Quick note: If you attended Oxonmoot, you should have received an email from the Chairs that the videos have been posted to YouTube with log-in instructions, ie password.
There were a few presentations that appealed to me as they were in the areas I have been studying related to the Children of Hurin.
These were roughly related to the meta-textual perspective I’m taking of treating the published drafts, annals and poems, as history.
The first of these was by Paula Castagrio Ayala, titled, From Text to Document: Rethinking Textual Authority in Tolkien’s Legendarium.
Using a theory by John Bryant, Paula noted that except for the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, the works we have are all possible interpretations of the intent.
She noted how Tolkien himself used the compiler, translator, transcriber model. We should consider the interrelationship of texts rather than their authoritativeness.
The fluid text is an evolving process that exists in multiple forms.
All of these resonated with me as I worked through my own understanding.
Andrew Higgins talk was on Tolkien’s Aelfwine’s Spelling, Tolkien’s Philological Imagination. In the talk he addressed the two part narrative, one being that of the journey of the elf friend and then what it would take to be able to translate.
Tree Fiction – Tolkien and the Linguistic Tree Model was given by Maria Zielenbach and Robert Tegethoff. The Language Tree Model by August Schleicher was the first of its kind and had an impact on the Professor through Joseph Wright.
This is one I do need to revisit as I missed parts due to mistiming the length of a walk I took between sessions!
Annamaria Kovacs presented, Fathers and Sons, the Lost Road, the Notion Club Papers and the Akallabeth. These two tales are transmission stories of how the story of the Akallabeth came to modern day society. It is for this reason that I paid attention as I did include these in my research.
Many people are unaware of these stories and they are related to one another, but neither was finished.
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