CFP for Tolkien at Leeds International Medieval Congress (7-10 July 2025)

 

In 2025 Tolkien at IMC Leeds (7-10 July 2025) will be celebrating our ten year anniversary having been started in 2015 by our founder Professor Dimitra Fimi.   

The special thematic strand of this conference will be ‘Worlds of Learning’.  

We are very pleased that the 2025 IMC Tolkien Sessions will again be sponsored by the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow  

Paper submissions are being sought for the following 2025 Tolkien at Leeds sessions:  

Tolkien: Medieval Roots and Modern Branches

This session can accommodate wider topics and new approaches to Tolkien's medievalism, ranging from source studies and theoretical readings to comparative studies of Tolkien’s works.  

Learning, Lore and Craft in Tolkien’s Medieval World 

Papers in this session can explore the role that learning, preserving lore and producing crafts in their widest sense play in Tolkien’s world-building of his Middle-earth legendarium and other fictional and academic works.   

Oral Tradition and Medieval Transmission in Tolkien’s Works 

“From ‘The Book of Lost Tales’ to ‘The Red Book of Westmarch’ and ‘The Notion Club Papers,’ Tolkien crafted various narrative frameworks to convey the conceit of transmitting his invented secondary world into our primary reality. In this session, papers can delve into the significance of orality in Tolkien’s works and explore the diverse transmission frameworks he developed. Additionally, researchers may investigate the literary works that might have influenced Tolkien’s efforts to create these connections 

J.R.R. Tolkien as Teacher and Mentor at Leeds and Beyond 

In this session, papers will celebrate Tolkien’s pivotal role as a teacher and mentor to students at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford. Topics may encompass how Tolkien’s teaching and mentorship influenced scholars, the academic work he supervised, and the establishment of academic clubs like The Viking Club at Leeds and its counterpart, Kolbitar, at Oxford. Additionally, attendees can explore students’ memories of Tolkien as both a teacher and mentor

Tolkien at Leeds Annual Roundtable: Teaching Tolkien 

The Annual Tolkien at Leeds Roundtable will invite educators to discuss and debate teaching methodologies and the unique challenges of bringing Tolkien’s works into 21st-century classrooms.

Please submit a paper contribution title and abstract by 31 August 2024 to  

Dr. Andrew Higgins (asthiggins@me.com) 

• Length of abstracts: 150 words (max!)  
• Please include a short bibliography of main research your paper will be drawing on and be in dialogue with.  
• Papers will be 15-20 minutes long (3 session papers will be preferred) 

• With your abstract, please include name and details of contributor (affiliation, address, and preferred e-mail address)

Tolkien Sessions at Leeds IMC 2024

Eglerio! This year The Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow will again be sponsoring six Tolkien sessions at The International Medieval Congress at The University of Leeds from 1st to 4th July .  This continues the tradition started by our founder Professor Dimitra Fimi (whose vision and scholarship we are celebrating this summer!) and is my fourth year organising these sessions.  

We have a great line up of Tolkien scholars and students exploring many aspects of Tolkien and Middle-earth studies including several papers focused on the timely subject of this year's conference CRISIS 

Tolkien Medieval Roots and Modern Branches 

This year we have two sessions which address wider topics and new approaches to Tolkien's medievalism and works.  

Session 1 - Monday 1st July 2024: 11:115-12:45 GMT 

1) "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" Tolkien's 1953 Lecture and Related Finding: Andoni Cossio, Universidad del País Vasco - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Vitoria-Gasteiz; University of Glasgow (Virtual) 

2) Gondor Calls for Aid: But Who Will Pay? Brian Egede-Pedersen, Independent Scholar

3) Eärendil's Mythopoeic Journeys - Anna Smol, Mount Saint Vincent University, Nova Scotia

Session 2 - Monday 1st July 2024: 14:15-15:45 GMT 

1) Sub-Creation, Multi-Canon, or Unreliable Narrator: Mythopoeia in Action - Amira Ali Hassan Ali Abdullah, Independent Scholar

2)  'The king has got a crown again': Ruin as Hyperobject in Arda - Will Sherwood, University of Glasgow

3) Freezing the Frame on Crises in the Legendarium through the lens of Alan Lee - Sultana Raza, Independent Scholar

Tolkien's Medieval Sub-Creation in Crisis 

Monday 1st July: 16:30-18:00 GMT 

This session will examine different concepts of crisis in Tolkien studies. 

1) A Medievalist Myth-Making Crisis: Tolkien's Tychonic Cosmology - Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State University

2) Bree-folk were sympathetic, but…': Historical Precursors to Middle-Earth's Migration Crisis at the End of the Third Age - Christian Trenk, Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

3) The Crisis of Arda Marred and How (Not) to Unmar It: The Ring, the Tongue, and the Tower as the New Wheel of Fortune, the New Tower of Babel, and the New World Tree - Cameron Bourquein, Independent Scholar

Racial Medievalism in Tolkien Studies: A Session Celebrating the Works of Professor Dimitra Fimi, Founder of Tolkien at Leeds

Tuesday 2nd July 2024: 11:15-12:45 GMT 

In this session we will celebrate the work and scholarship of our Tolkien at Leeds IMC founder and leading scholar and author of Tolkien and speculative literature Professor Dimitra Fimi whose ground-breaking 2008 book Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits, won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies in 2010. Fimi’s evolving body of work has brought to light neglected aspects of Tolkien’s creativity and world-building, including the centrality of the Elves, the role of linguistic invention, and the relationships between race and material culture in Middle-earth 

1) Into the West: Wonders and Woes of Looking for 'Celtic' Inspirations in the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien - Aurelie Bremont, Sorbonne Université, Paris

2) Teaching Song and Holiness: An Exploration of the Mystic and Syncretic Elements of Tolkien's Earliest Elvish Language Invention: Andrew Higgins, Independent Scholar 

Tolkien at Leeds Business Meeting - 1pm-1:45pm GMT - 

To Join via Zoom: 

Join Zoom Meeting

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Bodily Crises in Tolkien's Medievalism

There will be two sessions exploring crises/concerns of gender and bodily difference in Tolkien’s works including sexuality and disability.  Indicative areas to be examined include the role of bodies under physical duress, punishment, injury from battle or war, as well as bodies in transformation including prosthetics, spiritual transformation (good or evil) and how bodies and body transformation from Tolkien’s works are depicted in illustrations and in films and other media.

Session 1 - Weds 3rd July: 14:15-15:45 GMT 

1) Altered Bodies, Altered States in the 'Tale of Tinúviel' - Cami Agan, Oklahoma Christian University

2) Éowyn and/or Dernhelm: Tolkien's Paradoxical Gendering of Éowyn's Disguise Gavin Foster, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia

3) The Torment of Maedhros and a Crisis of Mercy: Bodily Crises in Tolkien's Medievalism - Mercury Natis, Signum University, New Hampshire

Session 2 - Weds 3rd July: 16:30-18:00 GMT 

'Restless and uneasy...thin and stretched': The Ring, the Ringbearers, and Bodies in Psychological Crisis in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings - Sara Brown, Signum University, New Hampshire

Bodily Transformations in Tolkien's Middle-Earth: The Metamorphosis of Elwing - Yvette Kisor, Ramapo College of New Jersey

'He was naked, lying as if in a swoon': Gazing Queerly at Frodo's Saintly Body in Crisis - Christopher Vaccaro, University of Vermont

Crisis in Researching Tolkien: The Annual Tolkien at Leeds Roundtable 

Weds 3rd July: 19:00-20:00 GMT 

We will end the 2024 Tolkien at Leeds Session with the annual roundtable - this year in response to the conferences overall theme a panel of Tolkien scholars will explore the current crises facing Tolkien teachers, academics, and researchers in Tolkien and Middle-earth studies.    

As always SODOM (The Society for the Drinking of Mead) Events and Fellowship throughout! 

On Saturday 6th July The Tolkien Society will be presenting Tolkien Society Hybrid Seminar 2024 – Tolkien’s Romantic Resonances at the Hilton Leeds City 

See you in Leeds this July! 

CFP: Leeds 2024 IMC Tolkien Sessions

 

CFP: Leeds 2024 IMC Tolkien Sessions 

Paper abstracts are currently being sought for the following Tolkien sessions for the International Medieval Congress at Leeds, 1-4 July 2024.  The special thematic strand of this conference will be ‘Crisis’.  See more here 

We are very pleased that the 2024 IMC Tolkien Sessions will again be sponsored by The Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow - 

Paper submissions are being sought for the following sessions:  

Tolkien’s Medieval Sub-creation in Crisis 

This session will examine different concepts of crisis in Tolkien studies. Papers may explore the types of crises Tolkien himself created in the body of his legendarium by his revising of several keys stories and legends at different times in his lifelong work.  Papers can address the significance of these narratives and their revisions in Tolkien’s shifting ideas about the world and cultures he was inventing. Papers may also explore adaptations of Tolkien works and how they create crises in our evolving understanding of the canon of Tolkien’s work and its reception.  

Bodily Crises in Tolkien’s Medievalism 

Papers in this session can explore crises/concerns of gender and bodily difference in Tolkien’s works including sexuality and disability.  Indicative areas to be examined include the role of bodies under physical duress, punishment, injury from battle or war, as well as bodies in transformation including prosthetics, spiritual transformation (good or evil) and how bodies and body transformation from Tolkien’s works are depicted in illustrations and in films and other media.  

Racial Medievalism in Tolkien Studies - A Session Celebrating the Works of Professor Dimitra Fimi Founder of Tolkien at Leeds.    

Papers in this session may respond to, critique and develop key ideas regarding Tolkien’s representations of race that were first explored in Professor Dimitra Fimi’s ground-breaking 2008 book Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits, which won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies in 2010. Fimi’s evolving body of work has brought to light neglected aspects of Tolkien’s creativity and world-building, including the centrality of the Elves, the role of linguistic invention, and the relationships between race and material culture in Middle-earth This session invites papers that explore Tolkien’s contexts, racial representations and world-building through engaging with and building upon the approaches Professor Fimi has set out in her academic work.

Tolkien: Medieval Roots and Modern Branches

This continuing Tolkien at Leeds session will accommodate wider topics and new approaches to Tolkien's medievalism, ranging from source studies and theoretical readings to comparative studies of Tolkien’s works and Middle-earth studies.  

Crises in Researching Tolkien: A Round Table 

The Annual Tolkien at Leeds roundtable will explore the current crises facing Tolkien teachers, academics and researchers in Tolkien and Middle-earth studies.  Topics can include the various adaptions of Tolkien’s works that will continue to grow with new media deals, differing thoughts on treatment of Tolkien’s race, culture and sexuality in his works and the desire of scholars to see, analyse and contextualise more of Tolkien’s remaining unpublished papers.   

• Please submit a paper contribution title and abstract by 31 August 2023 to  Dr. Andrew Higgins (asthiggins@me.com) 
• Length of abstracts: 150 words (max!)  
• Papers will be 15-20 minutes long (3 paper sessions will be preferred) 
• With your abstract, please include name and details of contributor (affiliation, address, and preferred e-mail address)

Tolkien Sessions at Leeds IMC 2022 - Full Schedule

 Eglerio!  Here is the full schedule of 2022 Tolkien at Leeds Sessions for this summer's conference.  

Thanks to our founder Dr. Dimitra Fimi the 2022 Tolkien at Leeds sessions are being sponsored by The Center for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow 

Before the IMC Conference Starts - The Tolkien Society will be hosting a one day seminar on Tolkien and the Gothic on Sunday 3rd July in Leeds - more information here 

Monday 4th July 11:15-12:45 GMT (Session 141) 

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

Moderator: Dr. Kristine Larsen,  Central Connecticut State University

'An Attempt to Re-Examine the Dialectic of the East and the West in Tolkien’s Selected Works' - Andrzej Wicher, Uniwersytet Łódzki

"Of Dust Motes, Trees, and Golden Flowers: Tolkien and Duns Scotus’ Haeccitas- Victoria-Holtz Wodzak, Viterbo University, Wisconsin

"Epistolary Glossopoesis: The Role of Early Reader and Author Responses in the Development of the Elvish Languages"  Dr. Andrew Higgins 

Monday 4th July 14:15-15:45 GMT (Session 241) 

Tolkien and Medieval Poets: A Session in Memory of Richard C. West  

Moderator: Dr. Andrew Higgins 

"The Revivalist Critic and the Alliterative Poet: An Unexpected Collaboration" Dr. Andoni Cossio, Universidad del País Vasco 

"Computing the Interlace Structure of The Lord of the Rings" James Tauber  Lancaster University

‘Pearls’ of Pearl: Medieval Appropriations in Tolkien’s Mythology - Dr. Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State University

Monday 4 July 19:00-20:00 GMT (Session 441) 

Round Table Discussion: Tolkien As A Gateway to Interdisciplinary Teaching 

Moderator: Dr Andrew Higgins 

This round table discussion will feature talks by teachers on how they have used the works of Tolkien to introduce and engage students with new fields of study and disciplines. Short papers and discussions will explore how teachers have used the works of Tolkien as a gateway for students to explore and become passionate about other areas of study.

Scheduled participants: Deirdre Dawson, Dr. Jane Beal, Gaëlle Abaléa, Brian Egede-Pedersen, Dr. Dimitra Fimi 

Wednesday 6th July 9:00-10:30 GMT (Session 1033) 

Borders Between Life and Death in Tolkien's Legendarium 

Moderator: Dr. Sara Brown 

'Memories on Borders: On the Borders of Memory - Beleriand as Elegiac Landscape" Cami Agan Department of Language & Literature, Oklahoma Christian University  

"Beyond the Circle of the World" Amy Amendt-Raduege Department of English, Western Washington University

Undead or Undying: Limited of Immortality in Tolkien's Work'  Gaëlle Abaléa, Independent Scholar, Orléans

Wednesday 6th July 11:15-12:45 GMT (Session 1131) 

Family, Orientation, Transgression and Crossing Borders of Middle-earth 

Moderator: Dr. Andrew Higgins 

'Tolkien’s Orphaned Heroes' - Deidre Dawson, Residential College in the Arts & Humanities, Michigan State University

'Chrononormativity and Queer Time: Crossing Temporal Borders in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth' Yvette Kisor, Humanities & Global Studies, Ramapo College of New Jersey

‘Finding out what lies beyond the borders of the Shire’: Applying Tolkien’s Fantastic Texts in and to Madness - The Transgressive Experience of Psychotic Thinking' Alke Haarsma-Wisselink, Independent Scholar, Zwolle

‘Lay your head in my lap’: Homoerotic Tension and Possibility on Mordor’s Border in The Lord of the Rings' Olivia-Kate Burgham, Independent Scholar, Ottawa

Thursday 7 July 2022 11:15-12:45 (GMT) Session 1641 

Crossing Borders in Middle-earth 

Moderator: Dr. Andrew Higgins 

"Light: The Key to Cross the Spatiotemporal Borders in J. R. R. Tolkien's Secondary World" Aslı Bülbül Candaş, School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow 

"Interrogating the Liminal Space: Vampires and Werewolves in Middle-earth"  Dr. Sara Brown, Signum University 

"Time Travel, Astronomy, and Magic Mirrors: How the Borders between Reality and the Otherworld in Middle- Earth Are Influenced by Celtic Mythology and Science (Fiction)' Aurelie Bremont, Centre d’Etudes Médiévales Anglaises (CEMA), Sorbonne Université, Paris

Tolkien at Leeds IMC 2022 Business Meeting - TBD 

SODOM fellowship and meading throughout!  

LIVE Tolkien Sessions at Leeds 2022 - Feb 2022 Update

   

Tolkien sessions at Leeds IMC 2022 (4-7 July 2022) 

Eglerio! These sessions have now been announced and there will be a more detailed blog post coming! 

For now you can see the sessions and speakers here just put Tolkien in the Sessions search 

This year thanks to our founder Dr. Dimitra Fimi these sessions will be sponsored by Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at University of Glasgow

See you in Leeds! 

Exploring Imaginary Worlds: Essays on Media, Structure and Subcreation

In the course of my scholarly and academic research and exploration there have been several books that I consider revelatory and have helped shaped the course of my own research and areas of interest   

In the field of Tolkien studies I would say these three books are: Dr. Verlyn Flieger's Splintered Light: Logos and Light in Tolkien's World (1983 revised 2002) Thomas A. Shippey's The Road to Middle-earth (1982 revised 2012)  and Dr. Dimitra Fimi's Tolkien, Race and Cultural History - From Fairies to Hobbits (2008) (and very lucky me Dimitra became my PhD supervisor and we went on to co-edit A Secret Vice Tolkien on Language Invention published by HarperCollins in 2016)

In the broader field of fantastic literature studies I would elect Farah Mendlesohn's Rhetorics of Fantasy (2014). Michael T. Saler's As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality (2012) and Professor Mark J.P. Wolf's Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Sub-Creation (2012).  

Since reading Professor Wolf's 2012 monograph I have been a great admirer of the work he has been doing to explore the world's behind fictional texts in their broadest sense (from narratives, films, television shows to video games and amusement parks). For me this opened up a whole next vista in looking at a text and added to my thinking in my primary Tolkien research and studies which tends to focus on how Tolkien used invented languages combined with myth-making to build his world of Middle-earth.    

Professor Wolf has also gone on to bring together scholars to explore the role of world-building.  This included the volume Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Sub-creation Studies Anthology published by Routledge in 2017 which included a brilliant chapter by Dr. Dimitra Fimi on The Past as an Imaginary World: The Case of Medievalism which compares and contrasts the medieval world-building of Thomas Chatterton, Umberto Eco and J.R.R. Tolkien.  I was very excited to review both the 2012 monograph and this volume for The Journal of Tolkien Research 

I first got to work with Professor Wolf when he asked Dimitra and I to contribute a chapter on 'Invented Languages' in the 2018 The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds.   It was around this time that I heard that he was planning another collected volume of exploring world-building in fictional texts and I jumped at the chance to be a part of this one.  

I decided to contribute to this new volume with a piece not on Tolkien or invented languages but around a story-world that I had grown up with and is a very important part of my life - the world ofDark Shadows.   Ever since I ran home from school to watch the last seasons of the original episodes on ABC TV in New York City and then re-watched the original 1245 episodes that started in 1966 (the same year Star Trek first appeared) again in re-runs, on MPI Videos and (to this day) on DVD's and Amazon Prime I have been fascinated by the gothic world of Dark Shadows.  I have been very lucky to have actually attended several Dark Shadows fan conventions in New York City and meet some of the original cast including Jonathan Frid (Barnabas Collins), Lara Parker (Angelique), David Selby (Quentin) and Kathryn Leigh Scott (Maggie Evans/Josette) who to this day is involved with many Dark Shadows projects including the recent excellent recordings of the original Dark Shadows gothic novels by Marilyn Ross (I am up to number 16 Barnabas, Quentin and The Mummy's Curse) - I have explored some of the Marilyn Ross novels on past blog posts here 

Sympathetic Vampires (long before Angel and Edward), werewolves, witches, time travel, Lovecraftian leviathans, parallel time - this trans-medial story-world has it all and I wanted my chapter in this volume to be a scholarly exploration using those ideas and thoughts that I learned from Professor Wolf's excellent work to explore the gothic world-building of Dark Shadows.  It was an incredible exploration and along the way I discovered the vast and varied soup of gothic, horror, and weird stories that Dan Curtis and his team or writers dipped into to create the narratives of this world.  

This new volume has just been published and has some brilliant chapters - here is the table of contents - hope you enjoy mine and many others explorations of the world's beyond the texts we read, watch, experience and play in - and I am looking forward to more exploration! 

Foreword

Scott Adams

 

Acknowledgments

　

Introduction

Mark J. P. Wolf

　

WORLDS OF WORDS

The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground by Ludvig Holberg: Subcreation and Social Criticism

Lars Konzack

‘A Little Bit of England Which I Have Myself Created’: Creating Barsetshire across Forms, Genres, Time, and Authors

Helen Conrad O’Briain

Mythopoetic Suspense, Eschatology and Misterium: World-Building Lessons from Dostoevsky

Lily Alexander

Building the Vorkosigan Universe

Edward James

　

AUDIOVISUAL WORLDS

Our World: World-Building in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town

Mark J. P. Wolf

"Suckled On Shadows": States of Decay in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Novels

Edward O’Hare

The Gothic World-Building of Dark Shadows

Andrew Higgins

Daventry and the Worlds of King’s Quest

Christopher Hanson

　

TRANSMEDIA WORLDS

The Softer Side of Dune: The Impact of Social Sciences on World-Building

Kara Kennedy

Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: Balance and Interconnectivity in the Fractured Worlds of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman’s The Death Gate Cycle

Jennifer Harwood-Smith

Welcome to the "Second-stage" Lynchverse – Twin Peaks: The Return and the Impossibility of Return Vs. Getting a Return

Matt Hills

The Fault in Our Star Trek: (Dis)Continuity Mapping, Textual Conservationism, and the Perils of Prequelization

William Proctor

　

Appendix: On Measuring and Comparing Imaginary Worlds

Mark J. P. Wolf

2017 A Look Ahead

Greetings to all from Valhalla which in the last four months has moved from London to lovely Brighton by the sea.  Wotan never thought he would live 5 blocks from a full blown pier and amusement park - so whenever Wotan tires of working on the various projects that I will be previewing below he can always go and ride on a roller coaster or take a visit to the Haunted Mansion.   

I have not blogged in a while and want to start again to share some of the work I am currently doing on Tolkien, World-Building and various others projects.  

Well 2017 is shaping up to be quite a busy year for Dr. Wotan after his work on the PhD thesis 'The Genesis of Tolkien's Mythology' and co-editing A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Language Invention with Dr. Dimitra Fimi.  I will be giving four papers this year as follows two across the pond in Kalamazoo, Michigan and two at the Tolkien sessions that the brilliant work of Dr. Fimi has established at The IMC in Leeds.   The abstracts I have written for these papers are below and Wotan is busy researching and writing them now! 

Tolkien Symposium at The Western Michigan University Library - 10 May (1-5pm) 

Mapping Tolkien's The Book of Lost Tales: Exploring 'I Vene Kemen'  (The Ship of the Earth) 

One of the unique para-textual elements that Christopher Tolkien published in the first volume of The Book of Lost Tales which is celebrating its 100th Anniversary in 2017 was a map in the form of a viking ship which his father invented as he was writing the first version of his mythology.   In this paper I will examine this conceptual and radical map called ‘I Vene Kemen’ (‘The Ship of the Earth’) from three perspectives.  First, as a key element of Tolkien’s early myth-making;  examining how it is linked to the body of ‘Lost Tales’ he was composing.  Secondly, as a para-textual artefact which reflects Tolkien use of his emerging Elvish languages.  Here I will focus specifically on how the place names on the map reflect the ‘consistent and coherent’ nomenclature Tolkien invented drawn from the Elvish lexicons and grammars he was developing at the time.  Finally, I will examine this map as a key element in the wider process of ‘world-building’ for fiction.  Here I will explore how this map represents the first of many maps Tolkien would invent and integrate into his narratives to build the world of his legendarium.   I will also explore and suggest some possible reasons why Tolkien decided to cast this map in this conceptual form of a viking ship based on his early objective of linking his unique mythology to a lost tradition of England.  

52nd International Medieval Congress - Tolkien at Kalamazoo 

Tolkien and Language Session - Saturday 13 May 

Elvish Practitioners of the 'Secret Vice 

In the course of his life Tolkien explored his thoughts and feelings on the role of language-invention as an interlinked element of myth-making and world-building in two key manifestos: his 29 November1931 talk 'A Secret Vice' and in his inaugural O’Donnell Memorial lecture of 1955 ‘English and Welsh’. Tolkien not only used his mythology to illustrate to his readers how he felt language invention should work in his Legendarium. In several instances within the context of his secondary world Tolkien both mythologized and embedded into the very narrative and discourse of several key mythic texts examples of peoples practicing the ‘secret vice’ of language invention which followed the theories Tolkien explored in the two key manifestos above. In this paper I will critically analyze several texts that Tolkien wrote in the 1950's and 60's (especially the ‘Dangweth Pengoloð' - 'The Answer of Pengoloth') to explore how Tolkien embedded his theories of language and language invention into these texts and also analyse why Tolkien especially had his first-born Elves practice the craft of language invention 'an art for which life is not long enough' (SV, p. 11).  

Tolkien Society Conference Leeds - Sunday 2nd July 

Poetry and Language Invention: The Interconnected Nature of Tolkien’s ‘The Qenya Lexicon’ and His Early World-Building Poetry.

In the Spring of 1915 Tolkien started the invention of his earliest Elvish language, Qenya, by composing two key documents – ‘The Qenya Lexicon’ and ‘The Qenya Phonology’.  Concurrent with this Tolkien also built his emerging secondary world mainly through poetic composition.  In this paper I will explore the interrelated nature of Tolkien’s earliest language invention and poetic composition from several perspectives. First I will explore how Tolkien included in ‘The Qenya Lexicon’ invented word forms that were designed to make select Elvish words sound more poetic and musical.  Secondly, I will demonstrate through a lexical analysis of some of the key poems Tolkien composed during this time, including his foundational world-building poem of July 1915 ‘The Shores of Faery’, a high corrospondance between the words in these early poems and the base roots and words Tolkien invented in ‘The Qenya Lexicon’; suggesting Tolkien may have been intending to render some of the English poems into Qenya.   Finally I will explore the lexical and grammatical sources of Tolkien’s first Elvish poem ‘Narqelion’ in Tolkien’s ‘The Qenya Lexicon’ showing the strong bond that existed even in this earliest period of Tolkien’s mythopoeia between poetry and language invention .  

International Medieval Congress Leeds  

'New' Tolkien Exploring the Canon - Monday 3 July 4:30-6pm 

Organizer and Moderator: Dr. Dimitra Fimi 

'A Secret Vice', the 1930's and the Growth of Tolkien's 'Tree of Tongues'  

In this paper I will explore how after giving us 1931 talk 'A Secret Vice', and as I will argue in several ways because of it, that Tolkien embarked on a new phase of his Elvish language invention by creating his 'Tree of Tongues' that has its conceptual roots in a proto-Eldarin ur-language and through-out the 1930's branched out into over ten different related Elvish languages existing in varying forms of linguistic development.  I will explore how Tolkien's development of this 'Tree of Tongues' drew conceptually upon his training and experience as both a philologist and medievalist and mythically reimagined the real-world attempt by 19th century philologists to reconstruct a similar type of structure for Indo-European languages suggesting it too had a common origin in a reconstructed 'port-Indo-European' language.  I will also explore how this 'Tree' fulfilled the requirement Tolkien explored in 'A Secret Vice' that art-lancs should have a fictional historical background including a sense of hypothetical change over time.  I will explore how Tolkien's 'Tree' is intertwined and interrelated to such key texts from the 1930's including 'The Quenta' and 'The Quenta Silmarillion', 'The First Silmarillion Map', the Annals of Valinor and Beleriand and the two key works on the Elvish languages Tolkien wrote in this period 'The Lhammas' and 'The Etymologies' 

________________________________________________________________________________

Well that should keep Wotan busy but wait there's more!  I am also very busy working on turning my PhD thesis 'The Genesis of Tolkien's Mythology' into a book and also Wotan is very excited that he will be working on a paper for an upcoming publication delving into the Gothic World-Building of the trans-medial diegetic world of Dark Shadows (more to come on this!).  

Talking about world-building one of Wotan's reading highlights this year, so far, has been a brilliant anthology of papers on world-building edited by Mark J.P. Wolf, Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology for which I wrote a short review of for Amazon.uk giving it 5 stars (quoted below).  This is a must read book for anyone interested in world-building for fiction or any other media.  

'Professor Mark J.P. Wolf’s 2012 monograph Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation (Routledge) was for me, and many others, a revelatory text as it dealt with how imaginary worlds are created in fiction; focusing on the trans-medial elements, in addition to the core narrative, that go into building secondary-worlds. Now Wolf has followed up his brilliant work on the theory behind world-building by bring together a group of leading scholars to explore various elements of world-building in fictional texts as well as physical and virtual environments. Wolf very helpfully divides these papers up into key sections. In 'Worlds on the Rise' three scholars examine different aspects of world-building. Dr. Dimitra Fimi's brilliant paper 'The Past as an Imaginary World: The Case of Medievalism' cogently explores three different author’s - Thomas Chatterton, J.R.R. Tolkien and Umberto Eco - work on inventing an imagined world aimed at representing a medieval past. Fimi puts in-depth focus on the actual process each of these authors used in inventing their versions of medievalism through their making of actual artefacts (forged and feigned documents) as well as constructing narrative transmission schemes to ground these worlds in a sense of reality. Fimi’s re-contextualisation of what has been considered the forgeries of an author like Thomas Chatterton as actually an inventive act of world-building is sure to open up new vistas of exploration around these and related texts. The section called 'Structure' offers a good set of papers exploring the actual mechanics of secondary worlds; ranging from Tolkien's world-building work to that of the role of religion as a world-building element in the television texts Battlestar Galactica and (the short-lived) Caprica as well as the transformational world-building and user reception of Minecraft. In the ‘Practice’ section there are several papers on specific fictional world-building. For me, the two papers on the American fantasy author Frank L. Baum really stood out here. Michael O Riley suggests one of the key sources of Baum's well-known Oz series of books is actually another work Baum wrote in the same year he wrote his most famous book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) called A New Wonderland which was overshadowed by the success of the first Oz book. A New Wonderland is a collection of stories that are set in the magical land of Phunnyland. Riley cogent exploration of this ‘lost’ text demonstrates that Baum would use several key elements of Phunnyland in his later Oz books (which itself grew in the series from being a portal world into a fully immersive secondary world) and also explores how prolific a world-builder Baum was outside of just his more well known Oz series. Henry Jenkins provides a good counter-point to Riley’s paper by exploring how the Baum’s Oz mythos was adapted in the recent film Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) which suggested a backstory to the origin of the Wizard by drawing upon elements of not only Baum’s original work put also key adaptations such as the famous MGM Musical The Wizard of Oz and the more recent stage musical Wicked. The series of papers on 'Reception' show how world-building for fiction can be expanded through what Henry Jenkins has called 'multi-media layering.' A good example is the extension of a fictional world coming from film or television through novelizations. William Proctor and Mathew Freeman's paper examines the very recent debate in the Star Wars mythos of what in the many novelizations of the original films is considered ‘canon’ to Lucas’ original world-building and what is now what Disney has been deemed ‘legendary’ as it no longer fits the diegetic braiding of the ‘official’ world-building of the Star Wars mythos. Gerald Hynes masterfully explores the role of language in the world-building of China Mieville’s Embassytown showing how the world-building element of language, either actually shown (as in Tolkien’s great work) or just described, has the power to shape conceptual domains and ground a secondary-world in a great sense of reality. After offering these brilliant papers this volume ends with a paper by Wolf himself suggesting a canon of Imaginary Worlds ranging from Kallipolis in Plato’s Republic (c. 380 BC) to the Utopia of Thomas More (1516 – the first fictional text to include elements of invented language and a map!) up to Wonderland, Flatland, Oz and of course Tolkien’s Arda – and beyond. One could just revel (and in these scary times in the primary world) escape into these worlds – and thanks to the continued work of Wolf (his bio shows more work on world-building is coming from him!) and the scholars who have contributed to this volume we now have a better understanding and exploration of how these worlds are built, grow, are received and thrive in our multi-media and multi-layered culture. I highly recommend this book and look forward to many more explorations.'

Well Hugin and Munin are whispering in my ears that I should stop writing this blog and actually get to work on the projects above - so Wotan will leave you now and will return with more news and thoughts from Valhalla by the Sea.  

 Lebe Wohl for now!