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Event Website
https://www.mythsoc.org/oms/oms-2024.htm
Start Date
2-17-2024 4:00 PM
End Date
2-17-2024 4:50 PM
Description
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people engaged with others on social media in ways that they had not before. During this time, I was excited to see many new interpretive communities begin and to listen to the kinds of conversations these groups would have about Tolkien. One such conversation that stuck out to me was the way in which I saw some fans interpret Tolkien’s description of the physical characteristics of the Valar. I also happened to be reading through C.S. Lewis’ space trilogy when I saw many of these conversations. I felt that there were several similarities between the Tolkien passage most often cited by these fans and the passage in Perelandra where the narrator describes the physical manifestation of Perelandra and Malacandra. This idea lay dormant in my mind for a couple of years, until I saw the Call for Papers for this conference, and I decided that the time was right for me to dig into these two passages. My intent is to perform a close read of the two passages, to examine the textual meaning, to see what interpretive room there is in each, and also to contrast any elements of the texts that do not seem to align with one another.
Creative Commons License
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Included in
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Towards an Ethos of Discussing In-Corporeal Gender in Fantasy Literature: Part I – A ‘Feminine’ Eldil and a ‘Masculine’ Vala
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people engaged with others on social media in ways that they had not before. During this time, I was excited to see many new interpretive communities begin and to listen to the kinds of conversations these groups would have about Tolkien. One such conversation that stuck out to me was the way in which I saw some fans interpret Tolkien’s description of the physical characteristics of the Valar. I also happened to be reading through C.S. Lewis’ space trilogy when I saw many of these conversations. I felt that there were several similarities between the Tolkien passage most often cited by these fans and the passage in Perelandra where the narrator describes the physical manifestation of Perelandra and Malacandra. This idea lay dormant in my mind for a couple of years, until I saw the Call for Papers for this conference, and I decided that the time was right for me to dig into these two passages. My intent is to perform a close read of the two passages, to examine the textual meaning, to see what interpretive room there is in each, and also to contrast any elements of the texts that do not seem to align with one another.
