The only reason to torture Tolkien’s work like this is not to understand it more deeply but to tear it down. And why would modern scholars want to do that?

The Tolkien Society, a literary organization founded in 1969 and dedicated to promoting the works of J.R.R Tolkien, has held an annual academic conference for decades. This year’s conference, to be held virtually via Zoom on July 3 and 4, is on the theme of “Tolkien and Diversity.”

Before we go on, understand that the Tolkien Society’s president was, and formally remains, the great J.R.R. Tolkien himself. His daughter, Priscilla, currently serves as the vice president. At its annual seminar, scholars present academic papers, archival materials are sometimes displayed and discussed, and a serious effort is generally made to understand and appreciate Tolkien’s unique genius. In other words, it’s not some ramshackle fan club for Middle Earth LARPers.

The best thing we can say about a Tolkien conference that presents papers on, say, “Pardoning Saruman?: The Queer in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings,” or “The Invisible Other: Tolkien’s Dwarf-Women and the ‘Feminine Lack,’” is that the scholars in question do not know the first thing about Tolkien or the meaning of his work.

The worst we can say is that they hate Tolkien and his work, and would like very much to destroy it.

Read More

[Editor’s note: One or more original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid; those links have been removed.]