By Amelia Scarponi ’23
Staff Writer
The literary organization The Tolkien Society, founded around a half-century ago, is dedicated to promoting the life and works of the British scholar and author of the high fantasy novel “The Lord of the Rings,” J.R.R. Tolkien. Since 1986, the Society has held an annual short summer conference consisting of academic talks and panel discussions on a Tolkien-related theme. The 2021 Summer Seminar, titled “Tolkien and Diversity,” was held live via Zoom on July 3 and July 4. The conference, free to the public, hosted more than 500 attendees from 42 countries. The theme of diversity received backlash from right-wing political commentators who accused the society of going “woke.”
The literary organization The Tolkien Society, founded around a half-century ago, is dedicated to promoting the life and works of the British scholar and author of the high fantasy novel “The Lord of the Rings,” J.R.R. Tolkien. Photo courtesy of Flickr.
To counter the Tolkien Society’s focus on diversity, software developer Keith Casey founded a new literary organization called the Society of Tolkien. In an interview with the conservative online editorial The Daily Wire, Casey said, “Tolkien’s works are wonderful and should be cherished and understood as he wrote them instead of twisted to fit current social fads.” The Society of Tolkien also held their conference honoring Tolkiens’ works on July 3. The newly announced seminar covered topics including “Solving Gollum’s Riddles: An Ode to Tolkien and Old English” and “Mapping Middle-earth.”
The Tolkien Society recognized that the topic of diversity has steadily increased within Tolkien-related academic and literary research. According to The Tolkien Society, “It is now receiving more critical attention than ever before. Spurred by recent interpretations of Tolkien’s creations and the cast list of the upcoming Amazon show ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ it is crucial we discuss the theme of diversity in relation to Tolkien.”
The seminar included themes on gender norms, heteronormative ideals, colonialism, post-colonialism and identity within Tolkien’s work. Papers presented at the conference discussed “Transgender Realities in ‘The Lord of the Rings,’” “Destabilizing Cishetero Amatonormativity in the Works of Tolkien” and “The Invisible Other: Tolkien’s Dwarf-Women and the ‘Feminine Lack.’”
According to Anna Smol, Professor of English at Mount Saint Vincent University, The Tolkien Society’s summer seminars provide a space to critique and to appreciate Tolkiens’ work through a new lens. In her blog, titled “A Single Leaf,” dedicated to her teachings and research of Tolkien, Smol wrote, “What Tolkien has written has gone out into the world and, like any influential literature, it is being read, interpreted, used — for good and for ill — in various ways by readers around the globe.” She continued, “Trying to understand this about Tolkien's work, as with any other pieces of literature, is a standard part of literary research, which leads to a better understanding of our contemporary culture.”
Sara Brown, Faculty Chair of the Language and Literature Faculty at Signum University and one of the sixteen academic presenters at the conference, explored themes of womanhood and identity in her paper, also titled, “The Invisible Other: Tolkien’s Dwarf-Women and the ‘Feminine Lack.’” Brown’s piece posits that reading Tolkien through the lens of French existentialist writer Simone de Beauvior and American philosopher Judith Butler shows the invisibility and marginalization of female characters in Tolkien’s Middle-earth legendarium.
Themes from previous years have touched on myth, lore and immortality. They have included papers such as “Tolkien, The Monsters, The Middle-ages and Middle-earth,” “Life, Death and Immortality” and “Tolkien the Pagan? Reading Middle-earth through a Spiritual Lens.”
As a devout Roman Catholic, Tolkien’s novels were written in the Christian tradition and full of Christian symbols; however, his intention was never to proselytize. In a letter addressed to Father Murray, a priest and family friend, Tolkien revealed, “The Lord of the Rings is, of course, a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in revision.”
Political Editor for the conservative online publication The Federalist John Daniel Davidson believes modern scholars aren’t interested in understanding Tolkien’s work, but instead want to tear it down. In a The Federalist article, titled, “In An Affront to its Namesake, The Tolkien Society Goes Woke,” Davidson wrote, “everything that Tolkien was, and everything he wrote, is an affront to the modern secular scholar’s understanding of the world, reality, and the meaning and purpose of life.”
The controversy regarding The Tolkien Society’s decision to focus on diversity and inclusion for their 2021 Summer Seminar continues to renew conversations about authorial intent versus reader interpretation and the future of academia.