Tolkien seminar

I was only able to watch about two hours of the eight-hour Tolkien Society online seminar today, due to my own issues. And trying to listen to it while simultaneously listening to Jamie Raskin repeat the same things he's been saying over and over for the last week didn't work very well either.

But in the process I did learn a lot. The seminar topic was 21st-century receptions of Tolkien, which includes artwork and blogs. Jotting down names (or more accurately opening more browser tabs and Googling them) gave me samples of some striking artists, like Tomas Hijo at the Prancing Pony:



Joe Gilronan at the House of Tom Bombadil:



and Ingvild Schage with Beren and Luthien:



and some recommended blogs: Tea with Tolkien (Tolkien and Catholicism) and A Clerk of Oxford (medievalism).

There was a paper on the memorial symbolism of Tolkien's grave, which pointed out that the names Beren and Luthien under Ronald's and Edith's names function as epitaphs. There was a canny paper on the various schools of reactions to the work, from literary to cultus to pop YA fiction and on. There was the obligatory paper of profound scholarship that was completely incomprehensible. And there was the paper discussing gaming systems whose presenter kept on saying "As you can see" until the moderator interrupted and pointed out that he hadn't turned on his screen-sharing, so we couldn't see any of it.

Will try again for the next one.