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' 

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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!   

50th International Congress of Medieval Studies - Tolkien at Kalamazoo Round-Up

Mae Govannen!

Well its has been over a month since I returned from the fantastic International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo Michigan (May 14-17), which was my second year of attendance.   I returned from Kalamazoo and went right into the final stages of finishing the manuscript of a new edition of Tolkien's A Secret Vice which I have co-edited with Dr. Dimitra Fimi and will be published by HarperCollins in Feb 2016 as well as the start of the 2015 Glyndebourne Festival (a.k.a my day job!).

The Tolkien at Kalamazoo Beowulf Dramatic Reading Group

This year's conference was really brilliant - the seminars, the papers, the colleagues I got to talk to and the fun of being part of a dramatic reading of the prose version of Tolkien's 2014 Beowulf in a brilliant adaptation by Thom Foy.



It was also quite exciting to give my second paper at Kalamazoo (now as Dr. Andrew Higgins!) - which this year occurred on the last day of the conference.  Here is a brief outline of the Tolkien related seminars/roundtables that I attended and papers given.

The first session kicked off the exploration of Tolkien brilliantly with 'Tolkien as Translator and Translated'.

• Sandra Hartl, a Phd student from Otto-Friedrich-University, Bamberg, gave a very interesting paper on Tolkien's use of Classical Sources (the subject of her PhD), with a specific focus on parallels between the Classical and Medieval Orfeo story and Tolkien's Beren and Luthien.  Sandra focused on Tolkien's early and continued interests in the Greek and Roman works, which does not receive as much attention in Tolkien scholarship as his interest in Northern literature.  Sandra drew out some interesting parallels between Ovid and Virgil's treatment of the Orfeo story and the Medieval version, which Tolkien himself translated and supervised A.J. Bliss's B Lit thesis on in 1947 (Chronology, p. 313 - does that still exist I wonder!).  Sandra's research is very interesting and I look forward to seeing more of her treatment of the classical sources Tolkien dipped his ladle in for his 'soup of story'. 

• Maria Volkonskaya explored Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  This paper focused on how Tolkien's modern English translation of Sir Gawain echoed the quality of the types of words that the Gawain poet used in the original poem.  Maria started her paper by indicating that in the glossary of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (compiled by Tolkien and E.V. Gordon) - of the 2,650 words - 250 of them are of Scandinavian origin and another group  are derived from French.  The French words are used by the Gawain poet for stylistic reasons such as for descriptive passages like when the Green Knight enters.  In this description of the Green Knight the beautiful and the grotesque are shown and emphasised through the poets choice of language.  The poet uses French words to describe the Green Knight's garments; whereas the most grotesque elements of the Green Knight are described using English or, in a few cases, Scandanavian words. The Green Knight's language itself is brutish, native and local containing many words with Scandanavian influence.  However, when Gawain is at the Castle of Sir Bertilak there are more instances of words with French borrowings.  Maria explored one line in the original Sir Gawain (ll. 224-225) where English and French words clash -  'Wher is', he said, 'the governour of this gyng" (SGGK, ll. 224-225).  Which Tolkien translates as 'Now where is', he said, 'the governor of this gathering' (Gawain, p. 23) maintaining the sense of the French and English words for 'governor' and 'gyng/gathering'

The showpiece of the first day of the conference was definitely the round-table 'Christopher Tolkien as Medieval Scholar'.  The dream-team partipants of this round-table were Douglas A. Anderson, John D. Rateliff and Brad Eden, who each spoke on aspects of the body of academic scholarship that Christopher Tolkien has done in his own right.  

• Douglas Anderson (who originally suggested this idea as a round-table for the conference) focused his talk on Christopher Tolkien's work in 1950-1960 and then again in 1969 with fellow Inkling Neville Coghill on scholarly editions from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales of The Pardoner's Tale (1958), The Nun Priest's Tale (1959) and ten years after them The Man of Laws Tale (1969).  These editions came out of Coghill's publishing of a popular edition of The Canterbury Tales with Harrap, and Coghill asked Christopher to work with him on these two editions.  Doug spoke on Christopher's work on these volumes and showed us various editions of them, 

• John D Rateliff started his talk by making the observation that up to 1974 Christopher Tolkien was known as a Medieval scholar and had he not worked on The Silmarillion (1977) and the 12-year labour of  publishing his father's mythology in The History of Middle-earth series, that is how we would think of him today.  John very kindly posted a written version of his talk on Christopher Tolkien's The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise. What I got out of John's excellent talk is that you can see the editorial blueprint for how Christopher structured The History of Middle-earth in the editorial work he did on Heidrek, which was one of a series of books in Nelson's Icelandic Texts.   

• Brad Eden gave a really intriguing talk by comparing how Christopher worked on and edited his father's mythology by suggesting that a similar use of texts was employed in stories of the Saints especially the Life of the Anglo-Saxon Saint Guthlac. 

The final session of the first day of the conference was a session on  'Tolkien and Victorian Medievalism' with three excellent papers exploring different aspects of this topic.  

• Sharin Schroeder (National Taipei University of Technology) focused her paper on Tolkien's Oxford lectures on Chaucer's The Pardoner's Tale and key elements he highlighted in these lectures that also suggest Tolkien's own thoughts on the folk-tale elements of Chaucer's tale, which she suggested have their origins in the work of 19th century folklorists.  She also drew some interesting parallels between Chaucer and Tolkien as story-makers.  Her paper sign posted the opportunity for more work on the Tolkien's own scholarship of Chaucer.  

• Amanda Giebfried (St Louis University) gave a paper on 'Maps and Landscape in William Morris and J.R.R. Tolkien.  Her paper focused on the trips William Morris made in the 1870's to Iceland and explored how Morris's description of landscape in his own fictional works, which would subsequently influence Tolkien, was inspired by the actual journeys through the landscape of Iceland and the descriptions he used in these journals (which are brilliant adventure novels in their own right!). 

• The final highly-anticipated paper of this session was by acclaimed Tolkien scholar Jane Chance (Rice University) who spoke on 'Tolkien's Victorian Fairy-Story Beowulf'.  Jane's paper suggested that Tolkien's work 'Sellic Spell' (included in the 2014 edition of Tolkien's Beowulf) was his re-writing of the Beowulf story as a fairy-tale.  In this work Tolkien turns the tragedy of Beowulf into a 'eucatastrophe' with a happy ending, the dragon never comes.  Jane drew out interesting parallels in 'Sellic Spell' to Andrew Lang and William Morris and also explored some of the more 'fairy-tale' elements of this work (including magic swords and rings) and suggested that in this version of the Beowulf story 'Bee-wulf' is much more like an Arthur figure.  I thought one of the most interesting points, of many,   Jane made is a need in Tolkien scholarship to take into consideration all the many projects (academic and creative) that Tolkien was working on during the writing on a key work (like 'Sellic Spell') and how they may have influenced each other.  Clearly Tolkien did not work on projects in isolation and an analysis of any work required looking at all the other projects he was working on during this time - an interesting point that I will add to my own methodology in researching Tolkien.   

On the next day of the conference The Tales After Tolkien Society held a round-table 'From Frodo to Fidelma:Medievalism in Popular Genres'.  

Kris Swank of Pima Community College and a Signum/Mythgard Institute Tolkien scholar and colleague gave a brilliant talk on 'Black in Sherwood: Race and Ethnicity in Robin Hood Media' in which she explored how the saracens of the Robin Hood legend are depicted in modern versions of the story.  Kris made the point that in modern adaptions the saracen 'other' is portrayed either as the strange foreigner or as the integrated muslim who is part of the band of merrymen but is still marked as 'other' through their dress and the following of strange customs.  She also explored how some of Robin's Merry Men have been portrayed in modern movie and televisions adaptations by people of colour.  

I thought the most interesting example Kris brought out here was the film Robin and The Seven Hoods with Frank Sinatra where Sammy Davis played Will Scarlet.  In this film the rather randy Maid Marion (played by Ava Gardener) seduced all of Robin's Merry Men except for Will Scarlet because he was being played by a black actor.  This was a brilliant presentation and I believe Kris is publishing related articles in an upcoming publication of The Tales After Tolkien Society. 

There were other interesting papers in this roundtable - next to Kris's the standout for me was John Marino of Maryville University called 'The Zombie Apocalypse in the Classroom' which related how John had used a simulated zombie attack to teach his students about survival and what is was like to live in the 14th century during the plague - very cool!   

The concluding day of the 2015 Congress had two very strong Tolkien sessions. 

On Sunday at 8:30am I was very pleased to see a full-room for the session 'Tolkien as Linguist and Medievalist'.  The panel for this session was made up of myself, Eileen Marie Moore, John D. Rateliff and Kris Swank.

My paper 'The First Red Book: An Exploration of Tolkien's Exeter College Essay Book' explored some of the earliest academic essays Tolkien wrote in his red covered Exeter College Essay book (the first Red Book).  My analysis of these essays, which were all written around 1913-1915, suggested links to the creative and intertwined myth-making and language invention Tolkien was developing at the time and suggests that these essays, just one source of Tolkien's own early academic work, gives us interesting insights into  understanding how Tolkien used elements of his own academic training in 'lit' and 'lang' in his own early mythopoeia and glossopoeia work. 

Eileen Marie-Moore gave an excellent paper on 'Inter-Elvish Miscommunication and the Fall of Gondolin' in which she explored one strand of the fate of the fall of Gondolin coming from the incursion of the speech of mortal interlopers into the 'nexus' of Elvish languages and dialects that were spoken in Gondolin.  Eileen gave some really intriguing examples of how this miscommunication was achieved through the blending of tongues, with a special focus on the Dark Elf Eol. 

John D. Rateliff's paper 'A Scholar of the Old School: Tolkien's Editing of Medieval Manuscripts' convincingly showed that contemporary criticism of Tolkien's process of editing Medieval manuscripts, as with the current 2014 edition of Beowulf, does not take into account how editors of Tolkien's own time thought about the actual process of editing manuscripts. Tolkien and his contemporary editors had a confidence in their knowledge of the texts and felt they had the philological knowledge to be able to change the scribes (not the original writers) emendations if they did not agree with them.  As is evidenced by Tolkien's edition of Exodus and Beowulf, Tolkien would emend certain passages and not tell the reader.  John highlighted the P. J. Lucas review of Tolkien's Exodus, which indicated that Tolkien's presentation leaves much to be desired.  John also made the point that Tolkien felt that the editor of a text should be invisible 'the trail of the passing editor' and that distractions should be removed from the text so that the work was a work of poesis or art.  The key point was that Tolkien had the confidence to do this and John's paper really helped me to understand the way Tolkien presents texts like Exodus, Sir Gawain and Beowulf to the modern reader.  

Kris Swank's 'Immram Roverandom' has to be one of my favs from the conference.  In this tour-de-force work of Tolkien scholarship Kris examined a recognisably Irish strain in Tolkien's 1925 children's story Roverandom, with a special focus on the immram, a class of Old Irish tales concerning a hero's sea journey to the Otherworld which were written in the Christian era but contains elements of Irish mythology. Kris's excellent paper identified key elements of the immram in Tolkien's Roverandom showing Tolkien's interest and use of Irish myth and legend.  Kris has an article coming out on this subject in the next volume of Tolkien Studies which I can not wait to read.  

The last Tolkien session of the conference brought us back to Tolkien's work on Beowulf.

• John R. Holmes's (Franciscan University of Steubenville) paper "That Does Not Attract Me": Lang/Lit. and the Structure of Tolkien's Beowulf Commentary' focused specfically on Tolkien's commentary on Beowulf, drawn from his Oxford lectures, which show the working of the tutorial mind who both knows and is trying to train students in framing  arguments.  Holmes gave several interesting examples of how in the commentary Tolkien follows a particular argument to its conclusion only to show that it is actually a dead-end, in other words showing students how to build an argument to ultimately show its weakness - a key focus of an Oxford student's preparation for their exams. 

• I was really looking forward to the next paper 'Can a Geat Be A Knight? Tolkien's Use of Chivalric Terminology in His Translation of Beowulf' by Professor Brian McFadden (Texas Tech University).  Tolkien's use of the term 'knight' in his prose translation of Beowulf has puzzled me since my first reading it last May.  Professor McFadden's made the point that the use of the word 'knight' in Beowulf was not unique to Tolkien and he been used in at least nine earlier translations - including John Earle's 'Deed's of Beowulf', which Tolkien first read as an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford (the one that starts of with 'What Ho! We have Heard'). McFadden suggested that like the word 'Elf' which he explored in On Fairy-stories, Tolkien was attempting to recover the word 'knight' to its original meaning which was connected with the Anglo-Saxon words of thane, retainer, earl, secg, leod, rinc.  McFadden pointed to Tolkien's notes on translation in the Clark-Hall prose translation of Beowulf when he explored the use of more contemporary words to signify older ideas...which yours truly needs to re-read! 

• Amy Amendt-Raduege focused her Beowulf exploration on 'The Weird Word Wyrd' examining the use of 'wyrd' ('fate')  in Beowulf.  Amy explored that the word 'wyrd' appears 12 times in Beowulf and is the subject of two of Tolkien's commentaries, with a record seven pages of commentary by Tolkien on 'wyrd'.  Amy recognised the actual meaning of wyrd is a crux in itself and examined several sources drawn from Old Norse and Jacob Grimm's link of wyrd to the Christian God.  Amy's talk made me go back and re-read Tolkien's very interesting notes on Wyrd in Beowulf!  

In addition to the Tolkien focused seminars and papers there were also some brilliant seminars focused on both 'lit' and 'lang'.  Of the most interesting for me was 'Words and Verses' sponsored by Society for Medieval Germanic Studies which included a paper by Dr. Nelson Goering of Oxford University (a brilliant Tolkien scholar as well) who gave a really interesting paper which looked at the metrical structure of the Word-Foot Theory of Old Germanic Meter.  Nelson is doing really brilliant work on Germanic metre and it is an area I am trying to read-up on and become more proficient in.

And the book rooms at Kalamazoo did not disappoint!  The list of books I purchased included two volumes that I am sure Tolkien read.  First The Principles of English Etymology by Rev. Walter W. Skeat in an Oxford Clarendon Press edition of 1887.  Secondly, Tolkien's former student G. Turville-Petre's Origins of Icelandic Literature (1953) which includes in the introduction 'J.R.R.Tolkien has also made many useful suggestions'

So another brilliant year of Tolkien exploration, discussion, debate and fun at Kalamazoo!  Based on the Tolkien at Kalamazoo Business meeting I think 2016 will be even more exciting (more to come on that!).  

Now it is on to the Leeds International Medieval Congress in July where I am very excited to be giving a paper on the panel 'Celtic Literature in Tolkien's Medievalism' organised  by Dr. Dimitra Fimi - in which I will be exploring the 'lit' and 'lang' of Welsh Princesses and Cats in Tolkien's Tale of Tinuviel - having fun digging back into the Lost Tales materials!

I also recently posted an extended version of the Francis Thompson paper I gave this March at The Enchanted Edwardians Conference in Bristol to Academia.edu here.

Namárië for now! 

Well....I am Back!

Mae Govannen!  Roughly three and half years ago Wotan left Valhalla to go on an incredible journey - an exploration of the world of J.R.R. Tolkien's earliest mythology.   With the incredible support, guidance and mentorship of Dr. Dimitra Fimi (my 'Gandalf' who appealed to my Tookish side of academic exploration and got me on the road!) I have now completed this quest and returned to my new Valhalla (looks like Fafnir and Fasolt have built me a new office - hope I don't have to give them Charlie the Wonder Corgi as otter-ransom).  

This Thursday in Cardiff I successfully completed my PhD thesis 'The Genesis of J.R.R. Tolkien's Mythology' and am now Dr. Andrew Higgins - a title I accept with humility and an unswerving ambition of wanting to do as much work and scholarship in the areas of Tolkien, fantasy literature and secondary world building in the years ahead....

The Genesis of Tolkien's Mythology - My PhD Quest 

The researching and actual writing of a PhD thesis on the early creative thought and mythology of J.R.R. Tolkien (a quest I highly recommend to all - whatever area you choose) has to be one of the most incredibly fulfilling, rewarding and, at times, frustrating projects I will ever undertake on this side of the great sea.   It is amazing to focus almost 24/7 on an author's emerging creative process - my research chose to critically examine the earliest creative work of J.R.R. Tolkien (up to the 'Book of Lost Tales' materials), from which the first version of his mythology would emerge, as one coherent whole, rather than a series of individual creative acts.  The thesis argues that all aspects of Tolkien's creativity worked in a dialectic way to bring to life an invented secondary world the complexity of which fantasy literature had not seen before.  In the next year or so one of my key projects will be working on turning the thesis into a book.  Hopefully in the not too far future I will be able to share with you my take on how Tolkien achieved the development of this earliest version of his secondary world.

The PhD viva itself was quite an experience and one of the most exhilarating robust academic dialogues I have had about the research.  When you are doing a PhD you are pretty much in what I call 'the thesis bunker' researching, writing and discussing your work mostly with your PhD supervisor - and in my case I was very lucky and fortunate that this meant spending many hours in discussion with Dr. Fimi whose incredible thoughts, feedback, patience (with my 'nigglings') and insight into this material was so important and valuable to me - there is none better! 

Being able to actually discuss the research with other academics (after three and half years of developing it!) was really rewarding.  I had a mock viva in December with an internal team at Cardiff Metropolitan University which helped me focus on some wider issues of the research.  Like in any quest,  I also had some amazing helpers along the journey who read chapters of my thesis and gave me incredibly instructive comments.  I was very fortunate to have the help of Tolkien scholar Douglas A. Anderson (who read an early version of the thesis and steered me in the right direction in terms of some of Tolkien's early work and dates) and then my thesis chapter readers: Dr. Verlyn Flieger, John D. Rateliff, Gerard Hynes and Dr. Simon Eckstein (whose own thesis work was an inspiration!).

For the final viva at Cardiff Metropolitan University last Thursday I was very fortunate to be examined internally by Dr. Kate North and externally by Dr. Mark Atherton - Lecturer in English at Regent's Park College, Oxford and author of There and Back Again: J.R.R. Tolkien and the Origins of the Hobbit.   This was an amazing session with some really constructive dialogue, debate and helpful feedback and comments that will go into the final thesis, which I submit in the next week, and also will feed into my work into turning this research into a book.

The only bittersweet element to achieving the PhD (very fitting for anything having to do with Tolkien) was that my Dad - having taken the ship to the West last year - was not there to see it.  In the acknowledgements of the thesis I paid tribute to my Dad who had a passion for Tolkien and introduced me to the 'arresting strangeness' of the world Tolkien built which had so impacted my Dad's life and subsequently mine.  I hope one day in the West my Dad and I can both discuss this research (he would have much to say I am sure!) - Nai hiruvalme Valimar! 

Upcoming Projects and Papers

To somewhat para-phrase Gandalf the achieving of a PhD is 'not an end' it is only the beginning.  As I remember in one of the many books on 'doing a PhD' I read over the last three years someone once said the PhD is not your 'masterpiece' it is what you do with it (wise words).   Indeed I return to Valhalla from my academic wanderings with quite a comprehensive list of projects that I will be working on - several of which have come out of, or been inspired by, strands of the research I have done.  

Currently I am scheduled to give the following papers at three key conferences coming up in 2015: 

The Enchanted Edwardians Conference 
Bristol 
29-30 March 2015 

I will be giving a paper on 'O World Invisible We View Thee' - The Syncretic Nature of Francis Thompson's Visionary Poems.   

At this conference Dr. Fimi will be giving a paper on 'Kipling and Tolkien and their "mythology for England" 

More info here 

50th International Conference of Medieval Studies 
Kalamazoo 2015 
May 14-17 2015 

This will be my second time taking part in the 'Tolkien at Kalamazoo' sessions in the company of many brilliant Tolkien scholars and academics. 

I will be giving a paper as part of the 'Tolkien as Linguist and Medievalist' Panel on 'The First Red Book - A Exploration of Tolkien's Exeter College Essay Book' and will also taking part in the live reading of Tolkien's Beowulf 2014 (practicing now as I re-read this important text for the current excellent 'Beowulf through Tolkien and Vice-Versa' course with Professors Tom Shippey and Nelson Goering) 

International Medieval Congress Leeds 2015 
6-9 July 2015 

Dr. Fimi has organised a series of Tolkien related sessions at this year's IMC Leeds 2015 and I am very excited to be giving a paper as part of the session on 'Celtic Literature in Tolkien's Medievalism' which includes some other excellent speakers including my Mythgard Institute colleague Kris Swank.  

• Tolkien, Brendan, and the Quest for The Lost Road (Aurélie Brémont, Centre d’Études Médiévales Anglaises (CEMA), Université Paris-Sorbonne – Paris IV)
• Immram Roverandom (Kris Swank, Pima Community College, Tucson)
• Welsh Princesses and Cats: Tolkien’s Tale of Tinuviel and The Gnomish Lexicon (Andrew Higgins, Cardiff Metropolitan University)

Other sessions will include papers by Dr. Fimi, Dr. Mark Atherton and Nick Groom whose work includes a brilliant chapter 'The English Literary Tradition: Shakespeare to the Gothic' in the 2014 Blackwell Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien.   

Dr. Fimi has more information on IMC Leeds 2015 on her blog posting here. 

In addition I have started to use Academia.edu for papers and book reviews and will continue to post there as papers are written and delivered.  There is an amazing treasure trove of academic resource to be found on this site.  

In January 2015 I launched a monthly Tolkien language column on The Signum University Newsletter 'The Signum Eagle' called 'In Dembith Pengoldh' through which I will explore elements of Tolkien's language invention. 

Wotan will use this blog to update on all activity and also explore some key areas of interest around Tolkien, fantasy literature and especially emerging scholarship in secondary world building and, for Wotan, the link to language invention.  

Glad to be back in Valhalla - and now to work - lots of papers to write!  

Dydd gwyl Dewi hapus! and Namárië for now!