J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved Dwarves evidence “middleness,” or a consistent state of being in flux or consistent change, as evidenced by their historical development, foreignness to other races, and displacement from their homes. The Dwarven race, from their first references in Tolkien’s works, are considered to be a race at odds with the other races of Ilúvatar. Tolkien’s Dwarves are initially seen as a politically neutral or an outright evil group, neither aligning themselves with followers of Manwë nor of Melkor. Additionally, they are described numerous times as more akin to the Orcish race than of the other Free Folk. While some have argued these earliest versions of Dwarves are a matter of narratorial perspective, it is telling that the Dwarves themselves remain on neither positive nor negative political terms with other races throughout the other books. Further, their creation by Aulë shows their timeliness as well. The Dwarves may be considered to occupy a middle position since they are not true children of Ilúvatar. Next, after beginning their lives in darkness, Dwarves continue to live in relative obscurity when compared to others. Occupying spaces between both darkness and light, their preference is for living amid the very earth of Arda. Finally, Dwarves are constantly shown to be displaced people; whereas, other races have defined homelands, Dwarves primarily live in exile. The entirety of The Hobbit shows how the loss of a true home bears on the Dwarven consciousness. Is there any hope for a recovery from this Dwarven “middleness?” For Tolkien, Gimli is the Dwarf par excellence. In his relationships with the other members of the Fellowship, through beginning to reconcile the adoptive children with the true children of Ilúvatar, Gimli provides an answer to the middleness of the Dwarven race.

This is a group discussion, after some opening remarks, about the Science Fiction (broadly interpreted to include what the audience brings up) movies of the past year or so.

As we enjoy fiction through written and filmed media, the storytellers portray an array of philosophical perspectives through their work. An inescapable portrayal in any creation is the reality of good and evil. Some writers portray good and evil as equal and opposite forces, harmonious when reached at a balance. Others leave behind this idea with the privation theory of evil. Fantasy, involving heroes and villains, magic and mischief, is a perfect media through which to present philosophy. What, then, do fantastical works have to say about good and evil? Do they agree across the ages or refute one another? Tolkien and Lewis hold orthodox Christian views of the natures of good and evil. How do contemporary works of fantasy compare in this respect? In this paper, I will analyze and compare Christopher Nolan’s film The Dark Knight, George Lucas’s Star Wars universe, and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings for their portrayals of the natures of good and evil.

Scholarship on Ista, Dowager Royina of Chalion, was minimal until the most recent anthology on Bujold’s work was published with four essays (out of 14, 28%) that focus on Ista, either as the primary focus of the essay (Yung Lee, Herington,), or as one of two characters analyzed (Palmer-Patel, MacDonald). These essay focus on queer and/or feminist readings of Ista (Yung Lee, MacDonald, Herington), and on analyzing the paradox of free will and fate in the Chalion duology (Palmer-Patel). In “I desire the road,” (Bujold’s emphasis), I build on these essays, all of which I consider convincing and strongly argued) by blending a reader response (my personal feminist killjoy (Ahmed), queer, atheist, sixty-eight year old autist) with an applied linguistic analysis of key passages describing Ista’s conversations and interactions with, variously, the Mother, the Bastard, and the Father in Paladin of Souls in order to consider the extent to which Bujold’s stylistic choices in those passages is more similar to or different from those describing Cazaril and Ingrey’s visions which I analyze in “The Holy Family: Divine Queerness in The Curse of Chalion and The Hallowed Hunt” (Yung Lee and McCormack). I consider the extent to which Ista, a middle-aged

woman, journeys from Dowager to Paladin in the context of kyriarchical attitudes toward middle-aged/menopausal women who are made invisible by their loss of reproductive capability and “beauty” as well as the extent to which the Chalion series undercuts genre fantasy’s reliance on the “Hero’s Journey” (or the attempted equalization of the “Heroine’s Journey) plot, both of which focus on a young person moving into adulthood.

How do Chinese translators of Tolkien translate the name “Middle-earth” without confusing it with China itself (Zhongguo, or “central kingdom”)? China is a nation which named itself the center of the world, and centrality is never a neutral or apolitical claim. “Middle/central kingdom” signifies a traditional conception of geopolitical power in concentric rings: from emperor, to capital city, to zones nearer to or further from the capital. This paper borrows from the tradition within Religious Studies of theorizing claims to centrality (Eliade, J. Z. Smith) and centrality in Chinese political symbolism (Meyer, Wheatley, Wu Hung, Walsh). Here I primarily consider three full translations of LOTR: by multiple translators for the Yilin Press, 2001; by Zhu Xueheng, 2001; by Deng Jiawan, 2012. Middle-earth is never named zhongguo, because it is not a kingdom (guo) but several domains, plus vast areas apparently unclaimed—the “Empty Lands.” One option is zhongtu dalu, middle/central land/ earth continent/mainland. “Mainland” (dalu) is itself a loaded term in contemporary politics. A second term is zhongzhou, middle/central plus zhou which can mean landmass, province, or continent. A third option is zhongtu shijie, the middle/ central land/earth world. All of these contain the character zhong (middle/central). Each has distinct nuances and connotations. Drawing from recent work in Translation Studies, this paper explores the creative possibilities of linguistic difference, and the interlingual relations of Anglo-, Euro-, and Sino-centrism, perhaps related to the “Little England” xenophobia of the Shire, or the quasi-imperialistic status of Gondor. I will evoke how the Chinese terms may reflect back on the original. This paper will 17 also briefly consider other notions of middleness in the Chinese translations, such as “the Middle days are passing,” “the valour of [Aragorn’s] manhood” (translated in each case as “middle years”), and Faramir’s remark that the Rohirrom “are become Middle Men.”

Eric Heideman, a Diversicon and Second Foundation founder, will talk and reminisce with Ruth Berman about the important Minnesota SF writer, who is named one of Diversicon’s “Posthumous guests of honor” this year.

The conversation between the elf Finrod Felagund and the human woman Andreth in Morgoth’s Ring volume 10 of The History of Middle-warth explores in depth the differences between elves and humans in Tolkien’s mythology. Their conversation touches, among other things, on the reason humans die and the relationship of soul to body in both. Panelists will share perspectives on the significance of this conversation in Tolkien’s mythology and his own metaphysics.

The Legend of Zelda franchise commonly uses alternate dimensions or worlds in its storytelling. These dimensions are often tied to darkness — being a place where evil waits, gathering strength, or a sister-world that has fallen to evil and needs liberation — providing the hero, Link, with the primary conflict driving his adventure. Alongside these larger worlds that provide conflict, there exist smaller dimensions, liminal spaces where Link and a small cast of other heroic characters are brought for physical and spiritual maturation. We will discuss how these liminal spaces function as doors through which the player as Link crosses the threshold of the hero’s journey, how these interludes reinforce Link’s journey as coming of age narrative, and how the varying levels of interactivity present in these liminal spaces promotes or impedes player enmeshment with Link, and the effect of that enmeshment on the player’s experience of the narrative.

Several scholars, including Tom Shippey, Philip Mitchell, and Gordon Sleuthag, all agree that Tom Bombadil is, among other things, Tolkien’s representation of the genius loci of the Old Forest. The argument is plausible and coherent, but there is much more that can be said about the spirits of places in Tolkien’s legendarium, and the traditions he draws from to craft his world of storied and mutable place. In general, an affection and attention for the local, which Tolkien extols in his letters and fiction, is rather amenable to ideas concerning the genius loci, as theorists such as Yi-Fu Tuan and Edward Casey argue. The idea of the genius loci was present in and important to some of the medieval texts that Tolkien studied and taught, and the concept of the genius loci was noted (and discussed) by other Inklings, including C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams. This paper aims to demonstrate that there are quite a few episodes in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings where there is a fittingness between names, places, vital effluence, and the sorts of creatures and spirits that “inhabit” places. The idea of the genius loci also has bearing for how Tolkien imagines the moral dimensions of improving and building, versus despoliation and imposition. My own proposal is that Bombadil is much more like the concept of the god Genius, rather than a single genius loci. Creatures such as the ents, the spiders, giants, the warders of Cirith Ungol, the Wose, and the Watcher in the Waters all evince genii loci.

This is a group discussion, after some opening remarks, about the Science Fiction (broadly interpreted to include what the audience brings up) television/streaming of the past year or so.

Mythcon participants are invited (but not required!) to take part in our opening festivities Saturday morning by wearing costumes or regalia and carrying banners in our procession to the Terrace Rooms in which our Opening Ceremonies and Scholar Guest of Honor Address will be held. Those wishing to take part in the Opening Procession should meet by 8:45 am inside the main hotel lobby.

C.S. Lewis famously said of Tolkien in a 1959 letter that “you might as well try to influence a bandersnatch.” He continued by noting that Tolkien had “only two reactions to criticism: either he begins the whole work over again from the beginning or else takes no notice at all.” It’s pretty obvious he had a similar reaction to his own self-criticism – to noticing a loose end, or something that didn’t fit a changed cosmological theory, or a new addition to the legendarium that required a revision to the back-story. His reaction would be to niggle away at a revision or recontextualization, or what we would now call a retcon, in an attempt to create retroactive continuity with the newer narrative or concept, sometimes successfully but perhaps far more often not.We’ll look at Tolkien’s tendency to niggle and revise and reconceive, why he did it, and what it impacts: our understanding 18 of his sub-creative process, how we think about canonicity in the legendarium, how this authorizes (or doesn’t) adaptation and creative re-use by fans and in media, and so on.

In 2018 and 2019, I interviewed young readers about their opinions of The Lord of the Rings (LotR) as a part of my Ph.D. thesis. Their ideas concerning the genre of the text destabilize Attebery’s use of it as a central point for the genre. Since these readers do not demonstrate a consensus that LotR is a work of fantasy, one is left to wonder if the idea of the fuzzy set proposed by Attebery is accurate when considering the lived experiences of readers. This leads to several questions about why these young readers have categorized the story the way they have, and questions about what this means for Attebery’s attempted ‘definition’ of the genre. Does it limit his definition, or does it expand I in new ways? This presentation is a lengthy consideration of these questions as well as a brief summary of my findings from my interviews with young readers about the genre of LotR.

The middle sections of a story can afford readers opportunities to appreciate different aspects of a work than the beliefsuspending beginnings or resolution-providing endings. Professor Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is no exception. It is set in the “middle times” of his larger legendarium—the Third Age tension with Elves in exile and men guiding the world. Moreover, the middle portion of The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, highlights a tension between free will and fate that underlies the entire narrative. Focalization via the characters of Samwise Gamgee and Sméagol draws the reader into that central tension. Specifically, Tolkien’s use of focalization, which may seem happenstance and merely a byproduct of the story’s progression, shifts the lens through which readers encounter the story’s pivotal decisions. Such shifts have led some to call Sam or Sméagol 19 the true hero(s) of Tolkien’s story. Or, at least, the possible heroes most worthy of readers’ careful study. And careful study can properly frame Samwise’s reflections about heroes “landed in” great tales, “lots of chances of turning back,” as well as the story’s final words: “Well, I’m back.” This article will survey the “middle-ness” of the Third Age of the world, “middle-ness” of The Two Towers, and “middle-ness” of choices made by Samwise and Sméagol. And this article will conclude that the “middleness” illustrates how readers can rejoice alongside the hobbits that they are “only quite [little fellows] in a wide world,” and that “all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

This is a slide presentation by Michael Kauper about the developments in Astronomy over the past year, and suggestions of what to watch for in the sky over the next few months, a tradition at Diversicon.

“Fantasy in the Anthropocene” was inspired by the Fantasy Scholarship finalist from last year, edited by U of MN Prof. Marek Oziewicz, Prof. Brian Attebery and Prof. Teresa Dédinova, a unique collection of mini essays, stories, poetry and artwork. As its description puts it, “Fantasy and myth have long been humanity’s most advanced technologies for collective dreaming. Today they are helping us adopt a biocentric lens, re-kin us with other forms of life, and assist us in the transition to an ecological civilization.” With both Brian and Marek available for this discussion, joined by Prof. Jack Zipes, we want to hear where the future of fairy tales and fantasy might lead.

Our Flag Means Death, a pirate romantic comedy released on HBO Max, has been discussed in terms of its mythopoesis by Sara Brown at OMS #3 (“Our Flag…Means Queer: Monstering the Majority Culture”), and has been studied as referencing Shakespearean motifs by Melissa Rohrer (“Sometimes the old tropes are the best tropes: Shakespeare and Our Flag Means Death”). In this talk, I showcase the Middle English and mostly Arthurian Romance elements we find in OFMD, particularly its episodic quest format, focus on homosocial bonds, and engagement with courtly love. Other minor motifs—such as a hero’s humble beginnings and legend vs. reality in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; the fair unknown, betrayal from within, and temporary madness caused by being bereft of love from Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur; issues of desire and desirability in the trope of the loathly lady of Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale; and even cannibalism made into a joke as in Richard Coer de Lyon— also appear in OFMD. While showrunner David Jenkins probably did not intentionally evoke these Middle English Romance tropes, some elements of the show, particularly melodramatic and violent moments followed by an incongruous return to a status quo, are more acceptable when understood as Middle English Romance. This reading invites a larger conversation that compares medieval Romance and the modern sitcom, and how these genres similarly make meaning through melodrama, archetypal characters, and ridiculous entanglements.

Although Tolkien’s biographer Humphrey Carpenter downplayed Tolkien’s interest in drama, a closer look at “On Fairy-stories” and at the manuscript drafts of the historical drama, “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth” suggests that this verse play should be more widely recognized as a drama with the potential for stage production. The recent edition by Peter Grybauskas, which includes one of the earlier drafts of the play and Tolkien’s own recording of the drama, gives readers some new insight into the play’s development and suitability for performance. A closer examination of further manuscript drafts, particularly a recently acquired version now in the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds, highlights Tolkien’s stage directions in a play suitable for a theatrical production. In addition to the primary world drama in this text, however, there is a further development into a liminal realm between primary and secondary worlds when one of the characters enters into what I would argue is a faërian drama. Using Janet Brennan Croft’s outline of the features of faërian dramas, I propose to examine the dream vision near the end of the play and the way that it transports the dreamer into the past and forward to the future. And while most critics conclude their discussions when the two characters leave the stage, the play doesn’t end there. Following Richard West’s lead, I will look at the verses in the manuscript drafts that conclude the play, which, I contend, extend the faërian dramatic experience to the audience.

At the zenith of the Inklings’s social and creative energy, Tolkien wrote a poem about “Our Dear Charles Williams.” It is a long poem—over three pages—full of praise, gentle teasing, and inside jokes. Many references may escape the casual reader or the Tolkien scholar who is less familiar with Williams’s works. Furthermore, the exact nature of the friendship between Tolkien and Williams has been frequently debated. In every friendship, loss is inevitable, whether through time, distance, conflict, or finally death. This is one such story. J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams were friends for about six years–from 1939 until Williams’s sudden death in 1945. Williams seemed to have had a steady affection and admiration for Tolkien, enjoying his company and his writings, while Tolkien’s feelings went through a dramatic change. In this talk, I’ll clear up confusion about their mutual admiration and provide a gloss of lines from the poem “Our Dear Charles Williams.”

In 2010, only a year before the adaptation of his fantasy novels would air, George R.R. Martin admitted that unlike J.R.R. Tolkien, whom he called a “linguist of rare talent” whose “astonishing feat of linguistic worldbuilding […] is never likely to be duplicated”, Martin himself only invents the words that he needs and does not “have a whole imaginary language” or languages “the way Tolkien did” (Martin 2010). In particular, when it comes to one of his ‘languages’, Dothraki, Martin said that he “did pepper the text with a few […] words” but generally relied on phrases like “[t]hey were speaking Dothraki” to “convey a flavor” (Martin). As he points out, however, this method would not work for audio(visual) adaptations like HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011-2019), in which “you actally [sic] have to HEAR what the characters are saying” (Martin). Those who wish to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and other writings are faced with the same problem even though, as Martin alluded to, Tolkien’s principal languages—the Elven tongues Sindarin and Quenya—are highly detailed and developed. Whatever form adaptations of Martin’s and Tolkien’s novels take—auditory, visual, audiovisual, interactive, and others—they have to tackle a number of questions: How should they include the languages in their adaptation and to what extent? What form should these inclusions take? Do they stick with what Martin or Tolkien have already invented, or do they create their own additions and if so, how much and on what basis? In my proposed talk for the 53rd Mythcon, I will present an overview of the use of invented languages in Martin’s and Tolkien’s writings, and how adaptations deal with them.

The Rivendell Discussion with Brian Attebery this past January focused on chapter two of his Mythopoeic Scholarship Awarded book last year, Fantasy: How It Works, in which he discussed the parallels between Edward Eager’s fantasy story, Half Magic and Elizabeth Enright’s family story, The Saturdays. Attebery’s discussion raises all sorts of interesting questions about these literary forms and overlap, and we wandered into discussion of how too much of this great literature for children has already been forgotten, though it was formational for so many of our current Fantasy writers (along with that of the earlier First Golden Age). Books by writers like Patricia Wrightson and Mollie Hunter and Madeleine L’Engle and Alan Garner and Susan Cooper and Robert Lawson and so many more.

“Mythcon Memories.” At this panel, Mythopoeic Society veterans will share their stories about Mythcons past. Attendees can learn about some of our more bizarre traditions, and who started them. We will discuss how Mythcon has changed over time and where it might be headed in the future.

Coming between his tales of the First Age and Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit occupies a curious middle position in his legendarium. The Hobbit is a children’s text, noteworthy for its lucky main character and its use of an often intrusive narrative voice, but the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and his thirteen companions allowed Tolkien to begin mapping his stories of the First Age onto a new narrative. Elrond, for example, the Master of the Last Homely House, and “one of those people whose fathers came into the strange stories before the beginning of History” (51), is a character from Tolkien’s earlier tales of the First Age. Conversely, The figure of Gollum, as he appears in the revised second edition of The Hobbit, becomes the link between the earlier text and Lord of the Rings; Bilbo’s magic ring lies at the heart of the later book, but the character of Gollum becomes an integral character in the unfolding of events and the destruction of the ring. Finally, The Hobbit functions as a fictional arena in which Tolkien first begins to test his theories of secondary worlds and secondary belief, outlined in his 1939 Andrew Lang lecture, and later essay, “On Fairy-Stories,” where “the story-maker proves a successful sub-creator” (36). I want to argue that the middle position occupied by The Hobbit is central to Tolkien’s creative process, bringing forward elements of The tales of the First Age, laying the groundwork for the events of the Third Age, while providing him a fictional space in which to employ his theories of sub-creation and secondary belief, creating a children’s story with narrative layers and mythological depth and setting a new standard for world building in the fantasy tradition of the twentieth century.

This panel will be discussing the relationships of the panelists to Le Guin’s work and to Le Guin herself. Is there an intersection between their work and hers? Did they meet her? If so, what it was like working with her? What is their best Le Guin story? What do they see as their most “Le Guinian” work and why. What are their favorite Le Guin works? What do they see as her most underrated work we should all go read?

After over 50 years of the Mythopoeic Society and through its many changes, Mythprint’s 500th—that’s right, five hundred—issue will be coming out at the end of this year (61:4 #411). The current editor Megan Abrahamson will chair a panel of former Mythprint editors talking about the newsletter’s past and future. If you’re interested in learning about Mythsoc history, being a contributor to (or future editor of!) Mythprint, or if you have suggestions for the future of Mythprint, join us for conversation and questions.

The panelists will talk about this year’s developments and will be open to discussion and questions.

The complex and sometimes contradictory origin and use of the term Middle West—an evolving concept especially during the later American Expansionism period (primarily 1880 and after)—impacted the imagination of its writers. Their works view the Middle West as an idyllic place that occupies a central part of their personal and cultural pasts, and as a mediator between East (aged, urban and jaded) and West (wild, youthful, untamed). Middle West rests on yeomanry, an Old-World concept which Jefferson especially admired, embodying the virtues of maturity, wisdom, and kindness: “The pastoral ideal, a haven midway between the corruptions of urban civilization and the dangerous untamed wilderness, has been a symbol, dream, and even definition for America since its discovery” (“The Emergence of Middle West as an American Regional Label” 214). For each artist, a particular place in the “Middle West” landscape invokes a personal nostalgia, while culturally it serves as a receptacle of core values that negotiates between East and West, individualism, and collectivism. This paper discusses the idea of Middle West in exemplary imaginative works: Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919), F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), Walt Disney’s “Mainstreet,” inspired by his childhood in Marceline, Missouri, and Ray Bradbury’s “Greentown,” based on a childhood summer in 1928 in Waukegan, Illinois as recounted in Dandelion Wine (1957). The narrow time period in which these writers were born, along with the impact of the First World War, instills the longing for a prelapsarian Middle West and the pastoral ideal it inhabits in the American cultural landscape, something akin to Tolkien’s Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age, a diminished Eden but a compelling one just the same.

Eleanor Arnason, Eric M. Heideman, & David Lenander These two local discussion groups, one chartered by the Mythopoeic Society, come together to discuss with Eleanor Arnason her fiction, particularly her Minnesota set book, Daughter of the Bear King, and the Attebery praised classic novel, Ring of Swords.

At Mythcon in San Diego (2019, the “before time”), the Stewards approved my proposal for the collection of essays entitled Cities and Strongholds of Middle-earth; Essays on the Habitations of Tolkien’s Legendarium from Mythopoeic Press. I will discuss the process of soliciting contributors, compiling, cajoling, editing, developing the introduction, proofing the volume, working with MythPress editors, as well as discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic affected/ affects the process of publication, and offer a general overview of the volume itself, which [Varda willing!] will be available for order at Mythcon53.

It is well-known that Tolkien saturated his works with his love of language, so it is worthwhile to reflect on the particular ways that he loved language. Tolkien especially loved languages of the past, and the past of languages, and he especially loved the esthetics of language: the sounds themselves, and the match between sound and meaning. He was thus searching for the beauty that could still be perceived in what was lost in language, a position like that of the Beowulf poet gazing from the top of his tower at the sea of fading paganism. This position can be understood psychologically as one of beckoning for preverbal experience across the gap that is created by language. Lacan recognized that after we develop language our earlier experience is lost to awareness, leaving us longing for what we had but do not know, which if we do experience it brings jouissance, madness or overpowering joy—think eucatastrophe and enchantment. Kristeva realized that these early experiences are not completely suppressed by language but enter it via tone and musicality, Tolkien’s own special emphasis and desire. Tolkien’s longing for and partial integration of the preverbal with language was likely accentuated by his leaving South Africa and his father when he was three years old, about the time that language ability typically solidifies. By so saturating his works with his particular feeling for language, Tolkien keyed into this central psychological anguish and desire that is part of life for all of us. By highlighting and partially fulfilling this anguish and desire, he touched the essence of enchantment.

Gary Lynch presents on Jules Verne.

In keeping with our theme of “Fantasies of the Middle Lands,” five novelists who’ve set work in Minnesota or the Midwest talk about Midwestern influence and setting in general and their own work. Eleanor Arnason (Daughter of the Bear King), Caroline Stevermer (River Rats), Lois McMaster Bujold (The Sharing Knife books were partly inspired by Ohio), Patricia C. Wrede (MFA finalist The Dark Lord’s Daughter starts out at the Minnesota State Fair!), Michael Merriam (Last Car to Annwn Station)

In his autobiography Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis spends quite a bit of time discussing his deep, lifelong love of the stories that are often called “Norse Myth” (even though the majority of these stories were first written down in medieval Iceland. His diaries and letters reveal more about his love of this literature, including discussion of the Kolbitars, the weekly discussion group organized by J.R.R. Tolkien to read aloud the Icelandic sagas and eddas in their original language. In spite of this, little work has been done on Lewis’s own writings and the medieval Icelandic literature that he loved. This paper will explore this relationship, looking at such things as the setting and characters in The Silver Chair (a cold land ruled by giants); the presence of Gudrun from the Volsunga Saga in The Pilgrim’s Regress; and the way that the passage in That Hideous Strength in which Ransom meets Merlin closely resembles the riddle game between Odin and the giant Vafthrudnir in the “Vafthrudnismal” from the Poetic Edda. This is a revised and expanded version of part of a presentation previously given at the first Icelandic C.S. Lewis conference, held in 2019.

In this paper I will discuss Tolkien’s description of the mechanical dragons at the siege of Gondolin in a section of “The Fall of Gondolin” in The Book of Lost Tales that was omitted from the published Silmarillion. The rather strange description of the firedrakes and the bronze or iron serpents that besiege Gondolin is unique to the 1916 version of the Fall and very different from any of Tolkien’s other dragons and resemble more machines or engines of war like the tanks that Tolkien encountered in the WWI trenches. I will end by comparing Tolkien’s mechanical dragons in the 1916 “Fall of Gondolin” with some of the dragons described in Tolkien’s other stories.

In spite of its relative brevity, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major has been a subject of numerous interpretations, with different scholars diverging on whether and to what extent the story can be read as allegorical, autobiographical, philosophical and religious (cf. esp. Flieger & Shippey 2001). In my presentation, I want to focus on an overlooked theme of the story: the way in which reaching or crossing the boundaries of the realm of Faery – the ‘Perilous Realm’ (OFS 32) of Tolkien’s literary aesthetics – results in borderline cognitive states like inquiry, hesitance and doubt. Though Wootton Major – unlike the towns from Hope Mirrlees’s Lud-in-the-Mist or Neil Gaiman’s Stardust – is not in the geographical neighborhood of Faery, it lies on Faery’s border ontologically. Just like in George MacDonald’s The Golden Key, which inspired Tolkien to write Smith, Faery is ‘the country whence the shadows fall’ (MacDonald 1980, 35) on the everyday reality of the inhabitants of the village; this gets reflected in their lives as a pervading sense of mystery, so that both the characters and the reader keep wondering, hesitating,

inquiring, doubting and seeking. Since the small world of Smith of Wootton Major in many ways serves as a microcosm of Tolkien’s larger literary universes (cf. Long 2014), taking a look at this theme through the lens of the epistemology of questions (cf. e.g. Salmon 1995) can throw light on Tolkien’s other works, with Smith and his fellow countrymen akin to other characters placed ‘at once in both worlds’ (LotR 223) – like the Men of Twilight or Eärendil, literally, physically suspended between the mortal and immortal realm. I argue that Smith’s struggles and doubts which result from living ‘both in the world and in Faery’ (Smith 44) introduce to Tolkien’s Platonic literary vision an element of imaginative agnosticism going further than just ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ (OFS 52, cf. Coleridge 2014, 208), disclosing a theme whose presence in Tolkien’s writings has rarely been acknowledged: the positive role of not knowing – especially in connection to the power and significance of hope.

This paper will explore the different ways in which Alan Lee follows up faithfully on Tolkien’s creation of Middle-earth, in terms of its history. One of the ways in which Tolkien made his world so believable was by recording great historical events in the past, the ruins of which were described in the books. Alan Lee remains loyal to Tolkien’s vision in this respect, as he puts us in the midst of a used world, with its own wear and tear, not to mention beautiful ruins. The latter serve to tell us how grand were the civilizations that preceded the Third Age. For example, the cover of The Fall of Gondolin serves to tell us the heights to which this civilization reached in order to construct such a magnificent city in the first place. Gondolin or the Elvish Troy was modelled on an even greater city in the past, Tirion in Valinor that the Noldor had left in the Blessed Realms. This paper will cover Alan Lee’s relevant illustrations of The Fall of Gondolin, Beren and Lúthien, The Children of Húrin, The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit. (It will also include materials from Alan Lee’s LOTR and The Hobbit Sketchbooks, as well as excerpts from his interviews on LOTR, and The Hobbit DVD extras.

Scott Lohman and Ben Huset lead a discussion of this television series.

David Lenander, who served on all of the Awards committees, leads a discussion of the finalists this year, hopefully joined by a few of the other committee members

Watch cartoons with Scott Lohman!

The French polymath René Girard presents a compelling argument that all desire is mimetic. According to Girard, we don’t actually know what we want; instead, we imitate the desires of others. This imitation is pervasive: children imitating their parents, athletes emulating their favorite sports stars, writers their favorite authors, and rivals mirroring each other. These models of desire act as mediators, indicating what objects or ways of being are worth pursuing. For Girard, desire exists in this middle place between a subject, a model, and an object. Thus, desire is interdividual. When the object of desire can be shared, mimetic desire leads to friendship. However, when the object cannot be shared, rivalry and violence inevitably ensue. Girard famously argues that all great literature leverages an awareness of mimetic dynamics; the greater the work, the more mimetically perspicacious the author. Given Girard’s theory, we would expect the greatest fantasy authors to erect their subcreative world with an intimate awareness of mimetic desire. When we turn to Lewis, this is exactly what we find. Lewis repeatedly explores this middle place of desire with mimetic characters like Edmund Pevensie, Orual, and the inner-circlehungry Studdocks. But perhaps Lewis’s most insightful exploration of this middle place of desire comes in the middle book of his Ransom trilogy. Perelandra presents a supposal of what might have happened in the garden of Eden when Satan tempted Eve, and Lewis envisions this event as inexorably mimetic. On unfallen Perelandra, the Unman takes up the mantle of the pander or go-between (the most powerful kind of mimetic model) to entice the green woman to break God’s one command. In this paper, I will argue that the Unman’s entire strategy rests on leveraging the power of mimetic desire and explore how Girard’s insights reveal Lewis’s take on Satanic deception.

The character of Merlin from the Arthurian tradition is a figure that exists between two worlds: the mundane and the

marvelous. He participates in the daily affairs of Camelot, but he is also an otherworldly figure, both demon born and divinely blessed. In modern Arthuriana, adapters have focused much on Merlin’s demonic side though creators alter and/or transform his heritage in unique ways. One set of texts occurs within what I have termed the Monstrous Matter of Britain. Merlin (because of his origins) has an important role within this subtradion. However, there are some interesting works that chose to ignore his beginnings yet still position Merlin on the side of monsters. It is these stories that I’d like to explore. They include the film Son of Dracula; the television series Mini-Monsters (from The Comic Strip), Darkstalkers, and Ultimate Book of Spells; and the Halloweentown telefilm series. Each of these position Merlin within the realm of monsters without treating his origins, a development that seems to present a further strategy for adapting his start for mass audiences.

In keeping with the conference theme Fantasies of the Middle Lands, I will present on the magical use of the imagination, commonplace wisdom, and life lessons to be found in the science fiction and fantasy works of three authors from Middle America whose works span a century of science fiction and fantasy: Edgar Rice Burroughs, (1875-1950) and Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), both from Illinois, and David R. Slayton (in the present), a relatively new author originally from Oklahoma. The works of Burroughs and Bradbury were significant in making me both a reader and a re-reader of books. Their works— especially Burroughs’ “John Carter of Mars,” “At the Earth’s Core,” “Tarzan of the Apes” series, and his stand-alone novels; and Bradbury’s “Green Town,” “Martian Chronicles,” and “Illustrated Man”—influenced me with their everyday wisdom that included valuing the magical powers of the imagination, practicing chivalry, and championing fair play in dealing with others. I will also include a discussion of the works of the contemporary fantasy author David R. Slayton, who extends and updates many of the same themes in his novels through emphasizing diversity and portraying the complexities of life and relationships in his tales of urban and epic fantasy adventure. My presentation will use observations about myths and folk-tale traditions from some of the volumes of the “Collected Works of Joseph Campbell” series as a theoretical backdrop.