The aim of the conference was to exhibit and reflect on the range of different approaches, methodologies, and backgrounds with which Tolkien has been studied in the past 50 years, which reflects the complexity of his personality, the richness of his creative work and the breadth of his reception. In an (academic) world ever more divided into different political and social bubbles, Tolkien had provided an exceptional meeting place, for very different people united by a common interest. Just as in the ancestral music of the Ainur, the conference aimed to be a polyphonic event, in which different scholarly endeavours can come together in a moment of shared reflection and celebration.
An integral part of the event was two special Tolkien exhibitions at Exeter and Merton Colleges, and private tours will be given to conference attendees at dedicated times (see below). Main partner: Corpus Christi College.
Recordings of most talks are available here below.
Speakers and talks:
John Garth (Author and Journalist): “An Entirely Vain and False Approach”: Literary Biography and why Tolkien was Wrong about It
Michael Ward (University of Oxford): Tolkien’s Faith in Fact and Fiction
Hamish Williams (University of Groningen): Classical Ideas in Tolkien
Lukasz Neubauer (University of Koszalin): Beowulf, Maldon and All That: A Tangled Web of Tolkien's Anglo-Saxon Scholarship and Fiction
Grace Khuri (Oriel College, University of Oxford): Kipling’s Medievalism and Tolkien’s Book of Lost Tales: Historicizing Myth and Mythologizing History in the Early 20th Century
Holly Ordway (Word on Fire Institute/Houston Christian University): Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Past Perspectives, Present Insights, Future Study
Yoko Hemmi (Keio University): Tolkien, “British” identity, and the Celtic studies
Michaël Devaux (Université de Caen Normandie): Tolkien's Textual Variants and the Authorial Status
Simon Horobin (Magdalen College, University of Oxford): ‘Never Trust a Philologist’: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the Place of Philology in English Studies
Giuseppe Pezzini (Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford): ‘Not about Anything but Itself’: Tolkien’s Language Invention and Literary Theory
