Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza

I am undertaking to start this thread with some trepidation, because I am not sure it will be possible for me (with my scattered, scanty, and occasionally illegible notes) to do justice to the scholarship of the speakers, but I have been encouraged by the discussion in the Plaza Discord to attempt a brief summary of some talks that may be of interest to Plaza members who were unable to attend. I am hoping that @Queen Nerwen and @Karis Ziranphel will also be able to supplement my recollections, and contribute summaries of some of the sessions that I was not able to attend!

For anyone not familiar with the International Medieval Congress, it is one of the largest gatherings of medieval scholars, held annually at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. This year, the in-person conference was cancelled due to the pandemic, and then moved online as a virtual gathering, free to attend for anyone who registered in advance (they finally closed registrations after 3,200 sign-ups!) Approximately 500 papers were delivered over the last five days, with many sessions running simultaneously. A PDF guide to the full program is currently available online here: https://www.imc.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/ ... 7_1121.pdf

The theme this year was ‘Borders’, so many (although not all) papers dealt with aspects of this theme. There were two sessions specifically focused on Borders in Tolkien’s Medievalism, which are probably the most interesting for Plaza members, and many other sessions focused on topics more distantly related (Old Norse sagas, and modern perspectives on and reinterpretations of the medieval, for instance). Unfortunately we do not have recordings of these sessions (my understanding is that there were some recordings made for accessibility purposes, but those recordings would only be provided to conference delegates who had made accessibility requests). However, some of the associated virtual events (recorded performances, exhibitions, and so forth) are available online for public viewing here: https://www.imc.leeds.ac.uk/imc-2020/vi ... ctivities/

The first Tolkien-related session, Borders in Tolkien’s Medievalism I, featured papers by Andrzej Wicher (Uniwersytet Łódzki) on “The Liminality of Tolkien’s Non-Human Species” and by Andoni Cossio (Universidad del Pais Vasco) on “Foraging for Sources: Sir Orfeo as the Origin of Medieval Romance Topoi Present in Mirkwood.” The second session, Borders in Tolkien’s Medievalism II, followed up with papers by Kristine Larsen (Central Connecticut State University) on “The Walls of the World and the Voyage of the Evening Star: The Complex Borders of Tolkien’s Medieval Geocentric Cosmology” and by Lars Konzack (Københavns Universitet) on “The Limits of Subcreation.”

All in all, the organizers did a truly fantastic job of moving the event online at very short notice, and I found it really stimulating and enjoyable. The inevitable hiccups (including internet trolls and faulty connections) were dealt with quickly and professionally by their conference team, and it has been a wonderful week!

To prevent this from getting too long and unwieldy, I’m going to put summaries of some of the individual papers in a separate post, after this OP - and I hope @Queen Nerwen and @Karis Ziranphel will join me in attempting to summarize some of the most interesting points.

Starting with the Tolkien-related talks and then I will try to add some other summaries later!

"Foraging for Sources: Sir Orfeo as the Origin of Medieval Romance Topoi Present in Mirkwood" - a paper by Andoni Cossio, of the Universidad del Pais Vasco. The paper drew parallels between specific tropes or sequences of events in the Middle English Breton lai Sir Orfeo and The Hobbit, particularly the section where Bilbo enters the halls of the Elven-king Thranduil. Orfeo wanders in the wilderness, sees the king of the fairies and his people from a distance (hunting, dancing, etc.), and eventually follows them into a cave and into a beautiful kingdom. Cossio drew specific parallels with the sections in the The Hobbit where Bilbo wanders the forest, sees the elves from afar, and eventually has to sneak through the great doors into the caves that form Thranduil's kingdom. Cossio argued that Tolkien was directly influenced by Sir Orfeo (he did do a translation of it; he was definitely very familiar with the text!) but adapted it for his own purposes and, in particular, radically reworked the presentation of the elves.

"The Liminality of Tolkien's Non-Human Species" - a paper by Andrzej Wicher, of the Uniwersytet Łódzki. Unfortunately my notes on this talk are very very nonexistent, so I'm hoping Nerwen or Karis can fill in some blanks here! The main portion of the discussion as I recall was on the nature of creatures like Ents and Elves - who are in some ways both human and other (e.g. part human part tree, in the case of the Ents).

“The Walls of the World and the Voyage of the Evening Star: The Complex Borders of Tolkien’s Medieval Geocentric Cosmology” - a paper by Kristine Larsen, of Central Connecticut State University. Dr. Larsen is in fact an astrophysicist, and talked about the evolution of Tolkien's cosmology, and how that evolution paralleled real-world developments in cosmology as our understanding developed from the medieval period to the present. She had some really great images and slides that I really wish I'd taken screenshots of, that compared Tolkien's early sketches of Middle-earth's sun/moon/Earth/cosmology with diagrams from various medieval manuscripts and there were some pretty striking parallels.

"The Limits of Subcreation" - a paper by Lars Konzack, of Københavns Universitet. This paper talked about different types of subcreation we see in popular media and contrasted Tolkien's comprehensive approach with the 'kitchen sink' approach taken by some other creators ... (again, my notes on this one are pretty sparse. But I swear it was interesting, despite my faulty memory. Also the presenter has published elsewhere on the process of subcreation; there's a chapter of his in Routledge's Companion to Imaginary Worlds that I have put on a reading list for further investigation!)

Thanks Alma, I really appreciate you taking the time to compile your thoughts and notes and memories and all that in a concise and well-formatted way for us folks that couldn't be part of this conference. There's so much good stuff here (and hopefully, maybe, some more to come). I would especially be interested in knowing more detail about that last paper. What exactly was meant by the kitchen sink approach by fantasy authors at large? I have an idea of what I would mean by saying that, but perhaps the author meant something very other. For that matter, what all does subcreation include? It sounds so interesting as a topic!

Also, sidenote, love the bingo card! Cracks me up, although I also have some mild internet conferencing trauma it's inducing.