{"id":2997,"date":"2020-04-27T18:06:04","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T18:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=2997"},"modified":"2020-04-27T20:07:40","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T20:07:40","slug":"call-for-papers-the-romantic-spirit-in-the-works-of-j-r-r-tolkien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=2997","title":{"rendered":"Call for Papers: The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Call for Papers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A volume in the Cormar\u00eb Series, edited by Julian Eilmann & Will Sherwood<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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If we examine Tolkien research since the 1960s, we may conclude that the notion of Tolkien as a Romanticist is not a popular approach of interpretation: \u201cWhen referring to Tolkien\u2019s works, Romanticism is hardly the first genre that comes to mind\u201d (Birks 28). His work has instead been largely interpreted within the context of his professional background as philologist and expert of medieval literature. The connection between Tolkien and the Middle Ages has thus become a commonplace of Tolkien scholarship: \u201cTolkien and the Middle Ages: a connection that seems self-evident and has frequently been dealt with by Tolkien scholars over the last years\u201d (Br\u00fcckner et al. 6). But as important as these studies grounded in history and philology may be, their dominance makes it difficult for other aspects of Tolkien\u2019s complete works to become visible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Tolkien research has started to widen its scope with the aim of enlightening readers of Tolkien\u2019s wider literary interests, the Romantic tradition has remained predominantly overshadowed. Scholars have repeatedly identified that the \u2018Romantic Gothic opened imaginative spaces for fantasy in the broader sense\u2019 (Roberts 29), but until Julian Eilmann\u2019s extensive study J.R.R. Tolkien \u2013 Romanticist and Poet<\/em> (2016) and Will Sherwood\u2019s Master\u2019s thesis “The \u2018Romantic Fa\u00ebry\u2019: Keats, Tolkien, and the Perilous Realm” (2020), research has only sporadically acknowledged the Romantic motifs in Tolkien\u2019s texts. Exceptions include R. J. Reilly\u2019s Romantic Religion: A Study of Owen Barfield, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, J.R.R. Tolkien<\/em> (1971), Meredith Veldman\u2019s Fantasy, the Bomb and the Greening of Britain<\/em> (1994), and Michael Tomko\u2019s Beyond the Willing Suspension of Disbelief<\/em> (2015), all of whom understand Tolkien\u2019s roots in the Romanticist tradition as a key to his literary work. The interest in the Romantic aspects in Tolkien\u2019s work was furthermore intensified in 2010 by the papers written for the Tolkien Seminar of the German Tolkien Society on the topic \u201cTolkien and Romanticism\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most recently Julian Eilmann\u2019s 2016 monograph offered a widespread analysis and appreciation of the genuinely romantic quality of Tolkien\u2019s legendarium. In context of the historical concepts of Romanticism, Eilmann traces these aspects in Tolkien’s poetic theory and literary work and especially focuses on Tolkien’s often neglected poetry in which the romantic spirit manifests itself most vividly. The book furthermore examines the romantic motifs in classic fantasy novels by George MacDonald, Lord Dunsany and others, thus illustrating the significant influence of Romantic aesthetics on modern fantasy literature. Will Sherwood\u2019s research has sought to link Tolkien with the English Romantic Tradition through the poetry of John Keats. The poet was heavily admired by William Morris and the thesis argues that echoes of Keats run throughout Tolkien\u2019s legendarium, providing a Romantic scaffold on which Tolkien built his Secondary World.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In continuation of the above-mentioned scholarship, this present book project (edited by Julian Eilmann and Will Sherwood) intends to bring together Tolkien scholars who are interested in using Romanticism and the Romantic tradition as an interpretative framework for a deepened exploration of Tolkien\u2019s work.[1]<\/a> The book is planned to be published in the second half of 2021 by Walking Tree Publishers. Authors are invited to contribute on topics of their choice. Possible research areas could be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n