Oxonmoot 2024

Few dimensions within the material world have a greater impact on culture and cultural identity than the production and consumption of food. In J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, there are clear connections that can be made between cultural identity, the choices people make regarding food (and the corresponding bodily experience), and the ideologies surrounding food and its consumption that are based on culture. By reading The Lord of the Rings through the works of theorists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss and Julia Kristeva, this paper delves into the cultural significance of food and how it can also serve as an indicator of the tension between what is natural – pure, clean, and in accordance with Nature – and what is unnatural.

Dr Brown's talk will be relayed into the second lecture theatre when space in the MOLT runs out