Reports from Loughborough

[Troels Forchhammer]

I am currently attending the Tolkien Society event, _The Return of
the Ring_ at Loughborough University, and I sort of hope that there
would here be some interest in the goings-on.

Yesterday, Thursday, was arrival day, which of course gave a bit of
extra hassle. At the gatherings of the whole event, it was obvious
that many people know each other from countless Oxonmoots and what-
have-you in the Tolkien Society, but there was also a significant
amount of 'good to finally meet you in the flesh' going on between
people who have interacted — sometimes for a very long time — on the
internet.

There were two lecture sessions yesterday, and for the first session
I had chosen to go to a couple of talks on 'Philosophy and Ethics .
First up was a professor from an American university, Laura Miller-
Purrenhage, who spoke on how she had constructed a course on Tolkien
by focusing on creating objectives in the subjects leadership and
ethics. It was an interesting approach to a literature class (one
often gets the impression that ‘reading Tolkien’ would be the normal
answer to the objective of a Tolkien class). Fortunately the subject
on how to construct a good course on Tolkien's work becomes more and
more relevant to more and more people, but I will admit that I had a
hard time relating to a number of the problems and issues that she
was talking about — a result of never having been in her situation,
nor being likely ever to do so.

The second speaker was Franco Manni from Italy who spoke on how
Tolkien related to a list of specific philosophers starting with
Plato and ending with a number of twentieth century relativist
philosophers. The paper was very interesting and engaging, and
Franco Manni spoke with an obvious passion for his subject. To put it
very shortly, Manni's thesis was that Tolkien reacted positively to
(parts of the works of) most ancient and medieval philosophers,
Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Boëthius, Aquinas. Tolkien also,
according to Manni, reacted to some of the nineteenth century
romantic philosophers, but only indirectly as these philosophers
reached him by the way of the great philologists. Finally Manni found
that Tolkien mostly ignored most twentieth century philosophers,
having no use for their ideas.

After a short break the second round of sessions was due. For that I
had chosen a session on ‘Tolkien's Sources’. The first speaker, Allen
Jenkins, ran a comparitive study between Tolkien and the native
American authoer, Sherman Alexi. He drew up a number of interesting
parallels, in particular between the situations of Tolkiens' Elves
and the reservation Indians in Sherman Alexi's books, and he believed
that the idea of peoples under threat (Tolkien's Elves under threat
from the Age of Man) was the common denominator that brought them
together.

The rest of this session was an hour-long panel on Tolkien and Source
Criticism. Chaired by Verlyn Flieger and with participation from Tom
Shippey, Mark Atherton, Renée Vink and Alex Lewis, this was a lively
panel with a good interaction with the audience and discussions
covered many interesting corners. Tom Shippey crying out that
‘Authors lie!’ and telling us in no uncertain terms that Tolkien did
so too is a memory that stands out, but it was certainly not the only
memorable point that was made. In the end it was proposed that source
criticism is one of the tools we have to try to understand the mental
landscape in which Tolkien's stories grew, and I think I can
subscribe to that as a worthwhile endeavour (more than trying to show
where Tolkien got his ideas from or ‘how he worked’).

In the late afternoon there was an opening ceremony with various
dignataries appear, two of them appearing in a video: Alan Lee and
John Howe sent a video greeting, though most of the talking was being
done by some short bloke from New Zealand. In the evening we had an
opening party, which was mostly a good excuse for some socializing,
where I ended up having some very intersting discussions with Shaun
Gunner, Emil Johansson and Marcel Aubron-Bülles. Among other things,
we discussed Shaun Gunner's article in Amon Hen (see the thread
'Glorfindel(s) I miss you'). Shaun has got some very positive
responses on this article, but let's see if this will be enough to
revive the great story-internal debates.

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think,
also admit that some things are much more nearly certain
than others.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

[sean_q]

On 8/17/2012 1:20 PM, Troels Forchhammer wrote:
> I am currently attending the Tolkien Society event, _The Return of
> the Ring_ at Loughborough University, and I sort of hope that there

> would here be some interest in the goings-on...

Wish I was there.

SQ

[Troels Forchhammer]

I have now returned to that spot of Middle-earth to which I belong
and which I call home. The last days of the conference, I was rather
busy, and didn't have time to post as I had planned and hoped. You,
shall, however, not be cheated, even if the reports are a bit delayed
. . .

Saturday.

Friday was the day where I went to bed three times � the first time
shortly after midnight and the last time about 11PM. The result is
that I approached Saturday feeling considerably more sprightly than
Friday, which was certainly a good thing.

In the first time-slot, I went to a session on the Ainulindal�. This
was lead off by Peter Gilliver (one of the authors of _The Ring of
Words_), who spoke on
�[URL=http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Gilliver]
Making the Music, a possible source for the Ainulindal�[/URL].� The
premise of this talk was a very striking correspondance in both
imagery and wording in Gerald Manley Hopkins' �notes on Ignatius
Loyola's _Spiritual Exercises_� to imagery and phrasing in Tolkien's
_Ainulindal�_. However, though written in 1881, these notes remained
unpublished until 1937, far too late for them to have influenced
imagery and phrases in _The Book of Lost Tales_, and while possible
connections could be made, these were all much too tenuous for anyone
to assert a source. Gilliver had then looked at other texts
containing the image of a creator having angels sing for him and a
musical rebellion leading to a fall of angels, and had found two
cases (one of these an interesting Babylonian text), but ultimately
the consensus was that it seemed more likely that there was a general
idea floating about in the Oxford Catholic circles (in 1919 there
were about 100 Catholic students in Oxford) regarding a musical
interpretation of the rebellion of (some of) the angels.

After this came Reuven Naveh who spoke on
�[URL=http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Naveh]The
Ainulindale and Tolkien's Approach to Modernity[/URL].� Naveh
suggested that the descriptions of the Discord of Morgoth are
consistent with early receptions of atonal music emphasizing
dissonance. While Naveh used Arnold Sch�nberg as his example, this
was not because he felt that Tolkien's words' necessarily were a
reaction to Sch�nberg in particular, but to his �type of music� more
generally. This took Naveh on to Tolkien's general reaction against
modernism, of which Naveh perceived a strong rejection by Tolkien.
One of the interesting points that Naveh made was that Tolkien seemed
to have been rooted in tonal music and it's emphasis on harmony that
even Wagner's play with a greater element of dissonance (though still
within context of tonal music) may have felt, to Tolkien, for that
very reason, ugly and incomprehensible.

At this point, I took a break, so that the next couple of time-slots
were kept empty. I spent some of the time to enjoy the exhibition of
Tolkien-inspired artwork. There was an impressive list of artists who
exhibited their work at the conference, and while I do not as a rule
get the vivid images while reading that I understand many do (and I
believe Tolkien did), I can certainly enjoy good art. I found
something enjoyable in nearly all of the artists works, and for a few
of the artists, I found most of their work enjoyable (no one
mentioned, and thus none forgotten), though even among these well-
loved artists, the all-pervasive imagery of the Jackson films could
not be wholly escaped: there was a blue Galadriel that seemed to me
inspired more by Jackson's vision than by Tolkie's words, just as
there were more than one depiction of Viggo Mortensen (who is, I am
sure, a very nice man who deserves every portrait) that claimed to
depict Aragorn / King Elessar. The dealers' stalls were dangerous
waters for me � the temptation to over-spend on the many interesting
books there was great, and perhaps I should be grateful that the
Tolkien Society Trading's stall only had two different volumes of
_Tolkien Studies_ on their �� price� shelves (none of which I had �
the past tense being important here . . . )

In the last of the day's multi-track time-slots, I went to a session
on _The Notion Club Papers_, which should be found in an Oxford bin
this year (I wonder if some faithful Tolkienists have been trawling
the colleges' waste bins this summer?). First up was David Doughan
speaking simply about �The Notion Club.� The aim of the talk seemed
make people interested in this piece of Tolkien's writings and make
them think about it. To that end Doughan had picked a series of
interesting facts about the Notion Club Papers, including the
identity game (matching aspects of the fictional club members to
aspects of the members of the Inklings), a history of the idea of
time-travelling through dreams and visions and the connections to the
linguistic work, _The Drowning of Anad�ne_, and _The Lord of the
Rings_.
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Doughan>

The second presentation of this session was �From 2012 to Atlantis
and back again. Tolkien's Time-Travelling and the Notion Club Papers
Mystery� by Xavier de la Huerga. Weaving a thread through Tolkien's
Notion Club Papers, ideas of (biologically) inherited memory, Mayarin
calendars and meteorological phenomena, de la Huerga gave me the
impression that he wanted me to believe in some kind of mysticism
(though he didn't exactly say it in that many words), and as a
physicist I have to admit that I resented this feeling (possibly
completely unintended, it may be a complete misunderstanding on my
part).
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Huerga>

From the Notion Club session, we hurried on to hear Verlyn Flieger
speak in the big auditorium where Tom Shippey had entertained on
Friday. Verlyn Flieger didn't entertain (though she did use humour),
but instead she provoked: her talk on �Tolkien's French Connection�
was thought-provoking in the very best sense of the word, and despite
a very different lecturing style from Tom Shippey, she had the
audience every bit as much in thrall as he. Starting out from
Tolkien's use of the French words _aventures_ and _quest_ in his
essay �On Fairy-Stories�, Flieger took us through the magical forest
of Broceliande, where Knights Errant went for simple _aventures_ (as
recounted e.g. by Chr�tien de Troyes) and to the noble nights in Le
Morte d'Arthur of which some (like Gawain) went on _aventures_ while
others went on _quests_. These she compared convincingly to Bilbo's
[u]adventures[/u] (teaching us to say the word with her as she read
all the, IIRC, eleven occurrences of the word in the description of
the first day (Tuesday) in _The Hobbit_ ). Though it is not repeated
as many times, Frodo's story is clearly about a _quest_, and Flieger
showed how the distinction and the two types of stories were tied up
with a French romance tradition.
http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Flieger

After an enjoyable evening with more friends, new and old, it was
time for first the Masquerade. Unfortunately the day was so hot and
the room so packed that I couldn't stand it, and so I ended up
outside, sharing the beer I had brought from Denmark. It was
originally bought for Jason Fisher, when I thought he was coming, but
I thought I'd bring it anyway. The beer was _B�gebryg_ from the
brewery _Skovlyst_, and the name of the brew translates to �beech
brew�. The beech has also given us the words book = bog (Danish) =
Buch (German), because the habit of inscribing runes on staves of
beech. From there we also, in German and Danish have our �beech-
staves�, _die Buchstaben_, _bogstaver_, which are our names for the
letters. So in a way I was bringing �book-beer� to a Tolkien
Conference, which seemed highly appropriate, and I was very pleased
that both beer and pun were well received. The Masquerade, and hence
our pun-beering, ended with a torchlight procession, which featured a
distinct lack of something � either some pitchforks and a monster, or
some ships (so we could prevent that self-important usurper from
following! Helcarax� take him!)

The last item on the Saturday agenda was the auction. In addition to
various donations from attendees and others (including four boxes of
the �Mines of Moria� Lego set and some wonderful artwork by attending
artists), there were a lot of old fanzines on auction. This being
because the Tolkien Society has closed it's lending library and now
only maintains an archive (from which members can get photocopies of
articles for their research), so they were selling out of their
doubles (or triples or whatever). The words in _The Hobbit_ about the
prices at auctions applies here, with early issues of obscure smial
journals fetching several tens of pounds. I got myself a Mallorn 43
and a Mythlore 12 for a total of �6.50 � mostly for the fun of being
a part of it. And it certainly was great fun.
http://www.returnofthering.org/auction.php

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.

Scientific reasoning works only with measurements: only
when we have a number and a unit. Thus, topics for which
we have no measurements, scientific investigation is not
useful. No math, no science. When we do have
measurements, scientific reasoning cannot be ignored.
- Dr Nancy's Sweetie on usenet
Message-ID: <ds159c$p45$1...@pcls4.std.com>

[Troels Forchhammer]

Friday dawned brightly . . . I'm sure, though I cannot really say as
I was still in bed at the time.

I decided to do breakfast late and then go to the first session, but
a minor confusion about the location of the breakfast venue meant
that I skipped breakfast.

My first session today was with Alex Lewis and titled ‘The Lost
Arthur’. Alex Lewis is writing a book on Arthurian influences on
Tolkien, and made a rather intersting point by saying that the
unpublished (for almost a year more) _The Fall of Arthur_ acted as a
filter through which the matter of Britain influenced Tolkien's
Middle-earth writings. To some extent this plays into John Rateliff's
idea of Tolkien borrowing from himself more than anything else — from
the Arthuriana to Tolkien's _Fall of Arthur_ and from there to
Middle-earth. Another essential point that Lewis made in his
presentation was about viewing these source studies (or the game of
what influences what — actually Lewis was talking about how Tolkien's
texts influenced each other) as caleidoscopic: each perspective adds
to our understanding, but none of them is the complete picture. All
in all it was an enjoyable presentation, though I think Lewis fired
his best shots in the beginning (defining LotR as ‘mythic history’
and talking about the ‘Tolkien Conundrum’ — that Much of Tolkien's
writings were unfinished, that they were very much in flux and even
the published writings cannot be considered as Tolkien's last thought
on the matter).
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Lewis>

In the second time slot, I went to a session titled ‘Biography’. The
first speaker was José Manuel Ferrández Bru who gave a talk titled
‘J.R.R. Tolkien's second father: Fr. Francis Morgan and other non-
canonical influences.’. For the most part this talk covered some of
the same ground as Bru's article in _Tolkien Studies VIII_, but this
time with the addition of illustrations which at some points brought
Bru's points out better than the article (pictures of letters, for
instance). This time round, I was also more intrigued by Bru's
suggestion that the inspiration for the wind-riddle in _The Hobbit_
should be sought in a Spanish poem by one of Fr. Francis' family
members, which stood in Fr. Francis' library. Towards the end, Bru
suggested, half-jokingly I think, that there might be some echoes of
Fr. Francis' influence on Tolkien in some specifics of Tolkien's
fiction — apart from the wind-riddle, the Barrels out of Bound
chapter might reflect also Fr. Francis' family's involvement with the
sherry business, Minas Tirith may derive some qualities from a
Spanish town (white houses, mountaineous location), and the scouring
of the Shire may owe something to the Spanish casting out Napoleon.
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Bru>

Bru was followed by Colin Duriez who spoke on ‘The origins of the
Inklings.’ Some of the things that I took away from this was related
to specifics of the history of the Inklings: when were they meeting
in what way, the differences between the reading-sessions in (mostly)
C.S. Lewis' room in Magdalen and the pub-meetings, the informal and
unstructured nature of the club and the centrality of C.S. Lewis.
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Duriez>

After a lunch cut short, most of us worked our way to the Barrow Hall
to experience Charlie Ross perform his ‘One-man Lord of the Rings’.
The show is based on Jackson's film trilogy, but it is still very
funny and he adds a number of references to the book (I shan't say if
performing before an audience of which half were in costume at a
Tolkien Society event made him add a few extra book-references).
Unfortunately I was rather tired and suffering from a headache (and
the sound was very loud), so there were a number of jokes that went
past me witout me noticing (not until everybody else were laughing,
which is always a bit too late ...). Overall I am glad that I got
the chance to see this show.

Taking a short break to lie down for half an hour made a big
difference for my readiness for the video of Tom Shippey's talk at
the 6th Lustrum, ‘The Ancestors of Hobbits - strange creatures from
English Folklore’. At this event Tom Shippey spoke about a number of
the creatures mentioned in the Denham Tracts, explaining what is
known about them etc. The main point was to highlight that the Denham
Tracts carries a suggestion of what he called ‘the lost world of
English folklore’ — the indication that the lower mythology of
England had not always been the poor and watered-down affair that the
folklorist found once they finally got round to write things down:
the hint of a much richer _English_ folklore hiding just a few
hundred years before the texts were written down.
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#shippeyF>

The real treat of the day was the live talk by Tom Shippey on
‘Tolkien on Leadership’. I had never before seen Tom Shippey live,
though of course various reports and video clips have filtered down,
but he really is a fantastic lecturer, capable of captivating his
audience completely. Shippey thought that Tolkien appears not to have
thought much about leadership as such before _The Lord of the Rings_
(claiming that the leaders shown in the earlier works are actually
quite bad leaders). Then he looked at leaders in _LotR_ and grouped
them in six categories with one or two examples in each: the
sacrificial leader (Théoden), the suicidal leader (Denethor), the
persuasive leader (Saruman), the counsellor leader (Elrond &
Galadriel), the loyal leader (Faramir — loyalty here mainly meaning
upwards), and the ideal leader (Aragorn). The Orkish leader, Uglúk,
with his order-keeping abilities was also noted and duly admired.
Shippey found that Tolkien's position on leadership could be summed
up in three pieces of advice: 1) be visible 2) don't publishise
yourself too much to others, and 3) any decision is better than no
decision. Shippey admits to not being an expert on leadership, and I
think that more work could be done in this topic (some has already
been done by a Finnish scholar of business management, though only in
Finnish), but I would agree with Shippey that these three seem to be
important elements in Tolkien's portrayal of a good leader.
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Shippey>

In the post-talk discussions, I managed to get a little better
insight into Shippey's dissatisfaction with Tolkien's analysis of
Maldon — my problem being that we have in current use in Denmark the
word _overmod_ which has a meaning very close to that which Tolkien
assigns to O.E. _ofermod_ in his treatment of the Maldon (‘The
Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorthelm's Son’ and the related essay
‘ofermod’). Possibly because I was managing to look very fan-boyish,
I was very kindly invited to share a beer with Shippey and Ronald
Hutton before dinner.

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke, /Profiles of The Future/, 1961
(Also known as 'Clarke's third law')

[Troels Forchhammer]

Sunday

I got up a little late on Sunday (skipping breakfast) so as to get as
much sleep as possible (the auction had ended not long before 1 AM)
before it was time for my own fifteen minutes (or rather thirty) in
the spotlight. Having had my paper printed, I sat down to read it
through critically for the first time, ending up with an insane
amount of hand-written corrections, additions and deletions to keep
track of, but in the end I think I got through reasonably well (i.e.
without loosing my thread more than a couple of times). My paper,
'"in the memory of old wives" -- Old Tales and Fairy-stories in
Middle-earth' was inspired by an old discussion in AFT & RABT in
which Steuard asked which the stories Gandalf had told to the Hobbits
were, and Larry noted that something might be done in terms of
investigating how the metafictional fairy-stories contributed to the
portrayal of peoples in LotR. In the end, however, the paper was
based on the idea that Tolkien not only constructed _The Lord of the
Rings_ to be a highly successful fairy-story according to the
principles he laid out in his essay 'On Fairy-Stories,' but that he
also exemplifies several of his points by letting his characters
experience the effects of metafictional fairy-stories.
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Forchhammer>

I was followed by Maureen Mann, to whom I had afterwards to
apologize, because it took me the first ten minutes of her
presentation to get back to the here and now, and when I finally
caught up with the thread of her talk on '"various queer things": The
House of Tom Bombadil and Fairie,' I realized that it was highly
interesting, and that it took up very excellently where I had left
off (had the programming been reversed, I would have just as smoothly
taken up the thread where she had left it). Maureen Mann dealt with
one episode from _The Lord of the Rings_ that I had left out: Tom
Bombadil's power of narrative enchantment, which she discussed in
depth and in further context. Where I had merely skated the surface,
barely scratching it, in my presentation of an overarching idea,
Maureen Mann expertly drilled through the ice in one spot and drew
from there crystal-clear waters. (I have since been mailing with
Maureen, and I look forward to digging into her paper at my leisure
later this weekend).
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Mann1>

The last spot in our session was a talk about 'Tolkien's Faerian
Drama: Origins and Valedictions' by Janet Brennan Croft. This took up
the idea of the dream-vision as an example of Fa锟絩ian drama, the
enchantment Tolkien describes in 'On Fairy-Stories,' and investigated
this topic with examples from other authors as well as from Tolkien.
I very much enjoyed the presentation, particularly the attempt to
extract some common characteristics of a Fa锟絩ian Drama Dream-vision
(which includes the meeting, the intersection, of aesthetic and
ethic) based on examples ranging from medieval stories (such as
_Pearl_) via Dickens to Tolkien. Going through my notes and writing
up these comments, I come to wonder how she deals with Tolkien's
rejection of dream-stories as proper fairy-stories (I can see at
least a couple of possible routes, none of which might be the one
that Croft would choose).
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Croft>

After lunch I went to another session on 'Tolkien's Sources',
starting with Yoko Hemmi who spoke on 'Tolkienesque Transformations:
Post-Celticism and Possessiveness in 'The Lay of Aotrou and
Itroun'.' The paper (at least as it seemed to me) had two main
theses. One was the idea of 'post-celticism,' which, as I understood
it, is created by adding 'the fair elusive beauty that some call
Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things)'
(_Letters_, no. 131) to the authentically celticism of the ancient
Breton lays, and the other was that Tolkien, in his _Lay of Aotrou
and Itroun_ also added possessiveness as a moral flaw (the following
discussion also suggested a connection of possessiveness and the
desire for immortality). The presentation as a whole followed very
well on to Verlyn Flieger's presentation on Saturday, though I am
afraid that this somewhat bland summary doesn't do it justice.
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Hemmi>

Next up was Gerard Hynes with a presentation that fell directly
within one of the areas of Tolkien studies that I am _very_
interested in. Speaking of 'Tolkien's Boethius, Alfred's Boethius.'
Gerard Hynes argued that the changes made to the text in the Old
English translation of Bo锟絫hius' _Consolation of Prophecy_ attributed
to King Alfred (Hynes called it a re-interpretation rather than
merely a translation) makes the translated text a more likely source
for Tolkien than the original Latin. Summarising Hynes' summary of
the relevant differences, Alfred's version loosens causality,
allowing a greater option for changing providence -- the Latin
version deals with the freedom to _think_, the Old English version
with the freedom to _act_. Thinking of this presentation afterwards,
this summary seems to me to match nearly perfectly the differences in
the operation of free will between Men and Elves in Tolkien's world
(as described by Verlyn Flieger, Charles Noad and myself -- you have
no idea what pleasure it gave me to write this comment :-) ): Elves
following the model of the Latin Bo锟絫hius and Men following the model
of the Old English Alfredian Bo锟絫hius. Such a model would seem also
strangely appropriate in other ways (which is probably why I am at
once attracted to it and reluctant to adopt it).
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Hynes>

The last presention of this session on sources took moved the focus a
few centuries forward to discuss 'Tolkien and Romanticism.' The basic
idea of Anna Thayer (n锟絜 Slack) was to place Tolkien in a Romantic
tradition, though not quite as radical as the original romanticists,
and I think the idea went down quite well. It does certainly seem
straightforward that Tolkien incorporates a number of ideas / themes
/ images adopted from romanticism, though I would probably be more
cautious about calling Tolkien a romanticist as such (a claim, it
must be emphasised, that Anna Thayer did _not_ make!). Ending with
the image of the piercing beauty, and the consolation gained from the
untouchability and eternalness of Sam's sighting of a star while in
Mordor closed the loop nicely to several other presentations
(including my own) touching on Tolkien's idea of Fa锟絩ie.
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Thayer1>


The last of the day's multi-track sessions, I spent with a panel on
'Tolkien Research' chaired by Janet Brennan Croft (editor of
_Mythlore_) and including Verlyn Flieger, Bob Blackham, John Garth,
and Angie Gardner (note that only one of these was a university
professor doing academic research on Tolkien). There were several
very positive and inspiring things to get from this panel: it _is_
possible to access most of the things if you have a good reason (and
someone to recommend you in the case of the Bodleian), the exceptions
being all the Silmarillion papers and the private papers (both in the
Bodleian) that are controlled by the Estate. Part of what I took away
from this panel is a list of libraries featuring important archives
of Tolkieniana, including what they contain and how to get into them
(though 'present myself' at the Marquette might present a bit of an
obstacle, but only due to it being in Wisconsin, USA and my living in
Denmark). Overall I found the session informative, inspiring and
encouraging -- what more can one hope for in a session focusing on
the possibility for contributing to Tolkien studies by independent
researchers and scholars.
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#EduPanel4>

Actually the above wasn't really the last of the multi-track events.
Just before dinner we had to choose again -- this time between Nancy
Martsch's 'Thirty Years of Tolkien Fandom' and the Christine Davidson
Memorial Lecture, given by Ben Barootes titled 'These Fading Days:
Language, Loss, and Recovery in Tolkien's Legendarium.' This was a
tough choice, but I ended up listening to Ben Barootes, whom I had
talked with over dinner one day (I had also spoken with Nancy
Martsch, and I would have loved to hear her talk).
Martsch' talk:
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Martsch>
Barootes' talk:
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#CDML>

I am not sure that I could do justice to Ben's presentation (there is
a good reason why he won the award that was set up to let a promising
young Tolkien scholar participate in the Return of the Ring
conference and give this lecture). He took his outset in the
narrator's comments on Frodo's vain attempt command the Ringwraiths
at the Ford of Bruinen to go back to Mordor, 'but Frodo had not the
power of Bombadil,' and then asked why? The answer to this question
should, according to Ben Barootes, be found in Northrop Frye's model
of evolution of language in three phases (see URL). Ben Barootes
wove, with great eloquence, ideas concerning language, word- and
name-magic (and song-magic), 'the long defeat' and other ideas
together to a tapestry of compelling force, and though I am not sure
that I can walk the whole nine yards with Ben, I'll be there with him
for the seven or eight of them, and I am impressed with the
explanatory power of his model.
<http://fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca/2009/09/24/the-phases-and-
modes-of-language>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/cg8ldx3>

The final point on the agenda before the grand Banquet also covered
thirty years with a relation with Tolkien's work. Having to call my
wife (Sunday was, after all, her birthday), I missed the start, but
still got to hear most of Brian 'Sibley in Middle-earth: A Thirty-
Year Ramble.' Full of entertaining anecdotes, this 'ramble' (let's
honour Brian Sibley by keeping his own name for it) also proved
thought-provokingly interesting for me as a firm book-lover (who put
any adaptation far below the original, and any _narrative_ adaptation
even lower . . .) -- I have certainly learned a greater respect for
adapting artists (regardless of whether or not I like their
adaptation _as an adaption_).
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Sibley>

After hearing Brian Sibley, I had to rush back to my room to change
for the banquet. Fortunately it was little delayed, so I was still in
good time to enjoy the company at the table, which included one whose
name I never did catch fully, Beregond (from Forodrim, the Stockholm
Tolkien Society), Christopher Kreuzer, Allan Turner, Janet Brennan
Croft, Johan Olin and his brother, H锟絢an. For anyone who had
previously been to events in the Tolkien Society the Standing Silence
and the toasts to the Professor and to absent friends were of course
expected and familiar as old friends, but though one has read about
it, it is a different matter to actually be there and be a part of
it. Rituals have the function of tying people together, of
strengthening the sense of unity and common purpose and interests,
and this sense of community is, at least for me, a very valuable
addition to being a Tolkien enthusiast. As the food disappeared from
plates and tables, the social aspect of course became more and more
prominent. A number of participants went to the Q&A session with a
couple of the people behind _The Fellows Hip_ -- a film celebrating
gamer culture and _The Lord of the Rings_, while others chose to
continue the socializing outside where the temperature was
approaching comfortable levels (at least as perceived by this Dane).

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was
standing on the shoulders of giants.
- Sir Isaac Newton

[Troels Forchhammer]

Monday -- the last day.

Already from the morning there was a certain degree of closure and
breaking up in the air. Over breakfast I finally got around to hear
Andrew Higgins about his current work (he is working on a Ph.D. with
Dmitra Fimi while at the same time doing his day-time job --
impressive!) but in the various breakfast conversations one could
also hear the consciousness of there being only a few hours until we
would spread to all the corners of the world.

After breakfast I managed to nearly finish my packing before the
first session, which was a panel called 'Lifelong Learning Tolkien:
Face-to-face and Online' with Corey Olsen as chair, and Shaun Gunner
(of the Tolkien Society and the Tolkien Gateway), Mick Ennis (of the
Ironville & Codnor School Myth & Magic Reading Group), Dimitra Fimi
(of Cardiff Metropolitan University), and Christine Ahmed (website on
LotR and the Scottish border). Corey Olsen's pages as the Tolkien
Professor and his Mythgard Institute are (I hope) well-known, as is
Dmitra Fimi's work (which also includes on-line Tolkien classes), and
the Tolkien Gateway. Mick Ennis' story about the school-children and
their travels moved me strongly -- this group offers these kids a
chance to grow and develop in so many ways; not just intellectually,
but also socially, emotionally and in other ways. It's really
amazing! Another highlight was the look on Shaun Gunner's face when
he asked how many present had accounts on the Tolkien Gateway, and
even Dmitra Fimi raised her hand . . . priceless! Overall the panel
was good with its focus on the many ways to learn more about Tolkien
that is available, but also with the ever-present warning to not
trust the internet inherently: check up on everything if you can.
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#EduPanel2>
Story on the Ironville & Codnor School group:
<http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk/Tolkien-precious/story-11592603-
detail/story.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/brmwvfv>
Christine Ahmed's site on LotR and the Scottish border
<http://server13.web-mania.com/users/northeah/index.htm>

For the last session, I chose to go to a final session on 'Tolkien's
sources'. Andrew Morton started with a promise of explaining
'Everything you need to know about the real Bag End' -- and then
some. The presentation included a number of pictures of the real Bag
End, where Tolkien's maternal aunt, Jane Neave, had lived and farmed.
Tolkien is known to have visited the farm only twice: on
reconvalescence in 1923 and later on with the whole family. The
presentation contained a lot of visual evidence, without which a
summary will merely appear bland. However, the pictures and related
discussions spiced with a lot of interesting bits of information
about his old house (a settlement at this place goes back to before
the Norman period), and the family (including Jane and Mabel's
father, John Suffield, and his love for his daughter's farm), made
the talk quite interesting to follow.
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Morton>

The final bit of scholarly work that I got to enjoy at the conference
was Dmitra Fimi's presentation on 'Elves, Goblins and Other 'Fairy'
Things in The Hobbit: Tolkien's Victorian and Edwardian Inspiration'.
This again relied on visual evidence -- mainly Victorian images of
faries, and discussed how Tolkien had relied on some of these
Victorian faries, though the very petite creatures with wings that he
came to resent so strongly, and how their influence can be traced
quite a lot longer than I had previously thought: even after Tolkien
had renounced them so strongly in his essay 'On Fairy-Stories.'
<http://www.returnofthering.org/timetable_items.php#Fimi>

After this, all that was left of this fantastic conference was the
closing ceremony. Allowing us a last opportunity for cheering, this
included some additional award-giving. First Nancy Martsch presented
the Beyond Bree awards that are given 'in recognition of outstanding
contribution to the study of JRR Tolkien, from the Readers of _Beyond
Bree_'. Unlike previous award votes, the readers had this time voted
for a single clear winner, Mark Hooker. Honourary mentions went to
Dinah Hazel (_The Plants of Middle-earth: Botany and Sub-creation_)
and Phil Goss (the _Compleat Gyde to Tolkien Calendars_).
Congratulations to all -- the awards are well-deserved!
Beyond Bree: <http://www.cep.unt.edu/bree.html>

The Compleat Gyde to Tolkien Calendars:
<http://www.tolkiencalendars.com>

Finally the chair of the conference, Lynn Whitaker, took the stand
for the closing words. All the people who had helped make the
conference were duly thanked (including the participants), and of
course the committee. In the middle of this, the chair of the Tolkien
Society, Sally Kennett, had to take over in order to present the
society's Gold Badge to the conference's booking's officer, Lyn
Wilshire, after which she proceeded to present one also to the chair,
Lynn Whitaker. When the cheering had finally subseded, that was it --
the Return of the Ring was over, and all that remained was to check
out of our rooms and go back each to our own corner of this middle-
earth.

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.

A common mistake people make when trying to design
something completely foolproof is to underestimate the
ingenuity of complete fools.
- Douglas Adams, /Mostly Harmless/

[Troels Forchhammer]

And one last thing . . .

I've put my reports up on my blog as well:
<http://parmarkenta.blogspot.dk/2012/08/ive-been-writing-about-return-of-ring.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/8bc6vhk>

For the most part it is the same as I have posted here, but with a few
extra thoughts in the end about other things at the conference and what
I have got out of the conference.

Feel free to comment, here, there and everywhere ;-)


And out of curiosity - has this felt relevant to the groups? For my own
sake I'd like to see reports from other conferences if anyone attend
(MythCon, K'zoo, Tolkien Thing, Lustrum, etc. etc. -- the more the
merrier), so if there's a taste for this sort of thing, we might as well
encourage others to both attend local conferences and post about them
here :-)

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.

Men, said the Devil,
are good to their brothers:
they don't want to mend
their own ways, but each other's.
- Piet Hein, /Mankind/

[Tahiri]

> And out of curiosity - has this felt relevant to the groups? For my own
> sake I'd like to see reports from other conferences if anyone attend
> (MythCon, K'zoo, Tolkien Thing, Lustrum, etc. etc. -- the more the
> merrier), so if there's a taste for this sort of thing, we might as well
> encourage others to both attend local conferences and post about them here
> :-)
>

Yes, definitely relevant. I have enjoyed reading your reports of an event
I would not have heard about elsewhere, and would have had no chance
to attend anyway.

[Steve Morrison]

Agreed. I'm only sorry I couldn't attend myself, but I'm on the wrong
side of the pond to do so.