Oxonmoot 2024

In a Legendarium with proportionally few female characters, only a subset of whom are mothers, it is perhaps unsurprising that motherhood in Middle-earth has not emerged as a subject of much discussion. In this paper, I consider how Tolkien depicts the experience of mothers, and how this evolved over the course of his writing career. The focus is on Morwen, the mother of Túrin, Lalaith and Nienor, whose identity as a mother is central to her character, from the Book of Lost Tales through to Tolkien’s late writings. Here I ponder the Húrin’s final epithet for Morwen ‘She was not conquered’ in the light of her story as a mother and what it means in Tolkien’s work for a mother to be ‘conquered’ or otherwise.

"In Australian history since the arrival of the first fleet, the children of our first peoples have been taken and placed with families and in institutions of a different colonial culture, a genocidal crime.

This talk will briefly look at:
* the fostering or guardianship experience of Ronald Tolkien and his brother, Hilary.
* fostering in Anglo-Saxon England, the historical period that Tolkien studied in depth
* the institutional and foster experience of a member of Australia’s stolen generation, Jack Charles.
* and overview of lost children in Tolkien’s writing and, in particular, of Tuor, Turin and Aragorn.
The talk reveals how Tolkien wrote his personal experiences and medieval themes in to his works, and the authenticity of these writings. It helps us reflect on the dispossession and loss of Australia's first people and children.
This talk was originally presented at Ozmoot 2023 - ""Deep Roots"", the first moot of Hern Ennorath, the Australian smial of the Tolkien Society."

"According to J. R. R. Tolkien’s 'The Hobbit', Bilbo Baggins and thirteen dwarves left Bywater on ‘just before May’; and he returned home on 22nd June of the following year, finding it the scene of an auction. The reason for all this was that he was ‘“Presumed Dead”’. Bilbo’s return had legal and social consequences, being ‘a great deal more than a nine days’ wonder. The legal bother, indeed, lasted for years’.

The talk explores the possibility that Tolkien’s portrayal of Bilbo’s return and its consequences might have been influenced by the Tichborne Affair (1865-98), an event extremely well-known and influential in its time. It began in 1865 when Thomas Castro, a butcher from Wagga Wagga, in the self-governing UK colony of New South Wales, Australia, claimed to be Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne, Baronet, the heir to a title and estate of a long-established, landed English family in Hampshire, who had gone missing, presumed dead, in 1854."

At the 2005 Aston conference, I lectured on William Morris's influence on Tolkien, and my lecture was published in the 2005 Proceedings. I divided the lecture-essay into four parts: the visual inspiration of the tapestries in Exeter College which were designed by Burne-Jones and woven in Morris's workshops, the influence of Morris's translations of the Norse sagas; of Morris's original Gothic romances; and his poetry. I have not changed my view of those last three parts, only reinforced them with more material. However,  must revise my view of the tapestries, especially the Adoration of the Magi in the Chapel, as more information has surfaced, notably on Tolkien's likely source of the name Melkor, no longer initially inspired by the warrior Magus in the Chapel tapestry, but by a medieval text set for his Finals.

"Eärendel has been considered as a Romantic and escapist figure as, despite being inspired by the homonym angelic herald of Christ in the 'Book of Exeter', original Tolkien’s poem 'The Voyage of Eärendel the Evening Star' depicts a purposeless character pursuing an otherworldly ideal.
Nevertheless, later, in 'The Silmarillion', such character, named Eärendil, is crucial for the victory against Morgoth.
Here I present a study linking the original Eärendel to the final Eärendil and showing that his development progressively follows the evolution of the entire Tolkien’s legendarium from his first poems and 'The Lost Tales' to the stage of the 'Quenta Silmarillion': in the first compositions the Silmarils’ fate is not central and the ancient Elvish lore is retrieved through Romantic wandering figures (e.g. mariner Eriol); while in the later stage Eärendil’s Silmaril has a prominent role in the narrative and directly links the Elder Days with Frodo’s mission in 'The Lord of the Rings'."

"Exemplified by the speaker in the poem The Sea Bell, many characters in The Silmarillion exist in states of liminality, forced to the margins of their societies, inhabiting marginal regions, passing physically and emotionally from one condition to another while always linked by allegiance or longing to a previous existence – always on the threshold between places and identities.
This paper explores a small but significant selection of examples of liminality that are focussed on the threshold between land and sea and considers the ways in which Tolkien describes the liminal state in which characters find themselves, depicting these episodes in ways that frequently cross the threshold between linguistic and visual art, while exploring the deeper significance of proximity to the sea in all cases."