The 1983 Marquette Tolkien Conference

So, as I mentioned in a post from a few days ago, recently I've been digging through boxes in the storage room, and among the things I've unearthed in my sorting is a box containing almost all the papers from the 1983 Marquette Tolkien Conference -- the first Tolkien conference I ever attended and still one of the very best. As promised, here's a list of the papers and presentations, in alphabetical order:


R. E. Blackwelder: "Reflections on Literary Criticism and Middle-earth"

Fr. Robert B. Campbell: "The Theme of Joy in The Lord of the Rings and its Importance in the Plot Development" (in absentia)

Lyle Dorsett: "Tolkien and the Inklings: Archival Resources at the Marion E. Wade Collection"

Verlyn Flieger: "Words and World-Making: The Particle Physics of Middle-earth"

Karen Wynn Fonstad: "Mapping Middle-earth"

Mike Foster: "In the Hands of the Ring-Maker: J. R. R. Tolkien's Revisions of Manuscripts of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings"

Gary Hunnewell: "Sauron is Alive and Well in Argentina: The Evolution of Tolkien's Audience in America"

Paul Kocher: "The Many Guises of Love" (read in absentia by Dr. Blackwelder)

Jared Lobdell: "Sequels in the Edwardian Mode: A Problem in Calquing"

Darrel Martin: "The Silmarillion from Manuscript to Publication"

Joseph McClatchey: "I Wonder What Sort Of A Tale We've Fallen Into?: Myth, Monomyth, and Mythopoeia in the Literature of Middle-Earth"

Taum Santoski: "A History of the Acquisition" [a history of Marquette's acquisition of the Tolkien manuscripts]

Anders Stenstrom: "The Aspects of Research Towards Tolkien's Secondary World: A Set of Concepts"


Roundtable Discussion of Tolkien Criticism: (i) Religious Aspects of Tolkien's Writings, (ii) Tolkien and His Contemporaries, (iii) Tolkien and Fantasy
Panelists: Mike Foster, Verlyn Flieger, Jared Lobdell, Darrell Martin, Joseph McClatchey, John Rateliff, Deborah Rogers, & Richard West (moderator).



--I've not yet found my copy of the program with the schedule, but I did find the notebook in which I took notes on the talks. Looking through them, I was reminded that not only is the Guest of Honor speech, by Clyde Kilby, missing from Taum's box, but there were a number of informal presentations that did not get written up and submitted for the proceedings, such as Jim Allan's or Lester Smith's. Accordingly, and since the sequence was as important part of the conference, I'll be re-construction a schedule and posting it as well as a complement to the preceding list of papers.

--John R.