Report from First Day of Tolkien at #Kalamazoo 2025 International Medieval Congress
Greetings from Kalamazoo Michigan! We kicked off our #Tolkien at Kzoo sessions today in Sangren Hall with two live sessions - Medieval Languages and Tolkien’s Language Invention and Tolkien and Medieval Feminism.
Yours truly started the first session with a paper exploring three obscure leaves from Tolkien’s Tree of Tongues - Nala Lambë a fragment of an Elvish language seemingly from the 1930’s, Mago/Magol a partially Hungarian inspired Mannish language that Tolkien may have intended for the orcs or Hobbits and Dunlendish - the language of the Upland folk who were marginalized by the Eorlings. Good discussion about the meaning of the only Dunlendish word we have “forgoil” Robinson Jay Ensz gave an interesting paper exploring the metafictional aspects of Tolkien’s Red Book of Westmarch and the reality that is created through metafictional and diegetic framing. Deidre Dawson explored the first French translation of Tolkien’s Farmer Giles of Ham into French by his student and colleague Simonne d’Ardenne. Fascinating exploration of the use of the Belgium language of Walloon to create an archaic sense.
In the second session William A Rogers contextualized the powers Luthien exhibits in the various tales of Beren and Luthien with the Old Norse Seithr giving someone the ability to command powers. Rogers explored powers that could derive from seithr that Luthien commands including escaping from the tree she is imprisoned in by growing her hair and her powers over both Sauron and Morgoth. Eileen Marie Moore who is a Tolkien academic, lambengolmor, singer and composer of children’s operas used her work on developing her Maidens of Middle-earth song cycles over the years to explore powerful women in Tolkien’s legendarium including queens, princess, and treaty brides. This was a very detailed and interesting exploration of re-envisioning Middle-earth ad a “Woman’s World”
In between I had my first visit to the book rooms where I had the pleasure of meeting the Icelandic Scholar and Archaeologist Jesse Byock and purchased my first two (but certainly not the last) books from the conference - see below.
And for dinner we went to a favorite Kalamazoo haunt - Bilbos! Where I had the Return of the King Roast Beef sandwich!
Tomorrow sessions on Tolkien and Old Norse and Tolkien and the Sea
Namarie for now!!
