This information was passed along to ISI:


Oxford Tolkien Conference
The Lord of the Rings: Sources of Inspiration
Exeter College, Oxford
Monday 21st to Friday 25th August 2006
WEB SITE:
www.tolkiensoxford.com

Exeter College Oxford is the college where J.R.R. Tolkien was an undergraduate. In the year after his graduation he married, and served in the Battle of the Somme. The great mythopoeic work for which he would become famous was already germinating in his mind.

C.S. Lewis said of The Lord of the Rings: “The book is like lightning from a clear sky…. Nothing quite like it was ever done before.” But how and why did the lightning strike? This international conference with speakers from Poland, France, Italy, Germany, Romania, and the USA will examine Tolkien’s extraordinary achievement from a variety of angles, asking some of the leading specialists in the growing field of Tolkien Studies to discover the main sources of his inspiration and influences upon the work.

Tolkien, Exeter, and the Great War, by John Garth
Tolkien and the English Language: The Word as Leaf, by Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner
Tolkien and Oxford University, by Wayne G. Hammond
Gilson, Smith, and Baggins: Sacrifice and Meaning in France and Middle-earth, by Verlyn Flieger
The Influence of Holiness, by Guglielmo Spirito, OFM Conv.
Tolkien Studies in Germany, by Marcel Bülles
Tolkien and Enchantment, by Patrick Curry
Inside the Belly of the Dragon: Levels of Initiation, by Robert Lazu
Tolkien, Kullervo, and the Kalevala, by Christina Scull
Tolkien, Thomism, and Chesterton, by Alison Milbank
Tolkien and Louis Bouyer: A Friendship, by Michaël Devaux
From Tolkien to Vico, by Marek Oziewicz
Tolkien’s England, by Stratford Caldecott
Plus: tour of Oxford – specialized bookstore – special guest

£695 full board; non-res. per day £100. Latest details: s_caldecott@yahoo.co.uk
Conference Office, Exeter College, Oxford OX1 3DP