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Event Website
https://www.mythsoc.org/oms/oms-2024.htm
Start Date
2-17-2024 11:00 AM
End Date
2-17-2024 11:50 AM
Description
The following papers will explore Tolkien’s queer landscapes of Middle-earth: from Arda’s highest peaks and hidden underbellies, to her liminal, fae places, using the lens of Michel Foucault’s heterotopias.
Marita Arvaniti will introduce the panel and discuss Tolkien’s Faerian Drama and its relationship to the much-maligned Tom Bombadil episode, focusing on the queer figure of Tom Bombadil himself and his heterotopic domain.
Mariana Rios Maldonado will analyse the Barrow-downs, Dead Marshes, and Paths of the Dead as symbolic sites of death created during harrowing moments in the history of Middle-earth. These are no-places: spaces of Otherness containing the evil and accursed; borders between the living and the undead; and frozen “slices in time” from which the characters must emerge to continue with their quest.
Will Sherwood will discuss Tolkien’s mountains following the collapse of mountain civilisations (e.g. First Age Elves and Third Age Dwarves). These liminal, phenomenologically queer spaces evolve into ecocosms that attract Otherness (Sméagol/Gollum, Balrogs, Ungoliant’s offspring & Shelob, Orcs) following their rejection by anthropocentric groups. Mountains are paradoxical symbols of immortality and sterility, hollow shells that on the surface refuse to succumb to Arda’s decay.
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Tolkien’s Queer Landscape: Three Papers on Middle-earth’s Heterotopias
The following papers will explore Tolkien’s queer landscapes of Middle-earth: from Arda’s highest peaks and hidden underbellies, to her liminal, fae places, using the lens of Michel Foucault’s heterotopias.
Marita Arvaniti will introduce the panel and discuss Tolkien’s Faerian Drama and its relationship to the much-maligned Tom Bombadil episode, focusing on the queer figure of Tom Bombadil himself and his heterotopic domain.
Mariana Rios Maldonado will analyse the Barrow-downs, Dead Marshes, and Paths of the Dead as symbolic sites of death created during harrowing moments in the history of Middle-earth. These are no-places: spaces of Otherness containing the evil and accursed; borders between the living and the undead; and frozen “slices in time” from which the characters must emerge to continue with their quest.
Will Sherwood will discuss Tolkien’s mountains following the collapse of mountain civilisations (e.g. First Age Elves and Third Age Dwarves). These liminal, phenomenologically queer spaces evolve into ecocosms that attract Otherness (Sméagol/Gollum, Balrogs, Ungoliant’s offspring & Shelob, Orcs) following their rejection by anthropocentric groups. Mountains are paradoxical symbols of immortality and sterility, hollow shells that on the surface refuse to succumb to Arda’s decay.
