Call for papers
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Call for Papers (book project)
The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On
2007 will mark not only the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit, which is likely to
get the lion's share of publicity, but also the 30th anniversary of The Silmarillion. The planned
volume is intended to commemorate this latter event.
The subsequent publication of the twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth (1983-1996)
has provided Tolkien scholars with a more detailed and accurate picture of the 'mythological'
background to Tolkien's narrative works and has thus rendered The Silmarillion almost obsolete
for this purpose. The time has therefore come to take a look at The Silmarillion not so much as a
source to be quarried for background information to The Lord of the Rings or the development of
Middle-earth, but rather as a work of literature in its own right (whose authorship may not be so
clearly J.R.R. Tolkien's, though).
Possible topics to explore include:
A Work of Love: Christopher Tolkien and the creation of a coherent text
The Cosmology of Arda
The Creation of a Canon: selecting texts for The Silmarillion
The Language and Style of The Silmarillion
(Un)reliable Narrators: whose story is it anyway?
Potential contributors are invited to submit a proposal (working title, brief abstract) on any of the
topics listed above or on a topic of their own choice. The editor, in collaboration with the
editorial board of Walking Tree Publishers, will review the proposals and, based on this
selection, invite contributors to write full papers.
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 28th February 2006
Deadline for submission of full papers: 31st August 2006
Please address all correspondence concerning The Silmarillion project to:
Dr Allan Turner
Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik
Steinbeckerstr. 15
17487 Greifswald
Germany.
The editor: Allan Turner has had a keen interest in the works of Tolkien for many years. His
areas of specialisation include linguistic characteristics of literary texts and translation. His
recent book Translating Tolkien (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2005) investigates the problems posed to
translators by philological features such as nomenclature and archaism, outlines some of the
solutions actually adopted and considers their effect on the consistency of the texts thus created.
Walking Tree Publishers was founded in 1997 as a
forum for publication of material (books, videos, CDs,
etc.) related to Tolkien and Middle-earth studies.
www.go.to/walkingtree