On September 3, I took another huge step in my Tolkien research journey. Oxonmoot, an event held by The Tolkien Society, was truly eye opening for me, both in terms of others research and my own. Here's a sneak peak at my paper & presentation, Unmovable Mountains: The Symbolic War Between Good and Evil.
When 70 people signed up to hear me present, I nearly burst with joy. So when that number jumped to 108 at the time of my presentation, I quite literally burst into tears afterwards. Although my knowledge of Tolkien lore might not have been as deep as some others attending the conference, not once was I made to feel inadequet. I am beyond thankful to The Tolkien Society and the Oxonmoot 2022 attendees for creating such a warm, welcoming environment. I'm already playing around with ideas for next year's presentation!
The parallels between Tolkien's use of mountains and those present in the Bible became more and more apparent to me as my faith grew deeper over the past two years. I began to notice a pattern, one that used near identical elements, and therefore, I concluded, could not be coincidental. Unmovable Mountains: The Symbolic War Between Good and Evil was born, and while I'll be pursuing publication of it (hence why I'm not uploading it here!), Tolkien's montane symbolism is something I want to exapand on in future research. Who knows, maybe by this time next year, I'll be at graduate school doing just that!
For today's blog, I'm including the summary of my paper as well as the video uploaded to The Tolkien Society of my presentation. If you have 20 minutes to spare, the embedded video brings your right to it! Its chock full of fun images on a PowerPoint and my reading of the paper, which I hope you won't judge me too harshly on – one day, I'll be an avid presenter!
Summary: Tolkien's Catholic faith influenced his fiction, and while the author himself discouraged readers from viewing his legendarium as an allegory, it is undoubtedly prevalent in his symbolism. Unlike allegorical interpretation, symbolism presents one thing as a representation of another. A common landscape throughout, mountains in Tolkien's writings can be identified as a symbol for one particular Catholic teaching found in Matthew 16:18: "the gates of hell shall not prevail." This promise, made to Peter by Christ, occurs on the Mount of Transfiguration. In both the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, evil resides within different mountain ranges, but, similar to the preceding Bible passage, good conquers since evil cannot. This paper primarily analyzes the connection between mountains in the Catholic Bible and Tolkien's novels, the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, in conjunction with the deeper intended meaning regarding the battle between good and evil.
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