"Eald enta geweorc": Tolkien and the Classical Tradition

Sponsoring Organization(s)

Dept. of Religious Studies and Philosophy, The Hill School

Organizer Name

John Wm. Houghton

Organizer Affiliation

Hill School

Presider Name

John Wm. Houghton

Paper Title 1

The "Other" Classicism: Tolkien, Homer, and the Greek Novel

Presenter 1 Name

John R. Holmes

Presenter 1 Affiliation

Franciscan Univ. of Steubenville

Paper Title 2

The Winnowing Oar: Odysseus, Frodo, and the Search for Peace

Presenter 2 Name

Victoria Holtz Wodzak

Presenter 2 Affiliation

Viterbo Univ.

Paper Title 3

The Politics of Tragedy: Plato’s Athenian Atlantis, Tolkien’s Númenorian Atalantë, and the Nazi Reich

Presenter 3 Name

Joshua Hren

Presenter 3 Affiliation

George Fox Univ.

Start Date

13-5-2017 10:00 AM

Session Location

Valley I Hadley 102

Description

“Finnish,” J. R. R. Tolkien famously commented, “nearly ruined my Honor Mods”: but even a bottom-of-the-barrel Second on the first examination in Litterae Humaniores in 1913 reflects a considerable depth of classical learning by our standards a century later. Despite his academically dangerous attraction to the northern fringes of Europe, Tolkien’s scholarly and literary projects could no more escape the intellectual relics of Greco-Roman civilization than could the Anglo Saxons whose landscape still showed its physical ruins, the “old work of giants.” This session's papers will consider Tolkien the medievalist as receiver and transmitter of the classical heritage.

John Wm. Houghton