When I first started this class, I already knew that I wanted to talk about Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings but I did not know exactly what my question would be. The way that Tolkien created cultures in the trilogy was something that had always interested me but I knew that that would be too big of a topic to conquer within the confines of my thesis paper. I spoke with Professor Skalak and we talked about world-building and narratology and how Tolkien tended to diverge from the plot and speak on topics that seemed to hold either little or no relevance to the events that were occurring in the novel. While speaking on that topic with Professor Skalak, I came to realize that I wanted to look into that more. My main question at the moment is; why do these moments occur and why are they important?
This is no small task though. There are many of these diversions and they can be as small as a paragraph to as big as a whole entire character. Professor Skalak and I decided that my first goal would be to read through the trilogy and find and categorize each of these diversions and then choose a category of diversions to look into more. We also spoke on how I needed to find out if I wanted to focus more on Tolkien’s world-building or narratology. After reading more on narratology, I came to the conclusion that it seemed the most interesting to me and the most relevant to what I have chosen to look at.
I started researching more and I first found The Complete Tolkien Companion by J.E.A. Tyler which goes through and lists every myth, name, language, etc within all of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and every subsequent text that Tolkien has written that exist within Middle Earth. My other sources are all articles that I found that either focus on narratology or on specific diversions that happen within the novel such as the character of Tom Bombadil and the languages that Tolkien created.
There are many academic journals that focus on Tolkien studies but the one that I found the most useful so far has been Mythlore as it focuses not only on Tolkien but on the genre of fantasy as a whole. Lastly, my three keywords are mythopoeia which means the creation of myth, narratology, and diversion as those are the two main things that I intend to focus on when writing my thesis paper.
Update:
As I finished reading The Lord of the Rings, my main interest zoned in on how Tolkien wrote about race and looking through the trilogy through a post-colonialist lens. Many times throughout the novels, the Hobbits have to define themselves to other as they are not a race that is well known throughout Middle-Earth even though they are one of the races of elder days. I was also interested in Tolkien’s depictions of Orcs and his use of color within the series such as how black represents evil and white represents good and purity. Once such scene that comes to mind is when Saruman used to be Saruman the white but once he introduced color into his life, he became evil and lost his higher status.
I have since learned that the world of Tolkien studies is a bit behind when it comes to what is being researched and talked about so they are currently catching up with adding to the conversation on race and ethnicity within the world of Middle-Earth. As such, due to my change in interest and current scholarship, I had to readjust most of my secondary sources to fit into the new ideas that I am researching.
My primary texts are all three of The Lord of the Rings books which follow Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship as they make the trek to Mordor to destroy the one ring. I have decided to not use The Hobbit or The Silmarillion as they tell of two very different stories and I believe that using all three would become way too much to analyze within the page restraints of our senior thesis.
Primary Sources:
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. New York, Del Rey, 2018.
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. New York City, New York, Del Rey, 2018.
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. New York City, New York, Del Rey, 2018.
Secondary Sources:
Bowman, Mary R. “The Story Was Already Written: Narrative Theory in ‘The Lord of the Rings.’” Narrative (Columbus, Ohio), vol. 14, no. 3, 2006, pp. 272–93, https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.2006.0010.
Emanuel, Tom. “It Is ‘about’ Nothing but Itself: Tolkienian Theology Beyond the Domination of the Author.” Mythlore, vol. 42, no. 1(143), 2023, pp. 29–54.
Jacobs, Suzanne. “Tolkien’s Tom Bombadil: An Enigma ‘(Intentionally)’.” Mythlore, vol. 39, no. 1, fall-winter 2020, pp. 79+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A639544043/AONE?u=carl22017&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=b63e703a. Accessed 25 Sept. 2024.
Juan Coste Delvecchio, et al. “Building an Artificial Language from Scratch.” The Owl (Tallahassee, Fla. Print), vol. 10, no. 1, 2020.
Chance, Jane. “Tolkien and the Other: Race and Gender in Middle-Earth.” Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages, edited by Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 171-186.
Dawson, Deirdre. “Language, Culture, Environment, and Diversity in The Lord of the Rings.” Approaches to Teaching Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and Other Works, edited by Leslie A. Donovan, The Modern Language Association of America, 2015, pp. 157-164
Fimi, Dimitra. “Teaching Tolkien and Race: In Inconvenient Combination?” Approaches to Teaching Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and Other Works, edited by Leslie A. Donovan, The Modern Language Association of America, 2015, pp. 144-149.
Flieger, Verlyn. “The Orcs and the Others: Familiarity and Estrangement in The Lord of the Rings.” Tolkien and Alterity, edited by Christopher Vaccaro and Yvette Kisor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 205-222.
McFadden, Brian. “Fear of Difference, Fear of Death: The Sigelwara, Tolkien’s Swertings, and Racial Difference.” Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages, edited by Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 155-170.
Tyler, J.E.A. The Complete Tolkien Companion. New York, St Martin’s Press, 2003.
Journal:
Mythlore: https://www.jstor.org/journal/mythlore
Far reaching keywords:
- Mythopoeia
Narratology- Post-Colonialism
- Diversion