing, but it also includes a look at the role of his friend Sam. The link above will take you to the pre-publication version of the essay.

Happy Reading Day!

Talks on Tolkien: Dimitra Fimi on Folklore and “Sellic Spell”

02 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by in Medieval, Medievalisms, Old English, Publications, Talks on Tolkien, Tolkien

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My weekly “Talks on Tolkien” series continues with a video presentation by Dimitra Fimi. Dr. Fimi was part of the Beowulf Launch Party organized by the Tolkien Society and Middle-earth Network last spring, when Tolkien’s Beowulf and other related texts were first published. Dr. Fimi’s talk is a little different from my previous video selections in that she is not reading a paper to a live audience at a conference. The Launch Party was an online event featuring several commentators throughout the day who were giving their first impressions of the Beowulf publication. If you’re interested, the other recordings from that day are also worth a look.

One reason I chose this talk was to highlight the fact that the publication of Tolkien’s Beowulf includes more than just his translation of and commentary on the poem — intriguing as that is to Old English and Tolkien scholars. Dr. Fimi’s presentation focuses on one of the texts included with Tolkien’s Beowulf translation: a folktale called “Sellic Spell” (which can be translated as “wondrous tale”) that Tolkien wrote in both modern English and in Old English. The other text that’s included in the volume is a poem, or two versions of a poem, titled “The Lay of Beowulf” which is written in rhyming stanzaic form, very different from the original Old English alliterative meter.

The publication of these texts has given us not only Tolkien’s translation of the Old English poem Beowulf (an interesting research topic in its own right), but also adaptations of the Beowulf story in different genres — ripe material for analysis! Further, I believe that Tolkien’s rendition of  “Sellic Spell” in Old English warrants study of his ability to think and write in Old English. In the following video, Fimi outlines another approach to the story through the lens of folklore research.

Dimitra Fimi is the author of Tolkien, Race, and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits, published in 2008, which won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies and was shortlisted for the Folklore Society’s Katharine Briggs Award. She is a Lecturer in English at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Recently, she filmed two short videos for a BBC iWonder guide on Why do the Elves in The Hobbit sound Welsh? You can find out more about her videos and interviews on her website’s Media page, or follow her blog or her Twitter account: @Dr_Dimitra_Fimi.

To read “Sellic Spell” or “The Lay of Beowulf” you’ll have to buy Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary. But if you’re interested in the original poem itself, you can listen to a few lines of it on Michael Drout’s Anglo-Saxon Aloud website. The poem exists in a single manuscript called Cotton Vitellius A. XV, held in the British Library. You can find information about the manuscript in the British Library’s Online Gallery, and you can also leaf through the digitised manuscript (go to f.132r to see the beginning of Beowulf).

Adaptations of Beowulf have proliferated since the late nineteenth century in books for children and adults, and more recently as films. Some of you may know the 2005 Beowulf and Grendel movie, or more likely, the 2007 Robert Zemeckis version featuring Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s Mother. I especially enjoy the 1998 animated version made for TV featuring Derek Jacobi and Joseph Fiennes, which you can view below. It’s just one among many examples of Beowulf adaptations — and now we have more of Tolkien’s work that can be examined as part of this rich store of material.

If you have any favorite Beowulf adaptations, or if you want to say something about “Sellic Spell,” let us know in the comments!