Editors:
- Examines racialized, gender, and queer dynamics in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion and other works by Tolkien to arrive at an understanding of how alterity functions in those texts
- Analyzes Tolkien's work against the backdrop of his experiences and personal writing
- Brings together a wide range of Tolkien scholars and experts
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages (TNMA)
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Table of contents (12 chapters)
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Front Matter
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The State of the Scholarship
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Front Matter
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Women and the Feminine
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
This exciting collection of essays explores the role of the Other in Tolkien’s fiction, his life, and the pertinent criticism. It critically examines issues of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, language, and identity in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and lesser-known works by Tolkien. The chapters consider characters such as Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, Saruman, Éowyn, and the Orcs as well as discussions of how language and identity function in the source texts. The analysis of Tolkien’s work is set against an examination of his life, personal writing, and beliefs. Each essay takes as its central position the idea that how Tolkien responds to that which is different, to that which is “Other,” serves as a register of his ethics and moral philosophy. In the aggregate, they provide evidence of Tolkien’s acceptance of alterity.
Editors and Affiliations
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College of Arts and Sciences, University of Vermont, Burlington, USA
Christopher Vaccaro
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Ramapo College of New Jersey, Mahwah, USA
Yvette Kisor
About the editors
Christopher Vaccaro is Senior Lecturer at the University of Vermont, where he teaches on Beowulf, Tolkien, Old English language and literature, British literature surveys, and gender/sexuality studies. He has published in the Tolkien-specific journal Mallorn, is the editor of the collection The Body in Tolkien’s Legendarium (2013) and is currently working on a book-length project on Beowulf.
Yvette Kisor is Professor of Literature at Ramapo College, where she teaches courses in medieval literature, early British literature, the history of the English language, and Tolkien. Her Tolkien publications appear in Mythlore and Tolkien Studies, The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment, and MLA Approaches to Teaching: J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Other Works, among others. Her mostrecent publication is a co-authored book with Michael D.C. Drout et al, Beowulf Unlocked: New Evidence from Lexomic Analysis (Palgrave Macmillan 2016).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Tolkien and Alterity
Editors: Christopher Vaccaro, Yvette Kisor
Series Title: The New Middle Ages
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61018-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-86985-8Published: 17 May 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-61018-4Published: 11 October 2017
Series ISSN: 2945-5936
Series E-ISSN: 2945-5944
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 270
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Medieval Literature, British and Irish Literature, Twentieth-Century Literature