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Alienmaster
Registered User

Jun 19 2021, 8:02am
Post #1 of 127
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An Excellent Article Against The Tolkien Society's Destructive Attempts
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Good day, fellow Tolkien fans. As you all are probably aware the Tolkien Society will be having their annual academic conference on the 3rd and 4th of July this year. The talks, indeed the very theme of this conference, is antithetical to everything that Tolkien and his works stood for and is an attempt to bring Critical Race Theory and Woke ideology into the fandom with the aim to destroy the messages and meanings of Tolkien's works, thereby destroying them. The Federalist wrote an excellent article regarding the conference, which you can go read here: (link deleted as it goes to a political site) I thought it my duty to report on this article as we want to stand and protect Tolkien's work from those looking to subvert and use it for their own political agendas, and that it's good to know that there are people outside of our fandom that also are standing by us to prevent what the Tolkien Society is trying to do by reporting on their insidious acts.
Alienmaster
(This post was edited by Altaira on Jun 26 2021, 10:41pm)
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Undermäki
The Shire

Jun 19 2021, 12:55pm
Post #2 of 127
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I don't usually pay close enough attention to know what the Tolkien Society is up to with their annual conference. But I'll definitely be tuning in this year. Looking at the talks it sounds like there could be some interesting and important content, and things I'm glad will be discussed.Thanks!
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squire
Half-elven

Jun 19 2021, 1:48pm
Post #3 of 127
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Trouble! Right here in River City! Mr. Davidson, the Federalist writer, is hijacking Tolkien to his cultural and political agenda just as much as he claims the Tolkien Society conference contributors are. Tolkien's personal cultural and religious conservatism is certainly one starting point for understanding how and why he wrote his legendarium, but that does not mean one cannot read and enjoy his books unless one is also a political and cultural conservative of the 2020s. The Tolkien Society, as I understand it, sponsored this 2021 "Diversity" themed scholarly seminar on Tolkien in response to complaints at recent conferences from fans and scholars from minority or diverse backgrounds (take the terms as you will). These people, with examples and anecdotes provided, felt they were being cut out from talking about, writing about, and even enjoying Tolkien from their own personal perspectives when they attended or contributed to fan gatherings and scholarly discussions. That those 2020s global perspectives were not always those of Tolkien, his circle of friends and colleagues, and even perhaps the audience for whom Tolkien assumed he was writing in the 1920s-50s, should go without saying. This does not, however, mean that these people "hate" Tolkien and "would like very much to destroy it". It's actually the opposite. It means that Tolkien has reached beyond and appealed to people in the future, when society and culture have changed from the century before. Regarding the list of papers and their sometimes exotic or jargon-laden titles, I read and review a lot of Tolkien scholarship for the journal Tolkien Studies. A lot of it is bad, some of it is good, very little of it is great. That's the nature of academia in general I guess, but it's certainly the nature of a specialty subject like Tolkien Studies, where the academics work on the edge of a massive commercially-driven fandom based on a popular romantic fantasy world. Like Davidson in The Federalist, I doubt much of major scholarly importance can be built on the brief appearance of the Lossoth people in the appendices of LotR. But even on reading the title I assumed the writer will explore how Tolkien presents indigenous near-Arctic peoples of Middle-earth who encounter the equivalent of advanced European-style Men who are in desperate trouble in a hostile and unfamiliar environment. There's not a lot to go on; but there's not nothing. And anyone who thinks Tolkien somehow had no thought for the actual encounters between European Arctic explorers and the Inuit and other northern indigenous peoples when he invented this scene, which leads in the story to the loss of the last palantir of Arnor and the fatally wrong "choice" of a northern King and thus another thousand year delay of the Return of the King, comes across as a bit of a fool. In a larger sense, all of these papers are like that: Tolkien invented an entire world, as a commentary on our existing one. Exploring the differences as well as the similarities between the two is what some Tolkien scholars have been doing since the 1960s. More recently, as the Tolkien phenomenon has gained more public attention, academics from other areas of scholarship have been drawn to see what can be found by doing cross-disciplinary or inter-disciplinary work, using their existing theories or lenses to read Tolkien in new ways. This sometimes leads to unfortunate or even comic episodes where the writers do not have a lucid grip on Tolkien's origins or native interests and style, or a familiarity with the deep explorations of his themes that Tolkien scholars have already laid down while working from the more traditional fields of philology, mythology, poetry, medieval literature, etc. Sometimes they even confuse the books with the popular films! If you can imagine that. Anyway, Mr. Davidson needs to get a grip. Either the papers will be well researched, written, and argued - or they won't. If the latter, they'll soon be forgotten; if the former, they will possibly inform new and rewarding and valid ways of reading and enjoying the Prof's work. Their simple existence is no threat at all to Tolkien or Tolkien Studies, but is rather an enlarged celebration of both. Congratulations to the Tolkien Society for responding to complaints and incidents with a wide-open invitation to its membership to listen to and consider the arguments of a new generation of scholars.
squire online: RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'. Archive: All the TORn Reading Room Book Discussions (including the 1st BotR Discussion!) and Footerama: "Tolkien would have LOVED it!" Dr. Squire introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal

Jun 19 2021, 2:34pm
Post #4 of 127
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I don't know if there's any way to confirm this, but I've suspected for some time that Tolkien might have based the Lossoth more on the Sammi people than on the Inuit. Did the Inuit ever have a presence in north-western Europe? Perhaps the academic paper at the seminar will explore this question.
#FidelityToTolkien #DiversityWithFidelity
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squire
Half-elven

Jun 19 2021, 3:02pm
Post #5 of 127
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That's why I wrote "Inuit and others". In the case of the Inuit I was thinking of the 19th century Arctic explorers like the Franklin expedition. But further back in time the Europeans who went too far North would likely have been trying to round the Scandinavian headlands and outlying islands and so have had interactions with the Sammi and the like. A paper on how Tolkien combined his deep knowledge of medieval sources of extra-European encounters with indigenous peoples with the more general popular knowledge of more recent imperial and quasi-imperial encounters would be well worth writing. We see such overlaps in his writings about the Haradrim, and the Druedain, and possibly even in the Dunlendings (paging Helm Hammerhand..) For instance, he wrote an academic paper ("Sigelwara Land", pts. 1 and 2, early 1930s) on how medieval Englishmen perceived who the black Ethiopians were, in the context of a an Anglo-saxon translation of the Bible. But he also describes in LotR the 'troll-like' natives from Far Harad (arguably like Ethiopia) in terms reminiscent of the worst kind of minstrel-show imagery from the 19th and 20th centuries. I don't know what the author of the Lossoth-based paper will present, of course, but to pooh-pooh the subject as useless and hateful of Tolkien, purely based on the paper's title, is more than ridiculous. It comes off as rather ignorant of the nature of Tolkien Studies.
squire online: RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'. Archive: All the TORn Reading Room Book Discussions (including the 1st BotR Discussion!) and Footerama: "Tolkien would have LOVED it!" Dr. Squire introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven

Jun 19 2021, 5:11pm
Post #6 of 127
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Are you familiar with the Streisand effect? //
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Treachery, treachery I fear; treachery of that miserable creature. But so it must be. Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Discuss Tolkien's life and works in the Reading Room! +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= How to find old Reading Room discussions.
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven

Jun 19 2021, 6:15pm
Post #7 of 127
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Not having heard about this conference prior to reading your post, I am genuinely grateful that you brought it to our attention. I visited the Tolkien Society page and found the list of presentations: Cordeliah Logsdon – "Gondor in Transition: A Brief Introduction to Transgender Realities in The Lord of the Rings" Clare Moore – "The Problem of Pain: Portraying Physical Disability in the Fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien" V. Elizabeth King – "'The Burnt Hand Teaches Most About Fire': Applying Traumatic Stress and Ecological Frameworks to Narratives of Displacement and Resettlement Across Cultures in Tolkien’s Middle-earth" Christopher Vaccaro – "Pardoning Saruman?: The Queer in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings" Sultana Raza – "Projecting Indian Myths, Culture and History onto Tolkien’s Worlds" Nicholas Birns – "The Lossoth: Indigeneity, Identity, and Antiracism" Kristine Larsen – "The Problematic Perimeters of Elrond Half-elven and Ronald English-Catholic" Cami Agan – "Hearkening to the Other: Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth" Sara Brown – "The Invisible Other: Tolkien’s Dwarf-Women and the 'Feminine Lack'" Sonali Chunodkar – "Desire of the Ring: An Indian Academic’s Adventures in her Quest for the Perilous Realm" Robin Reid – "Queer Atheists, Agnostics, and Animists, Oh, My!" Joel Merriner – "Hidden Visions: Iconographies of Alterity in Soviet Bloc Illustrations for The Lord of the Rings" Eric Reinders – "Questions of Caste in The Lord of the Rings and its Multiple Chinese Translations" Dawn Walls-Thumma – "Stars Less Strange: An Analysis of Fanfiction and Representation within the Tolkien Fan Community" Danna Petersen-Deeprose – "'Something Mighty Queer': Destabilizing Cishetero Amatonormativity in the Works of Tolkien" Martha Celis-Mendoza – "Translation as a Means of Representation and Diversity in Tolkien’s Scholarship and Fandom" I am particularly curious about Clare Moore's paper. Thirty years ago or more, long before immersing myself in Tolkien studies, I occasionaly sketched out some thoughts about what a proper film of The Lord of the Rings ought to include, and I remember being struck by the many injuries the characters suffer, and wondering whether showing them all would make the movie too graphic. More recently, about ten years ago, I once made a very rough outline for a proposed paper to be submitted for consideration for the International Congress on Medieval Studies held each year at Western Michigan University at Kalamazoo, which includes a track on Tolkien. I contemplated a paper applying Disability Studies, which then was often called "Crip Theory," to The Children of Húrin, but I realized I just knew too little about the field and wouldn't have time to learn. Instead I submitted an abstract for a paper on The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, but the Tolkien sessions' organizer, Robin Reid, by then had filled all the slots. It's probably just as well. Much of what I woud have said in that paper, which I titled "Bilboish, Samlike, and Dubious," would have been quickly outdated by the publication of Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond's expanded edition of Bombadil a few years later. Now I'm thinking about wrting a paper called "Titus the Tailor Told Ten Tall Tales to Titania the Titmouse." I see that the conference is timed to start at 10 a.m. in the eastern U.S., which I really appreciate as an American, and that it runs less than five hours each day. I may be able to squeeze that into my schedule.
Treachery, treachery I fear; treachery of that miserable creature. But so it must be. Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Discuss Tolkien's life and works in the Reading Room! +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= How to find old Reading Room discussions.
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven

Jun 19 2021, 6:35pm
Post #8 of 127
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The author of "Pardoning Saruman?: The Queer in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings" used to post occasionally to the Reading Room.
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In that Federalist article, John Daniel Davidson writes:
The best thing we can say about a Tolkien conference that presents papers on, say, "Pardoning Saruman?: The Queer in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings," or "The Invisible Other: Tolkien's Dwarf-Women and the 'Feminine Lack,'" is that the scholars in question do not know the first thing about Tolkien or the meaning of his work. The first paper's author, Christopher Vaccaro, is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Vermont, where he teaches English literature and language, including courses on Beowulf and on Tolkien's work. Prior to the pandemic, he'd hosted a one-day Tolkien conference every April going back more than 15 years that has featured some of the top scholars in the field. And from 2005 to 2017, as a class exercise, he periodically would direct his students to post questions to this forum, and sometimes offered a few thoughts of his own, posting here as Istar Indigo. Is it the fault of Davidson or his editors at the mysteriously-funded Federalist that his article, like the work of a lot of lazy writers on Tolkien, can't be bothered to spell "Middle-earth" as Tolkien did, instead writing "Middle Earth"?
Treachery, treachery I fear; treachery of that miserable creature. But so it must be. Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Discuss Tolkien's life and works in the Reading Room! +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= How to find old Reading Room discussions.
(This post was edited by dernwyn on Jun 19 2021, 8:20pm)
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven

Jun 19 2021, 9:20pm
Post #9 of 127
(4100 views)
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Just read a new article that referenced the Saami.
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An article in Science reports on a DNA study of hundreds of different Viking remains from sites as far apart as Greenland, Italty, and Ukraine, with some interesting results:
The results tell dramatic stories of individual mobility, such as a pair of cousins buried in Oxford, U.K., and Denmark, separated in death by hundreds of kilometers of open ocean. The genetic details may also rewrite popular perceptions of Vikings, including their looks: Viking Age Scandinavians were more likely to have black hair than people living there today. And comparing DNA and archaeology at individual sites suggests that for some in the Viking bands, "Viking" was a job description, not a matter of heredity. Viking-style graves excavated on the United Kingdom’s Orkney islands contained individuals with no Scandinavian DNA, whereas some people buried in Scandinavia had Irish and Scottish parents. And several individuals in Norway were buried as Vikings, but their genes identified them as Saami, an Indigenous group genetically closer to East Asians and Siberians than to Europeans. "These identities aren’t genetic or ethnic, they’re social," Jarman says. "To have backup for that from DNA is powerful." The sentence I have put in boldface is the article's title.
Treachery, treachery I fear; treachery of that miserable creature. But so it must be. Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Discuss Tolkien's life and works in the Reading Room! +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= How to find old Reading Room discussions.
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Lissuin
Valinor

Jun 19 2021, 9:57pm
Post #10 of 127
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It seems that a regular poster on TORN will be presenting an aspect of his work on Chinese interpretations of Tolkien's work through the various translations available. We've had the benefit of his scholarship on this forum for several years. Eric Reinders – "Questions of Caste in The Lord of the Rings and its Multiple Chinese Translations" Yes, it does mean a ghastly wee-hours-of-the-morning start for me here in New Zealand, but what else would a retired old lady who enjoys a full weekend of Tolkien topics do anyway? See you all there!
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven

Jun 19 2021, 11:54pm
Post #11 of 127
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Here's one of his TORN posts on that subject.
Treachery, treachery I fear; treachery of that miserable creature. But so it must be. Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Discuss Tolkien's life and works in the Reading Room! +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= How to find old Reading Room discussions.
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Voronwë_the_Faithful
Valinor
Jun 20 2021, 4:08am
Post #12 of 127
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There are some impressive people on that list! //
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'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.' The Hall of Fire
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noWizardme
Half-elven

Jun 20 2021, 10:14am
Post #13 of 127
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There's really no need for such alarm
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Welcome to the Reading Room, Alienmaster. I think you are worried unnecessarily (if you're really worried about what you say is worrying you). I can't see any way in which Tolkien, his meanings or messages could be 'destroyed' by people discussing and critiquing them. In fact, I guarantee it will emerge unscathed. All that can happen is that people express opinions you don't happen to understand, or agree with, or feel comfortable with. If Tolkien could really be 'destroyed' by discussion there would long ago be nothing left. For many years, Tolkien has been analyzed critiqued, discussed, praised and rubbished by (alphabetically)
- Athiests
- Anglo-saxonists
- Buddhists
- Christians - many groups and sects, sometimes coming to conclusions that a Catholic theologian would find highly questionable or downright wrong
- Feminists (of several different 'waves' by now)
- Freudians
- Jungians
- LGBTQ+ folks and their allies (along with homophobes, transphobes, and so on)
- Literary critics (of every possible point of view, level of education)
- Marxists
- Medievalists
- Neo Nazis (and anti-nazis) - and The Hobbit was no doubt read and enjoyed by actual, original Nazis
- White supremacists
This is of course only a partial list off the top of my head, but many of those approaches have either happened or been discussed on this very Reading Room site. The result is that everyone occasionally finds something they cannot understand, or agree with, or thinks is downright ridiculous. The policy here is that all points of view are welcome provided posters stick within the terms of service. And of course sometimes people from any point of view seem to have a deep knowledge of Tolkien, and sometimes it seems that he's just the latest tool they've picked up to beat at the bee in their bonnet. But can you point to a single piece of damage to Tolkien and his works by all that activity? Please do if you can, because I can't. Or if you prefer - how will the Tolkien Society's conference (whatever is discussed) force you into changing whatever you interpretation of Tolkien is? I recommend just ignoring the stuff you don't think you can benefit from. Precisely nothing will happen to Tolkien, or your interpretation of his messages. And you will save yourself a lot of bother and anxiety.
~~~~~~ "You were exceedingly clever once, but unfortunately none of your friends noticed as they were too busy being attacked by an octopus." -from How To Tell If You Are In A J.R.R. Tolkien Book, by Austin Gilkeson, in 'The Toast', 2016 https://the-toast.net/...-a-jrr-tolkien-book/
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noWizardme
Half-elven

Jun 20 2021, 10:23am
Post #14 of 127
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Where as Mr Davidson from The Federalist is...?
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Aside from fancying himself as the Tolkien fandom's Senator McCartney, apparently... OK, of course I googled him and find he's a political journalist with a lot of articles to his name from the conservative point of view. All well and dandy of course, and maybe he knows much more about Tolkien than I do. But him suggesting that this particular cast of speakers 'don't know the first thing about Tolkien' is absurd.
~~~~~~ "You were exceedingly clever once, but unfortunately none of your friends noticed as they were too busy being attacked by an octopus." -from How To Tell If You Are In A J.R.R. Tolkien Book, by Austin Gilkeson, in 'The Toast', 2016 https://the-toast.net/...-a-jrr-tolkien-book/
(This post was edited by noWizardme on Jun 20 2021, 10:33am)
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Voronwë_the_Faithful
Valinor
Jun 20 2021, 2:15pm
Post #15 of 127
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I'm curious to know if you have a specific example in mind?
'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.' The Hall of Fire
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squire
Half-elven

Jun 20 2021, 4:36pm
Post #16 of 127
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One reference to a study of Tolkien from a Buddhist perspective
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Here's an interesting reference from this 2009 Reading Room discussion, found by a quick search for mentions of Buddhism on these boards:
...it would be absurd to say JRRT was a Buddhist, and anyway there's a lot more to Buddhism than the few ideas I pointed out. In fact, David Loy & Linda Goodhew, in their book The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons: Buddhist Themes in Modern Fantasy (Wisdom Publications, 2004) tried to build a case for a Buddhist reading of LOTR, focusing more on ethics and the bodhisattva, but I feel with limited results. At a certain point you have to understand the project not as "finding Buddhism in Tolkien" but as "using Buddhism as a lens to read Tolkien," and even then there are limitations. - from a post by Alveric, Jul 10 2009 Not sure if this is what NoWiz was thinking of, but it's certainly an interesting sounding book.
squire online: RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'. Archive: All the TORn Reading Room Book Discussions (including the 1st BotR Discussion!) and Footerama: "Tolkien would have LOVED it!" Dr. Squire introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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noWizardme
Half-elven

Jun 20 2021, 5:15pm
Post #17 of 127
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Thanks squire! And I was also thinking...
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Thanks squire! And I was also thinking... Powell, Paul Andrew. "Hobbits as Buddhists and an Eye for an "I"." Buddhist-Christian Studies 31 (2011): 31-39. Accessed June 20, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41416528. I enjoyed it and maybe others will too. But it seems I forgot to share it here earlier, as squire couldn't find it. I note that "Powell, Paul Andrew" spends a bit of time worrying about the same reaction as the one Alveric names ("At a certain point you have to understand the project not as "finding Buddhism in Tolkien" but as "using Buddhism as a lens to read Tolkien," and even then there are limitations.") Yes, Tolkien definitely wasn't a Buddhist, and probably wasn't much influenced by Buddhism. Nonetheless, we seem to be discussing whether any critical tools to enjoying Tolkien should be disallowed, and I say 'none'.
~~~~~~ "You were exceedingly clever once, but unfortunately none of your friends noticed as they were too busy being attacked by an octopus." -from How To Tell If You Are In A J.R.R. Tolkien Book, by Austin Gilkeson, in 'The Toast', 2016 https://the-toast.net/...-a-jrr-tolkien-book/
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noWizardme
Half-elven

Jun 20 2021, 5:18pm
Post #18 of 127
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Ha - I had to look that up ...and now someone else knows//
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~~~~~~ "You were exceedingly clever once, but unfortunately none of your friends noticed as they were too busy being attacked by an octopus." -from How To Tell If You Are In A J.R.R. Tolkien Book, by Austin Gilkeson, in 'The Toast', 2016 https://the-toast.net/...-a-jrr-tolkien-book/
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven

Jun 20 2021, 5:36pm
Post #19 of 127
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Have you at long last no silly love songs? //
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Treachery, treachery I fear; treachery of that miserable creature. But so it must be. Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Discuss Tolkien's life and works in the Reading Room! +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= How to find old Reading Room discussions.
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven

Jun 20 2021, 5:47pm
Post #20 of 127
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There was another one from the same year.
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"Ending the Dualism of Nature and Industry in The Lord of the Rings" by Sarah J. Sprouse, in Mallorn 51 (pp. 27-31). In 2014, I noted some concerns about both articles (e.g., Powell refers to Tom Bombadil as "a forest hobbit"). And I agree with squire that most scholarship on Tolkien is not good. But I also agree with you that very little of it harms Tolkien's work in any way -- and even from most of the poor works I can glean a promising idea or two, albeit sometimes in contradiction to what the scholar in question intended.
Treachery, treachery I fear; treachery of that miserable creature. But so it must be. Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Discuss Tolkien's life and works in the Reading Room! +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= How to find old Reading Room discussions.
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FrogmortonJustice65
Lorien

Jun 20 2021, 6:04pm
Post #21 of 127
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It is stunning that the author would assert, without evidence or explanation, that an impressive collection of scholars "do not know the first thing about Tolkien" or even hate Tolkien and want to destroy him. You would hope such sweeping denunciations of a diverse group of scholars would be accompanied by evidence, but Davidson seems to think the mere presence of words like "queer" and "antiracism" is evidence enough that this whole convention is bankrupt. Some of the academic jargon in the paper titles is a bit much for my tastes, but this looks like a sincere attempt to study Tolkien from new perspectives rather than a nefarious Trojan horse to destroy Tolkien's legacy. You can only arrive at that conclusion if you are willing to ascribe the worst possible intentions to a group of strangers without any evidence. Tolkien's works will be turning 100 years old within many of our lifetimes. The appreciation and love of his writing has lasted this long. I am confident they will survive an academic conference. The article rightly points out that Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic and that this influenced his worldview and sub-creations. I am reminded of when C.S. Lewis stated: "it is the author who intends; the book means."
(This post was edited by FrogmortonJustice65 on Jun 20 2021, 6:06pm)
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Voronwë_the_Faithful
Valinor
Jun 20 2021, 6:24pm
Post #23 of 127
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There will soon be some more scholarship that partly looks at Tolkien from a Buddhist perspective.
'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.' The Hall of Fire
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geordie
Tol Eressea
Jun 20 2021, 6:32pm
Post #24 of 127
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I've been a member of the Tolkien Society for decades, and though I've been able to attend only a few of the seminars over the years, I've (usually) managed to keep up with the papers by buying the Seminars' proceedings in the Society's invaluable Peter Roe series. https://www.tolkiensociety.org/society/publications/peter-roe/ I've very little time for the views expressed in that news article; how anyone can have an informed opinion on papers before they're presented baffles me. This will be the second Tolkien Society seminar this year, and I'm grateful that it's online. I 'virtually attended' the first one, and I'm very much looking forward to this one.
(This post was edited by geordie on Jun 20 2021, 6:34pm)
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal

Jun 20 2021, 8:38pm
Post #25 of 127
(3969 views)
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Would you care to respond to some of the points raised here, Alienmaster?
#FidelityToTolkien #ChallengeExpectations
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