I do regularly wake between 4 and 5 am ET, so it wasn’t a stretch joining zoom sessions at 4 am on consecutive days over a long holiday weekend. I will admit it took some time to catch my brain function up with what was being presented. Friday morning between the presentation by Martina Jurickova on the slavic influence on the Soviet adaptation of the Fellowship, which took place in 1991 as the country was collapsing and Sophie Harding’s presentation on Beren and Luthien and the concept of ‘courtly love’, my Generation X brain kept thinking Sophie was saying Courtney Love.
I got over it, and it was an excellent presentation. I had not been aware of the Breton Lai or the specifics of courtly love. She explained it, or I recorded it, as love + crisis + trial = emotional intensity and integrity of that love when it survives. She used the primary example of Beren and Luthien, but noted Tuor and Idril, Earendil and Elwing, and Aragorn and Arwen – all of the same family line.
This of course called to mind for me Turin and Finduilas and how his decision at Nargothrond violated courtly love and hence his doom found him as Gwindor or Orodreth declared if he did not save her. I did amend my talk to include this point as I had noted it as a critical choice of Turin’s and compared the episode to Aragorn’s at Amon Hen during the breaking of the Fellowship. I’ll be studying more about this and incorporate it as appropriate in my work.
The next presentation by Charlotte Brockaway – Few but Powerful, Wild Women in Middle-earth primarily addressed the Lord of the Rings, but could have applied to those in the Children of Hurin as I addressed the role of Women in CoH in my 2023 talk. It could have applied to Courtney Love as well. Fundamentally, the Wild Women is more an archetype about the women, who may not have the numbers of men by character count, and yet are strong figures when they appear who often save the men.
This extension to the women in the Children of Hurin will be worth exploring, because while strong, not all saved men. Will also be digging deeper into this one.
Speaking of strong women, Sara Brown talked about the Women of the House of Beor, which was Morwen’s family. She spoke of their beauty, coldness, and the burden they bore for their grasp of understanding. She specifically spoke to Morwen’s manner in addressing Turin when his sister Lalaith died and why she responded in the way she did. She also noted her independent mind, which I would argue, like Turin’s pride, was significant in being strengthened to become a liability under the influence of the curse.
These were all excellent, and Sophie’s the unexpected surprise as I hadn’t been particularly interested in the Courtly Love topic. Well done Sophie.
Another presentation that was interesting for me was Emily Sullivan’s on Eowyn and the Hero’s Reward. While I write, I haven’t studied writing and wasn’t familiar with the 3rd Son Trope. She noted it was often used in fairy tales because it was familiar to a young reader – the youngest child received lower expectations from the family. In fantasy the eldest became king, so the youngest had to find something, a quest, which gave them value. She tied this to Eowyn’s position in the story and coupled it with other framings to demonstrate how Faramir, also not first born, and Eowyn were a good match.
Christian Trenk offered a solid defense of Radagast. He noted how in both the fandom and movies Radagast was often belittled and made a joke. When one considers who said what about him in the books and why they would say such things it becomes more difficult to take the text at face value.
While I mention several regarding women in this post, I think this was close to all with a focus on them, and even these were more about the craft of story in Courtly Love and 3rd Son, than it was specifically about women. I’ll continue to provide my takeaways from the various talks in additional posts. Please keep in mind, these are my summaries and takeaways and given the back to back nature, early morning hours, and need to actually read and interpret my own writing after the fact – there could be many errors.
