Lord Dunsany dies

So, I just found out from a posting on the MythSoc list* that Edward Carlos Plunkett, twentieth baron Dunsany, died on Tuesday (May 24th), aged 71.

http://www.meathchronicle.ie/news/roundup/articles/2011/05/24/4004570-death-of-edward-plunkett-lord-dunsany/

I never met this Lord Dunsany (Edward Carlos), the half-English/half-Brazilian grandson of the author, though I did meet his father the 19th baron (Captain Randal), during the time I was researching Lord Dunsany the writer (Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Lord Dunsany, 18th baron). But I'm grateful to Edward Carlos, who opened up the vault and let a number of unpublished works by his grandfather finally see the light of day -- an unpublished novel (PLEASURES OF A FUTUROSCOPE), a volume of plays (THE GINGER CAT AND OTHER LOST PLAYS), a collection of short stories (THE LAST BOOK OF JORKENS), and a few misc. pieces ("The Emperor's Crystal" -- obscurely published and long unavailable). This doesn't exhaust the unpublished material (e.g., the sequel to his verse-dairy THE YEAR, simply called ANOTHER YEAR) but it was welcome for those of us who'd read everything available to go back to that well for a few more times. And so, a belated thanks to someone I didn't know, who cut through to tangle that'd kept Dunsany publications in limbo for decades.

--John R

*thanks to Dale Nelson for this -- after all, how many of us wd have otherwise missed it because, like me, we don't read THE MEATH CHRONICLE?

Doug's New Tolkien Blog

So, one great piece of news for Tolkien fans and scholars is that Doug Anderson has just launched a new Tolkien blog, called TOLKIEN AND FANTASY.

Doug already has one blog going that he contributes to, WORMWOODIANA, but this is a collaborative blog and he's one of several (three or so) people who posts there on a fairly regular basis. While a lot of interesting things show up on Wormwoodiana, making it someplace I enjoy checking every few days, the focus is wider than my own interests, including a lot of horror and a surprising emphasis on early twentieth century publication of horror fiction in Australia.

Now he's branched out and started a new Tolkien-centric blog all his own: TOLKIEN & FANTASY -- the first two posts of which list the contents of the forthcoming volume (VIII) of TOLKIEN STUDIES and news of the new Paul Thomas edition of E. R. Eddison's saga STYRBIORN THE STRONG [1926].* The latter has been far too hard to find for far too long; while not as weird and wonderful and wonky as THE WORM OUROBOROS it's pure E.R.E. and shows just what an Icelandic saga written in the earlier twentieth century would look like. Plus, of course, Paul is a great editor and I always enjoy his introductions and notes.

Here's the link:

http://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com/

Wormwoodia itself has just posted one of the most fascinating things I've ever seen there. Ever wondered what R. W. Chambers' own drawing of The King in Yellow himself would look like? Wonder no more: a publicity poster from the time of the book's first publication [1895], part of the Forrie J. Ackerman collection. What's more, it turns out part of that design was used for the old Ace Books edition's cover, which I had a copy of once long ago but no more. Here's that link as well:

http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2011/05/robert-w-chamberss-artwork-for-king-in.html

So, good stuff, and I expect that much more good stuff will follow. This new blog's debut is definitely a good day for Tolkien studies.

--John R.

current reading: WATERSHIP DOWN

*I have a copy of the original edition of this (bought, in all places, in Bibliomaniacs, a great little used bookstore in downtown Delavan Wisconsin), but then I've read all of Eddison, including POEMS, LETTERS, AND MEMORIES OF PHILIP SIDNEY NAIRN [1916] and the unpublished juvenalia in the Bodley.

MY LATEST PUBLICATION: Clyde Kilby Memoir

So, today came the long-awaited arrival of the newest volume of VII, the Wade Center's journal focusing on the seven authors to whom the Wade center is devoted (Lewis, Tolkien, Williams, Sayers, Barfield, Chesterton, & MacDonald). I'm particularly pleased to see it, because it includes a piece I edited: Clyde Kilby's guest-of-honor speech at the 1983 Marquette Tolkien Conference. Essentially this is a memoir of his summer working with Tolkien, which focuses mainly on his belief on why Tolkien never finished THE SILMARILLION. I heard Kilby deliver it at the conference, and it wd have been a key part of the published proceedings, but a string of delays eventually forced cancellation of that project. Too bad. But at least now this one piece has finally made it into print. Now if we can only get Paul Kocher's essay into print as well . . .

From my personal point of view, as a student of the history of fantasy and Tolkien's role in the creation of fantasy as a modern literary genre, the most interesting point was Kilby's revealing that one of the books Tolkien loaned him to read as preparation for working on THE SILMARILLION was Lord Dunsany's THE BOOK OF WONDER [1912]. One discovery that was new to me, not having been mentioned in the lecture itself but jotted on one draft, was learning that Tolkien also recommended Sheila Kaye-Smith's THE CHALLENGE TO SIRIUS [1917] as "[the] best novel of the US Civil War". I don't know of any previous evidence that Tolkien knew Kaye-Smith's work; while largely forgotten today (aside from having been mocked by Stella Gibbons' COLD COMFORT FARM) she was famous in her own time both as one of Hardy's heirs and for a famous conversion to Catholicism in 1929 along with her husband (hitherto an Anglican priest).

Quite aside from my own interest in this volume from my own contribution, this issue has much else of interest in it. The lead article prints for the first time what its editor argues is the only part ever written down of Tolkien & Lewis's erstwhile collaboration, LANGUAGE AND HUMAN NATURE. There's also a short biography of Lucy Barfield and two Owen Barfield poems (one never before published)and a memoir of Lewis at Cambridge. So, all in all, a good issue; I'm looking forward to reading the other pieces.

--JDR

WORLD TURTLE DAY (Turtle Show!)

So, a few days ago Janice spotted a story about a Turtle Show at a nursery up in Shoreline on Sunday the 22nd. We had Book Group later that afternoon,* but given my fondness for turtles,** we decided to make the time to swing by and meet the turtles.

It was an interesting show. Finding the nursery (Skyway Nursery on Aurora, a huge sprawling place) was easy compared to finding the turtle room within it, but we persisted and at length prevailed. The turtles and tortoises, displayed in tubs (and, for the water-turtles, in tanks) on tables, most with "do not touch" signs, ranged from a number of exotics from Madagascar and Afghanistan to some Texas Box Turtles. They even had a large (135 lb) Sulcafa tortoise*** whose enclosure you could enter to pet the tortoise (on its shell and legs, not the head). He was quite a mellow fellow, alert but calm.

Also impressive was the snapping turtle who, as Janice pointed out, looked like an alligator with a shell (here they'd not relied on signs but put him in a tank with a solid lid between him and clueless wd-be-petters).**** Several former pets ("rescue turtles") were marked by how alert they were, constantly looking around and making eye contact. Some turtles who'd survived ghastly injuries were there to testify to turtle tenacity and toughness. But I may have been most impressed with the baby turtles at the last table we visited -- the youngest of which (tiny little black turtles) had hatched just the day before. The adult musk turtles there looked exactly like mossy rocks when viewed from above, while the babies reminded me of the little turtles we had as pets when I was a kid, before the selling of baby turtles at dime stores was outlawed (around 1970/71, I think). I even recognized one particular little grey turtle (a Texas Box or Pond Turtle) as the same type as one we had (Swifty, I think his name was). The oldest turtle there was at least fifty and might well live to be a hundred -- meaning that, like a parrot, this is a "legacy pet" that you have to make plans for in case it outlives you.

I got the impression that these turtle-owners rather disapprove of people having turtles as pets, believing that turtles shd be in the hands of people like themselves -- a distinction that wasn't immediately obvious to an outsider like myself. Certainly the exotic-pets trade has done terrible thing to turtle and tortoise populations (one owner said that his tortoise was territorial, so that if expatriated back to Afghanistan it'd spend the rest of its life wandering in search of its original territory), but I'm sympathetic to people having pets, so long as they take good care of them (which was definitely an issue in some of these cases).

In any case, it was great to see a bunch of turtles for an hour or so, and I'd gladly go again. The group hosting the event has a website here:

www.seattleturtleandtortoiseclub.com

--following the button "Other Links" shows a lot of interesting-looking sites I haven't yet had time to follow up on, while the "Upcoming Events" button revealed the news, which I'd not heretofore suspected, that today (Monday the 23rd) is "World Turtle Day". So, go out and pet a turtle today, or at least think good turtle thoughts.

--John R.

current audiobook: THE PICKWICK PAPERS

current book: WATERSHIP DOWN (re-reading), PLAYER'S HANDBOOK (1st ed AD&D).

*to discuss WATERSHIP DOWN, one of my all-time favorite fantasy novels (I rank it in my Top Ten). Most of the others didn't think much of it, but we had an enjoyable meeting nonetheless, with both our hosts' cats coming out to join us (the gregarious Max and the usually shy Maya). No sign of the Rapture, though two folks we'd expected to show up never made it . . .

**there's a reason one of my nicknames is "Turtle Man"

***the largest continental turtle, it turns out, and third largest overall

****having rescued snapping turtles who were trying to cross roads on three occasions in the past, I can testify that they're v. difficult to handle safely if you don't know what you're doing.

Great Googly Moogly!

So, late Sunday I was looking up some news stories from Arkansas about how bad the flooding was that was set to hit Memphis. I'd been surprised to hear that I-40, between Little Rock and Memphis, was closed and traffic being re-routed to two-lane highways -- mainly because I wd have assumed, having traveled that road before, that any water high enough to knock out the interstate wd already be over the old highways. Apparently not: it was flooding along the White River (better known these days not for the White River Monster but as the last stomping grounds of the no-longer-exinct Ivory Billed Woodpecker) that was to blame.

http://www.fox16.com/news/local/story/Flooding-closes-busy-I-40-in-eastern-Arkansas/h5W5Y6fYqkK6GesyZxWijg.cspx?rss=315

News of the flood that's just now cresting in Memphis, and on its way to Baton Rouge is bad enough: they think it'll match the flood of 1937. But I was stunned to read just how bad the flood of 1927, which was even worse. I'd only heard about this once before, in a Schlesinger article debunking recent (1990s?) claims that Herbert Hoover had actually been a progressive. According to Schlesinger, so far as I remember his piece (it's been a while since I read it), Hoover's flood relief added greatly to his reputation as a humanitarian but Hoover pretty much ignored black farmers hit by the disaster. I hope that's not true. In any case, here's the piece about how, bad as it looks, it's no Katrina, and it's no 1927;

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2011/05/river_flooding_begins_to_wrap_arms_around_memphis.php?ref=fpa

And, just in case the link doesn't work, here are the two final paragraphs that left me stunned (emphasis added):

This year's flooding is set to eclipse numerous crest records set mainly in 1927 and 1937. The Great Flood of 1927 swelled the Lower Mississippi to 80 miles wide in some parts, caused up to 1,000 deaths by some estimates and drove more than 600,000 people from their homes.

Since 1927, levees have been raised and constructed with different methods, dozens of reservoirs have been added across the basin and floodways have been added.

That's right: during the 1927 flood at Mississippi was EIGHTY MILES WIDE.

Great googly moogly!

--JDR

Tolkien at Kalamazoo 2011 (revised schedule)

So, thanks to Jason Fisher's post

( http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-tolkien-at-kalamazoo.html ), I now know more about other Tolkien events at Kalamazoo. So I've revised the schedule I put up a few days ago, to include the extra Tolkien events, two C. S. Lewis panels I only noticed last night, and (to increase the usefulness of it all), the room numbers where each event is to take place. So here's the revised schedule of Tolkien events at Kalamazoo 2011. I shd be able to make it to almost all of these, but we'll see. Enjoy!

Kalamazoo Schedule 2011

THURSDAY MAY 12th

10AM, Valley II 204

Session 7: In Honor of Jane Chance (Roundtable)

Presider: Gergely Nagy, Szegedi Tudományegyetem

A roundtable discussion with Deanne Delmar Evans, Bemidji State Univ.; Edward L. Risden, St. Norbert College (“Medieval Women, Its Impact on Medieval Studies and Medievalism”); Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State Univ. (“Mythography and Middle-earth”); Christopher Vaccaro, Univ. of Vermont (“A Hobbit Hole of One’s Own: Identity, Gender, and Difference in Middle-earth Studies”); and Joe Ricke, Taylor Univ.

THURSDAY MAY 12th

1.30PM, FETZER 2016

Session 73: Languages in Tolkien’s Legendarium

Presider: Benjamin S. W. Barootes, McGill Univ.

The Pleasure and the Poetics of Translating Old Norse

Mary Faraci, Florida Atlantic Univ.

The Origins of the Name “Thrihyrne” in The Lord of the Rings in Relation to the Icelandic Sagas

Tsukusu Jinn Itó, Shinshu Daigaku

Dunlendish and Sindarin: Tolkien’s Diptych of British-Welsh

Yoko Hemmi, Keio Univ.

THURSDAY MAY 12th

3.30PM, FETZER 2016

Session 120: Romantic Nationalism in Tolkien’s Legendarium

Presider: Douglas Anderson, Independent Scholar

Herder, Hiawatha, Húrin, and Hobbits: Teaching Tolkien as a Romantic Nationalist

John William Houghton, Hill School

Kipling, Tolkien, and Romantic Anglo-Saxonism

Dimitra Fimi, Univ. of Wales Institute, Cardiff

Macpherson and Tolkien: A Tale of Two Legendariums

John D. Rateliff, Independent Scholar

Rhetoric of the Rings: J.R R. Tolkien’s Allegories of Reading

Craig Franson, La Salle Univ.

Th. May 12th

7.30 PM, FETZER 1055.

Session 148: Festive Video Game Workshop

[session contains one Tolkien-related presentation]

A Narrative of One’s Own: Finding a Spot for Player Heroes in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings

N. M. Heckel of the American Military University.

FRIDAY MAY 13th

10 AM, Schneider 210

Session 210: Scholar as Minstrel: Music and Tolkien

Presider: Keith W. Jensen, William Rainey Harper College

The Harmony of the Worlds and the Horn of Heimdal: Cosmological Music in Creation and Subcreation

Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State Univ.

The Three Greatest Minstrels in Middle-earth: Tolkien’s Early Thoughts on Music and Power

Brad Eden, Univ. of California–Santa Barbara

Swann’s Songs: Tolkien’s Clues To Tempo, Tone, and Tune in Middle-earth Music

John R. Holmes, Franciscan Univ. of Steubenville

CSI: Who Killed Cock Robin?

Jennifer Culver, Univ. of Texas–Dallas, and Lynn Payette, Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts

FRIDAY MAY 13th

1.30 PM, Schneider 1280

Session 264: Geography, Lands, Environments in Tolkien’s Legendarium

Presider: Brad Eden, Univ. of California–Santa Barbara

“We Have Not Here a Lasting City”: The Undying Lands and the Other Disappearing Landscapes of Arda

Jeffrey Pinyan, Independent Scholar

The Clay of Cataclysm: Graeco-Roman and Medieval Notions of Adaptation Present in the Building, Destruction, and Rebuilding of Middle-earth

James R. Vitullo, William Rainey Harper College

Geography’s Grammar: A Stylistic Analysis of Middle-earth

Robin Anne Reid

Concerning Horses: Tolkien and Horses in the Legendarium

Janice M. Bogstad, Univ. of Wisconsin–Eau Claire

FRIDAY MAY 13th

3.30 PM, Schneider 1280

Session 322: Returning Heroes: Medieval and Modern in Tolkien’s Legendarium

Presider: Yvette Kisor, Ramapo College

Gandalf’s Sojourn through Purgatory: Medieval and Modern Adventure?

Nicole Andel, Pennsylvania State Univ.

“Well, I’m Back”: Tolkien’s Return Song in Two Part Harmony

Vickie Holtz-Wodzak, Viterbo Univ.

Point of No Return: The Scarred Homecoming in the Writing of J. R. R. Tolkien

Perry Harrison, Abilene Christian Univ.

Making Heroes: The Reception of Returning Soldiers in the Novels of J. R. R. Tolkien and Virginia Woolf

Margaret Sinex, Western Illinois Univ.

FRIDAY MAY 13th

7.30 PM, Fetzer 1010

TOLKIEN UNBOUND

Presider: Robin Anne Reid

(1) Maidens of Middle-earth

Eileen Marie Moore, Independent Scholar

(2) The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun

John D. Rateliff, Independent Scholar; Deidre Dawson, Michigan State Univ.; Richard C. West, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Dimitra Fimi, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff; and Deborah Webster Rogers, Independent Scholar

(3) Music Inspired by the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien

Brad Eden, Univ. of California–Santa Barbara

(4) “Where Did Our Ring Go?”: The Motown Tolkien

Mike Foster, Independent Scholar; Merlin DeTardo, Independent Scholar; Jo Foster, Independent Scholar; and Amy Amendt-Raduege, Whatcom Community College

SATURDAY MAY 14th

10 AM, Valley I 100

Session 351: Tolkien and the Medieval Mediterranean

Sponsor: UW (Madison) Department of Comparative Literature

Presider: Scott A. Mellor, UW

Gondor’s Debt to Byzantium

Christopher Livanos

Crossing the Borders: Unconscious in Dante’s Inferno, Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and Wood and Burchielli’s DMZ

Faith Portier

The Presence of the Middle East in The Lord of the Rings

Marryam Abdl-Haleem

10 AM, Schneider 1265

Session 380: Medievalist Fantasies of Christendom: The Use of the Medieval as Christian Apologetic in the Literature of the Inklings and Their Contemporaries

Presider: Cory Lowell Grewell, Thiel College

The Battle for Middle Earth: Medieval Fantasy of Christendom by a Modern Apologetic

Morgan Mayreis-Voorhis, Independent Scholar

Double Affirmation: Medieval Chronology, Geography, and Devotion in the Arthuriad of Charles Williams

Sorina Higgins, Lehigh Carbon Community College

The Polemical Other: Narnian Values and the Complicated Case of Calormen

Emanuelle Burton, Univ. of Chicago

Overcoming the Seven Deadly Sins: Active Spiritual Warriors in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Emily E. Redman, Purdue Univ.

SATURDAY MAY 14th

12 noon, Bernhard: President's Dining Room

Tolkien at Kalamazoo

Business Meeting

Sunday, May 15

8:30 AM, Valley II 205

Session 517: C. S. Lewis: Rediscovering the Discarded Image I

Sponsor: C. S. Lewis Society, Purdue Univ. Organizer: Crystal Kirgiss, Purdue Univ.

Presider: Erin Kissick, Purdue Univ.

Refurbishing a Discarded Image: C. S. Lewis’s Use of Spenser’s Faerie Queene in That Hideous Strength

Paul R. Rovang, Edinboro Univ. of Pennsylvania

C. S. Lewis and the Narnian Cosmos: Re-envisioning the Discarded Image

Heather Herrick Jennings, Univ. of California–Davis

“The Discarded Image?” C. S. Lewis and Owen Barfield on the Medieval Model

Edwin Woodruff Tait, Huntington Univ.

Sunday, May 15

10:30 AM, Valley II 205

Session 548: C. S. Lewis: Rediscovering the Discarded Image II

Sponsor: C. S. Lewis Society, Purdue Univ. Organizer: Crystal Kirgiss, Purdue Univ.

Presider: Jason Lotz, Purdue Univ.

“Use Your Specimens While You Can”: Lewis the Medievalist, Lewis the Medieval

Jennifer Woodruff Tait, Huntington Univ.

The Intuitive Medievalism of C. S. Lewis

Chris R. Armstrong, Bethel Univ.

Lewis’s Translation of Augustine on the Trinity

Charles Ross, Purdue Univ.

Farewell to Borders (Federal Way)

So, yesterday I was feeling under the weather (from the resurgence of last week's cold, which has me again in its grip) but, having stayed inside working on my Kalamazoo paper all Saturday and most of Sunday, was badly in need of an outing to stave off cabin fever. Just the night before I'd been looking up several things in James McKillop's wonderful OXFORD DICTIONARY OF CELTIC MYTHOLOGY, and noted that on the inside front cover where I sign and date my books I'd added a note to the effect that I'd bought this on Saturday July 26th 2003 on my first visit to the Borders in Federal Way, Janice having taken me there for a pokeabout when I was feeling sick.

Thus reminded, I thought it'd be a good idea to go down and poke around in the same bookstore's mythology section again and see what I might find, having had good luck there in the past,* followed by a work session at the nearby Starbucks. After all, this is one of my regular work-offsite spots: a pleasant drive down the West Valley Highway and Peasley Canyon Road, a browse in the bookstore and occasional purchase of a book or manga, followed by an hour or two's work in the Starbucks next door.

Accordingly, I got my laptop, some reference material I needed, and a thermos of tea to see me on the way down and back again. The drive down went smoothly, and the break from the books helped clear my head from the bits relating to the paper that had been going round and round all day, but when I arrived, I got a shock: the huge

STORE CLOSING

sign hanging out front.

Turns out it's all too true. Going inside, I found lots of people and a mostly empty store, with a '8 days till closing' sign hanging high and lots of '70% off' markers. Even the shelves and bookstands themselves were for sale.

Apparently this sale had been going on all month. Needless to say, I didn't find much. The manga section had been pretty well picked over. The mythology section simply no longer existed, and the same was true of the D&D shelves. What miscellaneous fantasy that remained didn't include anything that tempted me; the only book I almost bought was a new one called CHURCHILL'S SECRET WAR, about the devastating effects of his India policy during World War II (the author blames him for three million deaths). This one looks interesting, but too far from my regular interest to buy; I may check it out from the library later on.

So, after sadly departing from a favorite store for the last time, it was over to the Starbucks for some tea and some work, after which I went back home for a few more hours' reading (taking lots of notes as I went as relevant for the paper). As once again the economy proves that 'too big to fail' really means only 'for now'.

--JDR

*I recall that on my second visit, I'd found THE BURNING OF BRIDGET CLEARY there.

Run-up to Kalamazoo

So, next week I head out for this year's Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo. Here's a listing of the Tolkien Track events that I know of (there are usually one or two more papers/presentations on non-Tolkien-themed panels, and I haven't had time to comb through the program book's listings yet), including the two I'm taking part in.

THURSDAY MAY 12th

10AM

Session 7: In Honor of Jane Chance (Roundtable)

Presider: Gergely Nagy, Szegedi Tudományegyetem

A roundtable discussion with Deanne Delmar Evans, Bemidji State Univ.; Edward L. Risden, St. Norbert College (“Medieval Women, Its Impact on Medieval Studies and Medievalism”); Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State Univ. (“Mythography and Middle-earth”); Christopher Vaccaro, Univ. of Vermont (“A Hobbit Hole of One’s Own: Identity, Gender, and Difference in Middle-earth Studies”); Verlyn Flieger, Univ. of Maryland; and Joe Ricke, Taylor Univ.

THURSDAY MAY 12th

1.30PM

Session 73: Languages in Tolkien’s Legendarium

Presider: Benjamin S. W. Barootes, McGill Univ.

The Pleasure and the Poetics of Translating Old Norse

Mary Faraci, Florida Atlantic Univ.

The Origins of the Name “Thrihyrne” in The Lord of the Rings in Relation to the Icelandic Sagas

Tsukusu Jinn Itó, Shinshu Daigaku

Dunlendish and Sindarin: Tolkien’s Diptych of British-Welsh

Yoko Hemmi, Keio Univ.

THURSDAY MAY 12th

3.30PM

Session 120: Romantic Nationalism in Tolkien’s Legendarium

Presider: Douglas Anderson, Independent Scholar

Herder, Hiawatha, Húrin, and Hobbits: Teaching Tolkien as a Romantic Nationalist

John William Houghton, Hill School

Kipling, Tolkien, and Romantic Anglo-Saxonism

Dimitra Fimi, Univ. of Wales Institute, Cardiff

Macpherson and Tolkien: A Tale of Two Legendariums

John D. Rateliff, Independent Scholar

Rhetoric of the Rings: J.R R. Tolkien’s Allegories of Reading

Craig Franson, La Salle Univ.

FRIDAY MAY 13th

10 AM

Session 210: Scholar as Minstrel: Music and Tolkien

Presider: Keith W. Jensen, William Rainey Harper College

The Harmony of the Worlds and the Horn of Heimdal: Cosmological Music in Creation and Subcreation

Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State Univ.

The Three Greatest Minstrels in Middle-earth: Tolkien’s Early Thoughts on Music and Power

Brad Eden, Univ. of California–Santa Barbara

Swann’s Songs: Tolkien’s Clues To Tempo, Tone, and Tune in Middle-earth Music

John R. Holmes, Franciscan Univ. of Steubenville

CSI: Who Killed Cock Robin?

Jennifer Culver, Univ. of Texas–Dallas, and Lynn Payette, Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts

FRIDAY MAY 13th

1.30 PM

Session 264: Geography, Lands, Environments in Tolkien’s Legendarium

Presider: Brad Eden, Univ. of California–Santa Barbara

“We Have Not Here a Lasting City”: The Undying Lands and the Other Disappearing Landscapes of Arda

Jeffrey Pinyan, Independent Scholar

The Clay of Cataclysm: Graeco-Roman and Medieval Notions of Adaptation Present in the Building, Destruction, and Rebuilding of Middle-earth

James R. Vitullo, William Rainey Harper College

Geography’s Grammar: A Stylistic Analysis of Middle-earth

Robin Anne Reid

Concerning Horses: Tolkien and Horses in the Legendarium

Janice M. Bogstad, Univ. of Wisconsin–Eau Claire

FRIDAY MAY 13th

3.30 PM

Session 322: Returning Heroes: Medieval and Modern in Tolkien’s Legendarium

Presider: Yvette Kisor, Ramapo College

Gandalf’s Sojourn through Purgatory: Medieval and Modern Adventure?

Nicole Andel, Pennsylvania State Univ.

“Well, I’m Back”: Tolkien’s Return Song in Two Part Harmony

Vickie Holtz-Wodzak, Viterbo Univ.

Point of No Return: The Scarred Homecoming in the Writing of J. R. R. Tolkien

Perry Harrison, Abilene Christian Univ.

Making Heroes: The Reception of Returning Soldiers in the Novels of J. R. R. Tolkien and Virginia Woolf

Margaret Sinex, Western Illinois Univ.

FRIDAY MAY 13th

7.30 PM

TOLKIEN UNBOUND

Presider: Robin Anne Reid

(1) Maidens of Middle-earth

Eileen Marie Moore, Independent Scholar

(2) The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun

John D. Rateliff, Independent Scholar; Deidre Dawson, Michigan State Univ.; Richard C. West, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Dimitra Fimi, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff; and Deborah Webster Rogers, Independent Scholar

(3) Music Inspired by the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien

Brad Eden, Univ. of California–Santa Barbara

(4) “Where Did Our Ring Go?”: The Motown Tolkien

Mike Foster, Independent Scholar; Merlin DeTardo, Independent Scholar; Jo Foster, Independent Scholar; and Amy Amendt-Raduege, Whatcom Community College

SATURDAY MAY 14th

10 AM

Session 380: Medievalist Fantasies of Christendom: The Use of the Medieval as Christian Apologetic in the Literature of the Inklings and Their Contemporaries

Presider: Cory Lowell Grewell

The Battle for Middle Earth: Medieval Fantasy of Christendom by a Modern Apologetic

Morgan Mayreis-Voorhis, Independent Scholar

(the rest of this session consists of one paper on Wms' Arthuriad and two on Narnia)

SATURDAY MAY 14th

12 noon

Tolkien at Kalamazoo

Business Meeting