10 Comments

Hi Robin, as you asked for additonal sources, I thought I'd mention my article "The Lords of the West. Imperialism and Colonialism in Second Age Middle-earth", in: Lembas Extra 2022: Númenor, a publication of the Dutch Tolkien Society Unquendor. The bibliography contains some papers about Tal-Elmar by Dirk Wiemann and myself which probably also fall within your parameters. Unfortunately, none of these are available online (yet).

Thanks for the useful list! I wish I'd known about Whyte's article "Many a Tale of Dread" when I wrote mine a year later.

Expand full comment

Hi Renée: Thank you for the citation -- when I retired in 2020, I lost access to the subscription databases, so I know the list isn't as updated as I'd like. I'll add the citation! A friend and I are working on some Tal-Elmar projects, so I'd love to hear more about the work you and Dirk are doing.

I found Alastair's work completely by accident in the sense of stumbling across it in a Google search -- he's doing some amazing work bringing together totalitarian and utopian theories to apply to Tolkien's work.

Expand full comment

Thanks. And I seem to have created some confusion - sorry! Wiemann and I wrote independently of each other. He wrote "Tolkien's Baits: Agonism, Essentialism and the Visible in The Lord of the Rings", in: Politics in Fantasy Media: Essays on Ideology and Gender in Fiction, Film, Television and Games, ed. Gerold Sedlmayer and Nicole Waller, McFarland 2014, 685-749 (e-pub version). His analysis of Tal-Elmar covers only part of the article.

My paper is "Tal Elmar: Tolkien's Unrepresented Natives", in: Not the Fellowship: Dragons Welcome, ed. Francesca Barbini, Luna Press Publishing 2022, 106-121.

Maybe you could let me know the result of your & your friend's Tal-Elmar projects?

Expand full comment

Thank you--turns out my friend had already ordered Lembas, and Not the Fellowship! And we'll definitely be in touch -- I'll probably email you to introduce her. I think there will be a great deal more work on Numenor and Second Age texts coming out in the next few years, boosted by the Amazon adaptation!

Expand full comment

I sent you a message on academia.edu with my email: I thought I had yours, but then I lost my university email when I retired! We'd love to talk with you more about the projects.

Expand full comment

Your message didn't get through yet, but there are occasional delays. I'm open to an exchange, either at academia.edu, or here!

Expand full comment

a few sources I need to add to the bibliography when I have a bit more time:

Franson, Craig. American Id. Podcast.

Lavezzo, Kathy. "Whiteness, medievalism, immigration: rethinking Tolkien through Stuart Hall." Postmedieval 12, 29–51 (2021).

Mills, Charles W. "Stuart Hall's Changing Representations of 'Race,’” Stuart Hall, Culture, Politics, Race and the Diaspora: The Thought of Stuart Hall, ed. Brian Meeks, Lawrence & Wishart, 2007.

Mills, Charles W. The Racial Contract. Cornell UP, 1997, 2022.

Perry, David M. “How Can We Untangle White Supremacy From Medieval Studies?: A Conversation with Australian Scholar Helen Young,” Pacific Standard, Oct. 9, 2017.

Expand full comment

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/10/nell-painter-garrison-hayes-irish-slavery-race-whiteness/?utm_source=mj-newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-newsletter-10-26-2023

Garrison Hayes interview with Painter on how the Irish were not in fact "slaves" (my mother insisted to me, a few years before she died, that the Welsh were slaves -- given that her grandparents immigrated from Wales to Virginia, then homesteaded in the eastern part of the Washington territory on land stolen from the local nations, and stories about her Welsh ancestors filled my childhood, I think her later delusion shows the power of Bill O'Reilly whose poison she consumed daily for years).

Expand full comment