Tolkien's Material Culture

Autorentext

Marie H. Loughlin is Associate Professor of English literature at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Her publications include Hymeneutics: Interpreting Virginity on the Early Modern Stage (1997), Early Modern Women Writers Engendering Descent (2022), Same-Sex Desire in Early Modern England, 1550-1735 (editor, 2014), and The Broadview Anthology of Sixteenth-Century Poetry and Prose (co-editor, 2011).

Klappentext

The first full-length study examining Tolkien's major narrative works through the lens of material culture studies, this book explores the treatment of objects in Tolkien's works and their adaptations. From Galadriel's mirror and Bilbo's mithril coat to Aragorn's sword Andúril and the One Ring itself, Tolkien's Material Cultures looks at the creation, gifting, retention, collection, display, and destruction of Middle-earth's articles and how they constitute a meditation on the role of things in human experience and community. Tolkien's textual works and their multi-media adaptations are infused with people's sentimental bonds with precious and everyday objects, which embody particular histories, values, and identities. Examining Middle-earth's 20th- and 21st-century contexts, Marie H. Loughlin looks at post-war monuments and public commemoration; the birth of the museum; the advent of anthropology; film and televisual adaptation; digital games; licensed/unlicensed object replicas and extensions; LEGO's Middle-earth building sets and communities in the texts from The Hobbit to The Silmarillion to Peter Jackson's cinematic trilogies and Amazon Prime's The Rings of Power.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: Tolkien and Material Culture: The Lives of Fictional Things

• The Things We Make/The Things that Make Us: Approaching Tolkien through Material Culture Studies
• Paradoxes: Things in Texts and in the World, Or, Imagining and Realizing Middle-earth's Objects
• Overview

2. "Sketchiness in the archaeology and realien": Objects and Origins in The Silmarillion

• Imagining the Origins of Material Culture in Myth: Things in the Worlds of the Valar
• Building Relationships with Objects I: Inventing, Creating, Gifting, Inheriting
• Building Relationships with Objects II: Possessing, Depositing, Losing, Destroying
• Coda: The Birth of the Trauma Object: The Silmarilli

3. Objects and the Cultures of Memory in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

• Mathoms, Gifts, and Museums: Making Objects Mean in the Shire
• Smaug's Hoard and Dwarvish Treasures: Conflicting Cultures of the Object
• Memory Objects/Trauma Objects: Receptacles and the Challenge of the Ring
• The Library and the Book as Wonder Objects in Tolkien's Oeuvre
• Coda: Revisiting the Trauma Object: Frodo's White Gem and the Red Book of Westmarch

4. Monuments in Middle-earth: Remembrance from the First through the Third Age

• Public Memory: Memorials, Genealogies, and the Construction of the Past in The Silmarillion
• Monuments and Remembrance in Middle-earth's Third Age: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
• Grave Goods, Corpses, and Pasts beyond Memory: Barrows, Mounds, and Lost Tombs
• Occupation and the Public War Memorial: The Shire Remembers the Battle of Bywater
• Coda: Revisiting 'Waste' Receptacles: Trash Cans, Ash-heaps, Battle Pits

5. 'Lose the Umbrellas?': Marvellous and Quotidian Objects in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) and The Hobbit (2012-2014), and J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay's The Rings of Power (2022-)

• The Object as Fetish in Jackson's The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)
• Umbrellas, Hoards, and the Question of Culture in Jackson's The Hobbit (2012-2014)
• Payne and McKay's The Rings of Power (2022-): Middle-earth's Object Cultures and Fan Nostalgia

Chapter 6. Building Middle-earth/Building the Self: Digital Games, Licensed and Fan DIY Objects, and LEGO LoTR and Hobbit Building Sets

• Lord of the Rings Online: Mathoms, Accumulation, Identity
• (Un)Licensed Objects: Fandom's Culture of Collecting, Creating, and Connecting
• Actor Play: Re-inventing Narratives in LEGO's Lord of the Rings and Hobbit Building Sets

7. Conclusion
   Notes
   Bibliography
   Index