Binding them all
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on JRR Tolkien and His Works
Monika Kirner-Ludwig, Stephan Köser & Sebastian Streitberger (editors)
Cormarë Series No. 37
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This volume "binds" a collection of selected papers that emerged from
the J.R.R. Tolkien-lecture-series initiated at the University of Augsburg
in 2014. Each of the papers is representative of the editors' interest in
the interdisciplinary potentials of Tolkien's works and the joint venture
to make his legacy visible and accessible from the viewpoint of numerous
academic disciplines. Our contributors are experts as well as junior
scholars from the fields of Literature and Linguistics, Geography, History,
as well as Communications and Cultural Studies.
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Table of contents
Stephan Köser (with Monika Kirner-Ludwig & Sebastian Streitberger)
The Tolkien Journey at the University of Augsburg
1
Thomas Honegger
"Meet the Professor"
A Present-day Colleague's View of Tolkien's Academic Life and Work
17
(abstract)
Monika Kirner-Ludwig
A Meta-pragmatic and Discourse-analytical Approach
to Tolkien's "Beowulf The Monsters and the Critics":
A Deliberate Look at its Edges, not its Center
39
(abstract)
Heike Krebs
"One trailer to bring them all and in the darkness bind them?"
Lord of the Rings Trailers and their Communicative Functions
71
(abstract)
Birgit Schwan
Searching "For a Better Rhythm, or a Better Word or Phrase":
Tolkien's Re-Telling of the Legend of King Arthur in Alliterative Metre
111
(abstract)
Heike Schwarz
Wounds That Can(not) Be Wholly Cured: Ecopsychology, Solastalgia
and Mental Substainability in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
139
(abstract)
Magdalena Spachmann
Ethereal Elvish and Horrid Orkish:
An Attempt to Capture J.R.R. Tolkien's
Controversial Theory of Linguistic Aesthetics and Phonetic Fitness
169
(abstract)
Sebastian Streitberger
Concepts of Space in Middle-earth‘s Landscapes
or the Potential of Fantasy and Film for School Geography
193
(abstract)
Sabine Timpf
Insights into Mapping the Imagined World of J.R.R. Tolkien
231
(abstract)
Carolin Tober
How J.R.R. Tolkien Used Kennings to Make
The Lord of the Rings into a Medieval Epic for the 20th Century
253
(abstract)
Oliver M. Traxel
Exploring the Linguistic Past through the Work(s) of J.R.R. Tolkien:
Some Points of Orientation from English Language History
279
(abstract)
Christine Vogt-William
Tolkien's Green Man: The Racialised Cultural Other
Within and Green Spaces in The Lord of the Rings
305
(abstract)
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Abstracts
The Tolkien Journey at the University of Augsburg
"Meet the Professor" – A Present-day Colleague's View of Tolkien's Academic Life and Work
J.R.R. Tolkien saw himself primarily as an academic, a researcher in and teacher of medieval literature(s) and languages. Literary fame came relatively late – The Lord of the Rings was published in 1954-55 when Tolkien was approaching retirement. This late success as an author of fiction did not fundamentally change Tolkien's self-perception as (primarily) an academic. A closer look at his academic work is therefore crucial for a deeper understanding and appreciation of his literary works.
Since J.R.R. Tolkien was both philologist and writer, text linguistics as the
interface between linguistics and literature provides a most suitable instrument
for a thorough analysis of his lecture """Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics",
which was given on November 25, 1936.
Surely it was Tolkien's mission to convince the audience of Beowulf's complexity,
literary value, and worth as Anglo-Saxon heritage and he succeeded in
convincing both his audience and many critics. However, an analysis reveals
that the lecture is plainly too profound, dense, and complex for aural reception,
especially for a non-professional audience. This paper will argue and demonstrate
on various linguistic levels that it is highly questionable that "Beowulf:
The Monsters and the Critics" was and is indeed (meant) to be fully grasped
with nothing more than "a general knowledge [of] or interest" in Beowulf. My
second and main claim is that Tolkien wove in numerous subtle linguistic traits
that allow, when carved out and exposed, for intriguing insights into more
than "just" a passionate defense of Beowulf as the "most successful Old English
poem" (BMC 126). In order to make and sustain my point, I will propose an
approach to Tolkien's text which puts his very own armamentarium to the test
on a metalevel, namely the very textlinguistic principles he himself would apply
to compose, shape and literally "weave" his texts to perfection.
Within film marketing, trailers have developed as the most effective way of advertising
new films since the first days of cinema (Hediger, "Gedächtnis" 112).
Setting out from a marketing perspective on film trailers, this paper combines
a multimodal analysis of The Lord of the Rings trailers with Roman Jakobson's
functions of language (On Language), using the latter as a framework to describe
the trailers' communicative functions on their micro levels, i.e. concerning certain
modes like image, speech, writing etc. as well as the interrelations of these modes.
A first comparison between twelve different film trailers shows a clear development
from the very first trailer, aimed at advertising the whole trilogy, to the
different trailers of the single films and the ones advertising the Blu-ray and
extended edition of the trilogy. All of them must be seen in close connection
to the well planned marketing strategy of the trilogy, which aimed at readers of
the literary original and simultaneously needed to attract new spectators. For
both purposes, certain (multi)modal patterns are used, which can be assigned
to certain communicative functions.
Finally, the question of the communicative functions of trailers is considered
within the contemporary context of media convergence, which has been essential
for the economic success of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
The characters of Arthur King of Britain and his Knights of the Round Table had become a fixture in English culture by the end of the first millennium (A.D.) and, soon after, in the 11th and 12th centuries in European literature, too. Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, they are an important part of world literature, while indeed the stories around King Arthur have evolved from legend to myth over the centuries. It is no wonder, then, that a scholar like J.R.R. Tolkien, interested in all manners of medieval stories, decided to study them further. For J.R.R. Tolkien, studying medieval literature often meant translating it, sometimes while re-working and transforming it in order to transport it into another age. In his essay "The Poem in Arthurian Tradition", Christopher Tolkien has already placed the work of his father into the line of the Arthurian literature, starting with Geoffrey of Monmouth's work Historia Regum Britanniae and ending with Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur, which is why I will not focus on the tradition of the story itself, but on the aspects in which Tolkien's story-telling differs from his sources, especially from Malory. By closely reading and comparing passages of Tolkien and Malory, Tolkien's work appears to be rather "un-medieval" despite the ancient metre. Today's reader of The Fall of Arthur may be especially struck by the alliterative metre, which nevertheless sounds quite dynamic to our modern ears and which helps rendering the old story in a cinematic way, while opening up new interpretatory avenues.
This essay employs an approach towards J.R.R. Tolkien's seminal epic The Lord of the Rings using an interdisciplinary angle of ecopsychological frameworks which understand the relevance of environmental well-being based on an embedment of individuals in undamaged ecological surroundings. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and its environment of the Middle-earth has attracted ecocritical scholars only recently yet quite distinctly. Obviously Tolkien can be categorized as ecocritical novelist whose concern of representing the opposition of a well-balanced environment of the Hobbit world and the Entsociety versus the machine-world of Sauron exemplifies how an interaction and interrelationship with an unspoiled environment seems necessary for physical as well as psychological balance. The very recent establishment of the discipline of ecopsychology, stressing the networked self being able to rely on an intact umwelt and thus establish mental stability, needs to be connected to not only nonfiction works, documentaries about natural catastrophes or decidedly realist fiction. Tolkien's high-fantasy work can very well be analyzed in an interdisciplinary way combining ecopsychological standpoints with a stress on how literature enforces empathy showing how especially the genre of fantasy helps establishing an interrelationship of "nature", environment and the human and non-human self. Ideas of nostalgia and ecology, reconceptualized by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht with the term of solastalgia shimmer through Tolkien's narration even though Albrecht's term was only established recently. Solastalgia as "nature distress syndrom" refers to the psychological impact of destruction of a formerly intact environment. This essay will explore the challenge and necessity of interdisciplinary approaches towards literature and psychopathology, carefully investigate (pop) psychological influences that shaped Tolkien's notion of psychopathological characters in The Lord of the Rings (such as Gollum/Sméagol), analyze misconceptions of psychological categories and diagnoses usually applied to some characters, explain how the concept of solastalgia applies, and how Tolkien negotiates trauma and post-trauma while at the same time allow for a development of environmental and thus ecopsychological healing in terms of a proposed concept of mental sustainability.
J.R.R. Tolkien was a genuine word-lover who invented a considerable number of languages with the utmost meticulousness. In need of a world in which some of his invented languages could become alive, he created the famous mythology of Middle-earth, which is therefore largely a product of his philological convictions. Close inspection reveals that the linguistic universe unfolded in The Lord of the Rings implicitly, and yet decidedly, contradicts established linguistic theory, i.e. de Saussure's arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. For instance, the principle of arbitrariness is challenged by Tolkien's decision to equip the heroes of his novel with pleasantly sounding languages and, in turn, the villains with abominably sounding ones. His language making depends on the concepts of phonetic fitness and linguistic aesthetics and represents a plea in their favour. In this essay, several of Tolkien's invented languages are examined with a special focus on tracing their underlying linguistic aesthetics and phonetic fitness. Due to the lack of a single coherent account of his convictions, this essay aims at compiling a Tolkienian linguistic theory by drawing on some of his literary and scholarly works as well as his rich written correspondence.
Peter Jackson's Oscar-winning The Lord of the Rings trilogy followed in the
footsteps of J.R.R. Tolkien and the defining importance of his novel for
fantasy literature. Film and literature have certainly both been imported into
everyday educational life all around the world. Fantasy arguably has not. Thus,
this paper argues that supposedly non-educational (fantasy) films can in fact
be used effectively for educational purposes if educators view them through
their individual scientific – in the case of this essay geographical – glasses. I
seek to demonstrate my point by taking Peter Jackson's filmic interpretation
of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings as a starting point and by bringing
it together with the fundamental geographical concept of space.
After establishing a theoretical basis for using film (as a medium) and fantasy
(as a genre) in the classroom, the second part of this paper will focus on a
discussion of strategies to adapt Tolkien's Middle-earth for geography education.
To embed these discussions within a geography teaching frame, I will
introduce various perceptions of geographical space: from the early – yet not
outdated – concept of "material space" (e.g. through the concept of "ecozones")
and "systematically ordered space" (e.g. through the "Central Place Theory")
to a more constructivist perspective on spaces (e.g. through concepts of "individually
perceived space" or "socially constructed space"). In doing so, various
geographical and non-geographical educational media such as maps, graphs,
text information and drawings from and of Tolkien's oeuvre will be used to
enhance Jackson's The Lord of the Rings for the classroom and steer students
through Middle-earth's landscapes, while changing their spatial perception
on the way. Likewise, teachers and educators are provided with an example so
to unlock the educational potential of film and fantasy for their classrooms.
Insights into Mapping the Imagined World of J.R.R. Tolkien
In April 1953 in a letter to his publisher (L 168) J.R.R. Tolkien writes: "Maps are worrying me. One at least (which would then have to be rather large) is absolutely essential." Why were maps so important to Tolkien? How were the maps produced that graced the first publication of The Lord of the Rings? And how do these maps differ from Tolkien's imagined worlds? Every map tells a story and different maps fulfil varying functions. How are these functions linked to the acts of creating a world, exploring its geographical extent and content, getting an overview or presenting the world to a group of readers? While examining the relationship between Tolkien's sketches, maps and his writing it becomes clear that J.R.R. Tolkien was too deeply immersed in his world to produce an overview map. The act of exploring and collating material for a story produces a cognitive collage. By contrast, the act of presenting the geography of the final story demands a map. Mapping imagined worlds requires detachment from the richness of the described geography.
My paper examines the stylistic device of the kenning and analyses why and how Tolkien used it in his novel The Lord of the Rings. I argue that the strict rules and premises that the elaborate form of the kenning achieved in the Old Norse poetry cannot and should not be regarded as binding for the Old Celtic and Old English kennings that can also be considered as models for Tolkien – nor are they direct models for the Tolkienian kennings themselves. There are many Tolkienian kennings that fully comply to even the strictest requirements of the Old Norse kennings, but just as many deviate from the Old Norse tradition and show greater affinity to Old English kennigs, and should therefore be examined with regard to their kenning-character.
On a number of occasions, Tolkien's literary works contain words or even small passages that may sound alien to the modern reader. However, these are not always mere inventions. In fact, many expressions used to be part of the English language, even if they have become extinct or have changed to such an extent that they are no longer recognisable to speakers of Present-Day English. But there are also other languages or language stages that served as an inspiration for particular forms, such as Welsh or Old Norse. For example, some striking evidence is found in the names of certain characters in Middle-earth, which often reflect inherent traits if translated from their source language, such as Théoden, the Old English word for "ruler". Éomer even addresses him with the Old English greeting "Westu hál!". Such occurrences are therefore an ideal resource to create an interest in language history among those who are not yet familiar with it. This article shows how both Tolkien's fiction and scholarly work can serve to introduce both students and general readers to some key aspects of historical linguistics, in particular with regard to English.
Tolkien's Green Man: The Racialised Cultural Other Within and Green Spaces in The Lord of the Rings
The central impetus for this piece is my curiosity about how the pre-modern
pagan mythological figure of the Green Man manifests itself in English
literary genres that were very much pertinent to J.R.R. Tolkien's areas of
scholarship. In my elucidations of the figure of the Green Man in the medieval
Arthurian romance poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as translated
by Tolkien as well as his fantasy cycle of The Lord of the Rings, I explore
how the liminality of this figure in the English imagination can be used to
reflect on discourses around literary representations of forms of Otherness.
The sets of relationships under examination consist of those between Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight Treebeard's dealings with the Hobbits and
the specific interaction between the Druedain or the Woses represented by
Ghân-buri-Ghân and the Men of Rohan, represented by Theoden on the
eve of the War of the Ring. Informing my readings of these works is Verlyn
Flieger's observation that "(t)he form and subject matter of J.R.R. Tolkien's
major fiction clearly derive from the medieval genres of epic, romance and
fairy tale", whereby he has reconceptualized many stock characters and
reconfigured archetypal situations and contexts i.e. putting "a modern spin
on many of his characters […] while at the same time keeping faith with
the medieval types from which they derive" (Flieger, "Green Knight" 115).
I read the figure of the Green Man as functioning as a palimpsestic device in
these texts, in that it evokes pagan cultural sensibilities that connote natural
forces as having considerable influence on more Christian worldviews that
mark the English cultural contexts. Thus a pertinent question then would
be: could the Green Man function as a transcultural contact zone (see Mary
Louise Pratt 1992) in these texts to allow for ruminations on constructions
of the Self and the Other? A salient component in my ruminations here on
both these Tolkienian works will be an intersectional lens considering forms
of masculinity, religious and cultural standpoints Christian and pagan positions
as well as their accompanying forms of racialization.
table of contents | abstracts | cover | announcements | more
Cover
table of contents | abstracts | cover | announcements | more
Announcements
Review of Binding Them All (25th November 2024)
Book reviews in Fafnir (6th April 2023)
Three book reviews in Journal of Tolkien Research (10th July 2019)
Two book reviews in Beyond Bree (20th March 2018)
Book presentations in Augsburg (8th October 2017)
Binding Them All is published (8th October 2017)
Forthcoming and planned publications (21st July 2017)
339 pages, Walking Tree Publishers 2017, Cormarë Series No. 37, Editors: Monika Kirner-Ludwig, Stephan Köser & Sebastian Streitberger
, ISBN: 978-3-905703-37-5.
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