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April 2007
The Hall of Fire has welcomed many visitors and continues to encourage the study of Tolkien at all levels. We have also had a number of reports from friends and colleagues, near and far.
Prof. Omer Salim Khan, who organises the Lahore Tolkien Reading Group sent news of a Tolkien event for students. He writes:
On 15th Sept, 2006 we had a small Tolkien Quiz Competition at work [Salamat Girls ICAS, Lahore]. We tried to coordinate this event with Oxonmoot! Some 14-15 students, largely from the BA and A levels participated in it. It wasn't very difficult, I'm afraid, we showed them the 'Lord of the Rings' film trilogy last week and the questions were based on these. The girls did pretty well, considering their limited knowledge of the books and/or Prof Tolkien's life. The A level Literature students seemed to do better and here are the results: The winners all got 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' as prizes, along with merit certificates!
The event was attended by 120 students from the A levels, O levels and BA. Hopefully such events will generate more interest in Tolkien and his works and more students might be interested in joining the Lahore Group as a result.
***
Carol Brownlow kindly sent her impressions of reading her poetry for the first time at Oxonmoot. This is an extract:
It was my first Oxonmoot and I had decided to offer a selection of my Middle-earth poems at the Saturday night 'Ents'. It was pretty trepidacious reading to an audience who knew its stuff, so it was lovely to know that my poems hadn't fallen on totally deaf ears, and Helen asked if I would do it again. Yes, I would. Despite the nerves, this event gave me the chance to read my small appreciation of a man who has kept me human for over thirty years - maybe Bilbo having the cheek to write of Earendil in the House of Elrond, but I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
***
We have noted from recent calls for papers that Tolkien is still being strenuously ignored in some academic circles but promoted in others. It was a shame that Tolkien's seminal contributions to Anglo-Saxon studies were ignored by The Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium in their call for papers for a conference they called 'Echoing Anglo-Saxon England: Continuities, Encounters, Influence.' Their publicity outline declared:
This conference seeks to explore the ways in which Anglo-Saxon literature and culture echoes (spatially and temporally) in surrounding or distant cultures, as well as how alterity echoes from within Anglo-Saxon texts and cultures. Submissions can address issues of cultural identity between Anglo-Saxon England and other societies, both medieval and modern; the presence of the Anglo-Saxon canon in debates on textual studies and criticism; and the influence of Anglo-Saxon on the modern literary imagination and other artistic mediums. This included Anglo-Saxon texts or subject matter and modern cinema, theatre, and music as well as the Anglo-Saxon influence on modern authors, including W.H. Auden, Robert Bridges, Robert Graves, Thom Gunn, Gerald Manley Hopkins, C.S. Lewis, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Richard Wilbur, Walt Whitman.
Did you spot the absence?
***
On a happier note:
Dr Kusumita Pederson, one of the Education volunteers working in New York, notified us of a conference dedicated to The Silmarillion and hosted by the Northeast Tolkien Society, Heren Istarion. The conference was called "The Silmarillion: Themes, Narratives, Comparative Studies," on April 20-22, 2007. The event commemorates the 30th anniversary of the 1977 publication of The Silmarillion edited by Christopher Tolkien.
It is exciting to see a whole conference devoted to The Silmarillion.
And also
The EAA conference in Zadar, Croatia, 19-23 September 2007. INVENTED CIVILIZATIONS Organised by Michael Jasmin (CNRS - France; Harvard University - USA) and Cornelius Holtorf (University of Lund, Sweden).
The call for papers here noted Tolkien's contribution to this topic and places it in a wide-ranging historical context:
Western civilization has not only brought about the discipline of Archaeology but also an astonishing number of invented civilizations in the visual arts and creative fiction. Ever since the invention of Atlantis and El Dorado, it has been popular to thrive in fictitious cultures. Among the most prominent examples are in literature: J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth. H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, C.S. Lewis's Narnia. In the contemporary arts: Anne and Patrick Poirier's imaginary ruin sites, Charles Simmonds' remains of the Little People, etc. One may also think of Mu, Lemuria, Camelot, the Kingdom of Prester John, the lost civilization of Teegeeack, the Klingons in Star Trek, the Khuza culture, as well as Arcadia and the ancient gods on Mt Olympus.
***
Professor Julie Pridmore of the University of South Africa (UNISA) gave a paper at The Classics Colloquium on Aeneas and Aragorn: conflicted and unconflicted.
Although enquires to Education have dwindled from the flurry of interest that followed the release of the films, there continues to be a steady trickle of requests for help and information from students of all kinds across the Globe. Every one is a reassurance that Tolkien is still being taken seriously as an author worth investigating.
The volunteers have been kind enough to help once again with a number of the requests for help.
On a less encouraging note: an Italian student who had written her thesis on different landscapes and places described in Beowulf and The Lord of the Rings contacted the Society in hope that we could assist her to continue her research into this topic. Each year we get similar contacts. Sadly, the Society is not in a position to offer scholarships or other financial aid to students.
Co-operation and contact between members of the Education team came about following a Tolkien Reading Group/Southfarthing smial meeting which began a discussion about orc society. This spread to other members of the Education team worldwide, and some of the research that resulted has been developed by one researcher into material he will use to support his university application.
Another Education team member is working on a degree as a result of a deepening interest in literature, sparked by an initial love of Tolkien.
Other Society members are proceeding in a similar way towards degrees, and it is an important part of the Education mission to encourage them.
Supporting other writers and poets who are inspired by Tolkien's work continues to be a priority.
Contacts are being maintained with other academics and researchers in Tolkien studies in an effort to offer support and encouragement. Some of our colleagues work in isolation and have great difficulty obtaining books.
Requests for hard copy and downloadable copies of the Old English and Rune study packs continue.
We created a whole range of material specially designed to help parents or guardians and children enjoy Tolkien together. Some of this was of a generic nature, but most was specifically directed to the places in England with which Tolkien is known to have been associated, so there were separate Reading day Packs for Leeds, Filey, Birmingham, Warwick, and Southampton (have you come across this one?) Oxford did not originally have its own Pack because the Tolkien connection seemed too diverse, obvious and well-catered for. These Packs are still available online in downloadable format.
The Lahore Tolkien Reading Group held a special meeting to celebrate Reading Day. One member travelled all the way from Kashmir to Lahore to attend.
The Southampton (Southfarthing) Tolkien Reading Group met on 24th March and 13 of us actually did read together the chapters 'The Ride of the Rohirrim' and 'The Battle of the Pelennor Fields.' Reading round the group taking a paragraph each was a new venture for us, but it was very effective, and I can recommend it.
Other reports on Reading Day activities will be found in the forthcoming Amon Hen.
The Hall of Fire in Amon Hen continues to provide a regular overview of activities relating to Education. Details of current research projects notified to us appear first in this hard copy format, along with calls for papers, and reports by Education team members.
The team needs more teachers. While academic studies are the foundation for 'teaching the teachers' and showing them why Tolkien should be part of the English curriculum, there remains a need for mainstream teachers able to create contacts and increase the range of study materials available from the Society, and specially targetted for younger children.
We also need volunteers to attend Literary Festivals around the country on behalf of the Society, to be the human face of displays and hand out information. We have a volunteer for the north east, and that is a welcome start.
The material generated by the enquiry about orcs will be collated to provide a resource for researchers and others interested in this topic.
The results of the volunteers' responses to the call for help with Christian websites will also be collated and put in the Education webpages as a resource for researchers.
Lynn Forest-Hill
