Thread by @Dr_Dimitra_Fimi

For @FolkloreThurs’s #wild men theme: in #Tolkien’s hapless Túrin Turambar 3 myths collide: Kullervo (Finnish), Sigurd (Old Norse) + Oedipus (Greek). Oedipus is important not only for the incest motif
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Art: @TedNasmith, Akseli Gallen-Kallela

but also because of his movement from wilderness to city. Abandoned as an infant in Mount Cithaeron (wilderness), Oedipus moves from Corinth (city), to the cross-roads (wilderness, where he unwittingly kills his father)...
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to Thebes (city- where he unwittingly marries his mother), to self-exile in desolate spaces away from the city. He is the saviour, but also the destroyer of Thebes, via his patricide and incest. 3/6
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In the First Age of Middle-earth Men live in small communities in the wild while the Elves have elaborate cities (Doriath, Gondolin, Nargothrond). Túrin’s journey from (mannish) wild spaces to (elvish) cities brings doom 👇
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Túrin thrives in wild spaces (leads band of outlaws, weakens/brings destruction to elvish cities). Both Túrin + Oedipus change identities and are savage in the wild. Both can become heroic, but both fall. 5/6
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[Art: @AlanLee11225760, F.X. Fabre]

A far more developed version of this argument can be found in my chapter “‘Wildman of the Woods’: Inscribing tragedy on the landscape of Middle-earth in The childrenof Húrin” in this book, edited by Helen Conrad-O'Briain and @Gerard_K_Hynes
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