IMC 2022: Sessions

Papers in this session will explore broader topics around different types of less evident borders found in Tolkien's creative thought and writing. They can include orientations and borders that are encountered and crossed (or not) in various types of social interactions and relationships in Tolkien's legendarium including social, linguistic, racial, and sexual.

Paper -a: Tolkien spent much of his youth as an orphan, having lost both parents by the age of 12, and this experience left an indelible mark on his life and work. It is hardly surprising, then, that the legendarium includes several characters who have lost one or both parents and who are consequently raised by others. In The Lord of the Rings, these orphaned and fostered characters, in particular Frodo, Aragorn, and Éowyn, take on heroic tasks. However, not all of the orphaned and fostered characters in Tolkien's legendarium are destined to achieve heroic deeds that help liberate their people. My paper will draw on examples of fostering and adoption in classical myths and legends, but also on contemporary adoption studies.

Paper -b: Borders are most frequently conceptualized in terms of space; however, this paper is concerned instead with temporal borders. Inspired by four related sessions from the 2021 IMC 'It's a Queer Time: Trespassing the Boundaries of Chrononormativity', which focused particularly on the 'parcelling of history through periodization and localization in given spaces, [which then] become boundaries and barriers to a more fluid understanding of the Middle Ages', and posited that the Middle Ages 'is also a queer time, in its fluidity', this paper seeks to apply these related concepts of chrononormativity, queer time, and the borders between them to Tolkien's Middle-Earth. It does this by considering the structures constructed to contain temporal history, such as Annals and Tales of Years, alongside experiences of time found in Tolkien's work that push against that conception, most notably the concepts of time associated with the Elves.

Paper -c: In The Hobbit, Gandalf plucks Bilbo from his comfortable armchair, sending a bunch of unruly dwarfs to knock on his door. At first, Bilbo tries to hold them off, but waking up the next day feeling their absence: he runs! Positively rushes! Breaks out! In leaving the Shire, his fellow citizens shake their heads. Bilbo reaches a certain 'point of no return'. This is reminiscent of the call of madness, and we could apply Bilbo-crossing-the-border to the lived experience in psychosis. In psychiatry the preferred stable 'armchair' state of the soul is called 'euthymia', and transgressing to mental modes of mania and madness - losing oneself in delusions: wild associative thinking, and hallucinations: sensing things non-common-sensical - is considered dis-ordered. As a cultural scientist and an 'expert by experience' in psychosis, combining inside and outside perspectives, I propose: let us share in an adventure and explore the common domain of Madness and Faërie, the perilous realm of Fairy-Story.

Paper -d: Sam and Frodo's relationship is characterized by increasing intimacy throughout The Lord of the Rings as evidenced by a series of carefully constructed exchanges and scenes. As their intimacy deepens, their relationship begins to transgress the heteronormative boundaries of homosocial relationships. The wearing away of boundaries in their relationship accelerates as they enter the liminal space of Mordor's border. This paper argues that while the liminal space of the border acts as the stage for the possibility of homosexuality, only the anihilation of this possibility, caused by the 'disabling' of Frodo's mind and body, allows the author to resolve the relationship as queer. Their trespassing over geographic, romantic/erotic and other borders are uneasy transgressions and the tension written into the text reflects an authorial ambivalence toward homoeroticism that can be further seen reflected in the infertility/sterlity of both Mordor's landscape and the presentation of queer relationships.