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Nazgûl Taller Than Night: Tolkien and Speculative Realism
Alternative TitleDraft title: ‘“In the Darkness Bind Them”: An Introduction to Tolkien’s Speculative Realism’
GROOM, NICK
2021-02-13
Conference NameTolkien Society Seminar No. 1 2021: Twenty-First Century Receptions of Tolkien
Conference Date2021-02-13
Conference PlaceOnline globally livestreamed
CountryInternational
Author of SourceGROOM, NICK
Abstract

This paper is an introduction to recent developments in philosophy and critical theory through the work of Tolkien that comprise a new in the reception of his work. The aim is fourfold. First, to provide a readily accessible and straightforward introduction to this new area, often called ‘Speculative Realism’ – beginning with Eugene Thacker’s The Horror of Philosophy (2011-15) to Graham Harman’s Weird Realism (2012). Secondly, to show how twenty-first-century approaches such these as can provide startling new readings of Tolkien. Thirdly, to show how Tolkien’s own writing has influenced these new critical approaches, and to suggest why this may be. Fourthly, and in conclusion, to widen the focus and explain how Tolkien’s writing provides a perspective on the bigger conceptual and environmental concerns of the ‘Anthropocene’.

It would of course be impossible to provide a definitive reading in an individual paper, so the paper will take a single example as a way of illustrating these approaches. This case study will be a close reading of the representation and significance of darkness in the opening chapters of The Lord of the Rings. While the nature of darkness draws on earlier depictions of darkness influenced by John Milton and Edmund Burke, is also part of the spectrum of the weird and the eerie – terms suggestively revived by recent thinkers. There is effectively a ‘spectrum’ of philosophical darkness, from the early and medieval Christian theology of Pseudo-Dionysius and The Cloud of Unknowing (with which Tolkien was familiar) to Thacker’s contemporary ‘Black Illumination’. Tolkien’s uses of darkness both draws on the earlier tradition and influences present-day thought, making his work potentially a key text for the twenty-first century.

KeywordTolkien Speculative Realism Object-oriented Ontology Darkness Lord Of The Rings
URLView the original
Language英語English
WOS Research AreaLiterature
WOS SubjectLiterature
The Source to Articlehttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoyx2jXs6Le9KChyyjvHiZE1wgUnACrFT
Document TypeConference paper
CollectionDEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
AffiliationUniversity of Macau
First Author AffilicationUniversity of Macau
Recommended Citation
GB/T 7714
GROOM, NICK. Nazgûl Taller Than Night: Tolkien and Speculative Realism[C]. GROOM, NICK, 2021.
APA GROOM, NICK.(2021). Nazgûl Taller Than Night: Tolkien and Speculative Realism. .
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