Call for papers

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16th September 2013: Call for papers

Tolkien's portrayal of nature in Middle-earth has been interpreted in a variety of ways, often depending on the context of the reading. Some have seen Middle-earth and its potential destroyer, the Ring, as an allegory of the European continent under the threat of the atomic bomb, while others have embraced it as an artistic expression of the Green movement's agenda in the face of industrial abuse. Some have read nature in Tolkien's work in terms of old myths and religion; yet others take the exhaustive descriptions of the physical environment, textual and cartographic, as a sign that Middle-earth itself is the central protagonist of the stories. Tolkien himself leaves the field open for interpretation, as long as we do not single out one particular perspective as more valid than another łas he states in his famous 1966 foreword to The Lord of the Rings, applicability not allegory is key to the understanding of his literature.

For all these different approaches, it seems safe to say that nature in Middle-earth ... [read more -> pdf format, web page]

(to link to this announcement: http://www.walking-tree.org/news_archive.php?item=95 )

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