XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.fan.inklings   
   From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid   
      
   I am currently attending the Tolkien Society event, _The Return of   
   the Ring_ at Loughborough University, and I sort of hope that there   
   would here be some interest in the goings-on.   
      
   Yesterday, Thursday, was arrival day, which of course gave a bit of   
   extra hassle. At the gatherings of the whole event, it was obvious   
   that many people know each other from countless Oxonmoots and what-   
   have-you in the Tolkien Society, but there was also a significant   
   amount of 'good to finally meet you in the flesh' going on between   
   people who have interacted — sometimes for a very long time — on the   
   internet.   
      
   There were two lecture sessions yesterday, and for the first session   
   I had chosen to go to a couple of talks on 'Philosophy and Ethics .   
   First up was a professor from an American university, Laura Miller-   
   Purrenhage, who spoke on how she had constructed a course on Tolkien   
   by focusing on creating objectives in the subjects leadership and   
   ethics. It was an interesting approach to a literature class (one   
   often gets the impression that ‘reading Tolkien’ would be the normal   
   answer to the objective of a Tolkien class).  Fortunately the subject   
   on how to construct a good course on Tolkien's work becomes more and   
   more relevant to more and more people, but I will admit that I had a   
   hard time relating to a number of the problems and issues that she   
   was talking about — a result of never having been in her situation,   
   nor being likely ever to do so.   
      
   The second speaker was Franco Manni from Italy who spoke on how   
   Tolkien related to a list of specific philosophers starting with   
   Plato and ending with a number of twentieth century relativist   
   philosophers.  The paper was very interesting and engaging, and   
   Franco Manni spoke with an obvious passion for his subject. To put it   
   very shortly, Manni's thesis was that Tolkien reacted positively to   
   (parts of the works of) most ancient and medieval philosophers,   
   Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Boëthius, Aquinas. Tolkien also,   
   according to Manni, reacted to some of the nineteenth century   
   romantic philosophers, but only indirectly as these philosophers   
   reached him by the way of the great philologists. Finally Manni found   
   that Tolkien mostly ignored most twentieth century philosophers,   
   having no use for their ideas.   
      
   After a short break the second round of sessions was due. For that I   
   had chosen a session on ‘Tolkien's Sources’. The first speaker, Allen   
   Jenkins, ran a comparitive study between Tolkien and the native   
   American authoer, Sherman Alexi. He drew up a number of interesting   
   parallels, in particular between the situations of Tolkiens' Elves   
   and the reservation Indians in Sherman Alexi's books, and he believed   
   that the idea of peoples under threat (Tolkien's Elves under threat   
   from the Age of Man) was the common denominator that brought them   
   together.   
      
   The rest of this session was an hour-long panel on Tolkien and Source   
   Criticism. Chaired by Verlyn Flieger and with participation from Tom   
   Shippey, Mark Atherton, Renée Vink and Alex Lewis, this was a lively   
   panel with a good interaction with the audience and discussions   
   covered many interesting corners. Tom Shippey crying out that   
   ‘Authors lie!’ and telling us in no uncertain terms that Tolkien did   
   so too is a memory that stands out, but it was certainly not the only   
   memorable point that was made. In the end it was proposed that source   
   criticism is one of the tools we have to try to understand the mental   
   landscape in which Tolkien's stories grew, and I think I can   
   subscribe to that as a worthwhile endeavour (more than trying to show   
   where Tolkien got his ideas from or ‘how he worked’).   
      
   In the late afternoon there was an opening ceremony with various   
   dignataries appear, two of them appearing in a video: Alan Lee and   
   John Howe sent a video greeting, though most of the talking was being   
   done by some short bloke from New Zealand.  In the evening we had an   
   opening party, which was mostly a good excuse for some socializing,   
   where I ended up having some very intersting discussions with Shaun   
   Gunner, Emil Johansson and Marcel Aubron-Bülles. Among other things,   
   we discussed Shaun Gunner's article in Amon Hen (see the thread   
   'Glorfindel(s) I miss you'). Shaun has got some very positive   
   responses on this article, but let's see if this will be enough to   
   revive the great story-internal debates.   
      
   --   
   Troels Forchhammer   
   Valid e-mail is    
   Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.   
      
       When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think,   
       also admit that some things are much more nearly certain   
       than others.   
    - Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)