Asterisk Tolkien: Filling Medieval Lacunae
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 "Lost" Language of the Hobbits
Presenter 1 Name
Deidre Dawson
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Independent Scholar
Paper Title 2
"To Recall Forgotten Gods from Their Twilight": Tolkien, Machen, and Lovecraft
Presenter 2 Name
John D. Rateliff
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Independent Scholar
Paper Title 3
"Backdreaming" Beowulf's Scyld Scefing Legend
Presenter 3 Name
Anna Smol
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Mount St. Vincent Univ.
Paper Title 4
Bred in Mockery
Presenter 4 Name
Michael Wodzak
Presenter 4 Affiliation
Viterbo Univ.
Start Date
14-5-2016 10:00 AM
Session Location
Fetzer 1060
Description
As an heir to the successes of nineteenth-century historical linguistics, J. R. R. Tolkien was accustomed to the philologist's claim to fill in gaps: not simply on the small scale of supplying a missing word in a manuscript or an unattested form (conventionally marked by an asterisk) in an etymology, but also at the level of reconstructing the literatures and cultures of lost civilizations from their linguistic remains. Considered from this philological perspective, the boundary between Tolkien's scholarly and literary work broadens out into a debatable marchland where (for example) the Beowulf translation, Sellic Spell and the "The King of the Golden Hall" chapter of The Two Towers are three locales in a single district. In a 1979 essay, T. A. Shippey referred to Tolkien's "creation from philology": this session's papers explore the continuum between philology and creation.
Asterisk Tolkien: Filling Medieval Lacunae
Fetzer 1060
As an heir to the successes of nineteenth-century historical linguistics, J. R. R. Tolkien was accustomed to the philologist's claim to fill in gaps: not simply on the small scale of supplying a missing word in a manuscript or an unattested form (conventionally marked by an asterisk) in an etymology, but also at the level of reconstructing the literatures and cultures of lost civilizations from their linguistic remains. Considered from this philological perspective, the boundary between Tolkien's scholarly and literary work broadens out into a debatable marchland where (for example) the Beowulf translation, Sellic Spell and the "The King of the Golden Hall" chapter of The Two Towers are three locales in a single district. In a 1979 essay, T. A. Shippey referred to Tolkien's "creation from philology": this session's papers explore the continuum between philology and creation.