Thread by @Dr_Dimitra_Fimi

1st #Tolkien session @IMC_Leeds: “Materiality in Tolkien’s Medievalism, I”!
First up: Kristine Larsen on “Medieval Automata and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Fall of Gondolin” @TolkienSociety @UofGFantasy

Larsen is talking us through the sort-of-mechanical dragons in the Fall of Gondolin. Are they mechanistic dragons? Surreal hybrids of beast and machine? Are they related to WWI tanks? #IMC2019 @TolkienSociety @UofGFantasy

Larsen: In Melkor’s fires foreground Saruman’s reliance on the machine - resonances of the Industrial Revolution and related philosophical perspectives.

Larsen: before Ilúvatar accepts them, Aule’s dwarves are a kind of automaton. Idea of automata going back to classical tradition - Talos is a paradigmatic example.

Larsen now takes us through medieval automata and the tensions they embody: between technology and sorcery/demonic forces. Melkor’s dragons in Gondolin fit well within this model. @TolkienSociety @UofGFantasy #IMC2019 @IMC_Leeds

Larsen: including models of medieval designs of dragon-like vehicles! (1430, Kyeser’s Bellifortis) @TolkienSociety @UofGFantasy @IMC_Leeds #IMC2019

Larsen argues that this is the point of Tolkien’s mechanised dragons in Gondolin: they navigate the dichotomies between nature/machine, magic/technology, the medieval and the modern. @UofGFantasy @TolkienSociety @IMC_Leeds #IMC2019

2nd speaker: Deidre Dawson on “Tolkien as Letter-Writer”. Dawson begins by explaining that the well-known edition of #Tolkien’s letters represents only a fraction of his letter-writing practice.
@TolkienSociety @UofGFantasy @IMC_Leeds #IMC2019

Dawson recounts anecdotes of Tolkien as a prolific letter-writer, which - despite apologies for delays in responding and for brevity (!) - often were thousands of words long! @TolkienSociety @IMC_Leeds @UofGFantasy #IMC2019

Dawson: Tolkien talked about the “appalling mass of letters” he received - but still took every letter seriously, especially those from children + older people. (Images of letter to a young reader, reproduced in the Bodleian exhibition volume) @TolkienSociety @IMC_Leeds #IMC2019

Dawson: during WWII #Tolkien used airgrams to correspond with his son Christopher - they would have looked like this (and Tolkien had to be concise!) @TolkienSociety @IMC_Leeds @UofGFantasy #IMC2019

Dawson: Tolkien loved using his Hammond typewriter - he started using it more for letters as his hands couldn’t cope with writing that many letters anymore. He also used Latin + Old English in his letters to Christopher -a way to deal with wartime censorship? @IMC_Leeds #IMC2019

Dawson: there are a number of letters in Carpenter’s edition that were never sent - self-censorship! See also Dawson’s handout with a selection of quotes of #Tolkien as a contrite letter-writer! @IMC_Leeds @TolkienSociety #IMC2019 @UofGFantasy

3rd speaker: @asthiggins on “I glin grandin a Dol Erethrin Airi: An Exploration of Tolkien’s ‘Heraldic Devices of Tol-Erethrin’”. Higgins will be focusing on #Tolkien’s early heraldic devices.

@asthiggins: these heraldic devices are collectively called “I glin grandin” - the attractive towns? But could have Tolkien forgotten the mutation in “glin”? Could it be “clin”? Could it be “the resounding towns? @IMC_Leeds @TolkienSociety @FiatLingua #IMC2019

@asthiggins: the devices themselves were linked with specific locations significant to #Tolkien at the time he was working on the Lost Tales. Tau(v)robel: Great Haywood in Staffordshire (notice the bridge connection!) @TolkienSociety @IMC_Leeds @UofGFantasy #IMC2019

@asthiggins: Cor-Tirion = Warwick (where #Tolkien and Edith got married). Celbaros = Cheltenham (where #Tolkien and Edith re-united after a 3-year separation). @TolkienSociety @FiatLingua @IMC_Leeds #IMC2019

@asthiggins: placement of devices on the page - from bottom to top the progression of #Tolkien’s relationship with Edith, while at the same time chronicling parts of his (then evolving) history of the elves/fairies in The Book of Lost Tales. @TolkienSociety @IMC_Leeds #IMC2019

Brilliant discussion on dragons, invented languages, letters and drafts, technology and magic, paratexts, Orcs, and the interplay of #Tolkien mythologising his own life vs. inventing Elvish history. @IMC_Leeds #IMC2019 @TolkienSociety @UofGFantasy

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