Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Christopher Tolkien Centenary Conference

On Saturday, November 23 and Sunday, November 24, I attended the two-day webinar, the Christopher Tolkien Centenary Conference hosted by the Tolkien Society via Zoom. Past readers of the blog know that I am a big fan of conferences, both in-person and virtual, so this was a great opportunity to combine my love of intense learning events with my research for the hypothetical animated musical. Even as someone on the younger end of attendees, I felt right at home through the friendly chat, the generous speakers, and my extensive knowledge of the Legendarium. Here are my favorite highlights from each talk, minus anything that seemed to be proprietary information. Any mistakes are likely because I have been up since 4:45 a.m. watching this conference. For naming conventions, as said succinctly by James Tauber, “It’s become a common convention in Tolkien studies to use Tolkien to refer to the father and Christopher to refer to the son”, so I will do the same in this summary.

Saturday Programme

Working with Christopher with Richard Ovenden

Richard Ovenden has been Bodley’s Librarian at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, having worked at the library since 2003. Christopher Tolkien placed some of his father’s archive at the library, and many scholars who spoke later in the conference had visited these archives for research. J.R.R. Tolkien received his first card for the library in November 1913, and for a few years he worked next door at Oxford English Dictionary, a building that has become the History of Science Museum.

A personal remembrance of Christopher with Chris Smith

Smith has been the Tolkien editor for HarperCollins since 1999 and recently wrote the introduction for Les Monde du Christopher Tolkien, a French language essay collection. He has a lifelong relationship with Middle-earth, saying, “I grew up in the world [the Tolkiens] created. For me, the cities of The Silmarillion have more reality than Babylon”. He described Christopher with reverance, feeling as if he “sat at the right hand of God… [as] Middle-earth embodied”. As for his career, Smith recalled that HarperCollins “paid for a single fax machine to be kept in the building solely so that Christopher could continue to write lengthy missive”. As a guest in Christopher’s home, he saw the famous chair where Tolkien composed The Lord of the Rings and the stool where Christopher sat, noting also the “kitchen at the heart of the home [and] the cornucopia of books”.

A Conversation: Working with Christopher and the Estate with Alan Lee

Illustrator Alan Lee recated his limited “but very memorable” contacts with Christopher as he was contracted to create the Centenary illustrated version of The Lord of the Rings to be published in 1992. He drew “a lineup of all the characters in the Fellowship” but was asked instead to “concentrate more on the landscapes”, his preferred painting style. Christopher did not want the characters to look too specific, as they were intended to be archtypes. To make his illustrations appear distinct, Lee drew inspiration from Romanesque architecture and his home county of Devon along with executing the final versions in watercolor. Like Smith, Lee was invited to Christopher’s home and saw the famous chair and stool. Lee believes Tolkien is “on par with Chaucer and the author of Beowulf” in terms of literary significance.

A polyphonic tribute to Christopher Tolkien – from France with Vincent Ferré

Vincent Ferré was editor of Les Mondes de Christopher Tolkien: Hommage pour son centenaire, which included essays from other speakers in the conference: Richard Ovenden, Chris Smith, Alan Lee, and Thomas Honegger. The book is set to be translated into English and other large European languages. He noted that Christopher claimed, “I’ve never been more than a discoverer, an interpreter of what I discovered”, similar to how Tolkien used the translator conceit for describing his books.

Fathers and Sons, or: Looking for CJRT in JRRT’s Fiction with Thomas Honegger

Thomas Honegger compared the relationship of father-son pairs to relationships in Tolkien’s life, noting that “happy and fulfilled relationships are rare”. Tolkien had an absent biological father, and his father figure was his guardian Father Francis Morgan. He had a close relationship with Christopher, authorizing him in his will to have “full power to publish, edit, alter, rewrote, or complete any work… or to destroy the whole or any part or parts of any such unpublished work…” Honegger had a few important reminders related to The Lord of the Rings and explained, “I was always so irritated by people saying, ‘Well, they’re uncle and nephew.’ No, they’re not! They’re cousins. I actually wrote a paper ‘Uncle Me No Uncle’ because I wanted to set this straight once and for all.” Honegger also compared the role of Christopher in editing Tolkien’s work to Frodo editing Bilbo’s work: “‘tidying things up a bit before you go’ [was] a very, very British understatement.”

‘Pursuing it with eager feet’: My Indebtedness to Christopher with Brian Sibley

Brian Sibley jokingly began, “I am a fraud. I’m an imposter, a humbug… [I] certainly didn’t know Christopher Tolkien”. He first read a single volume Lord of the Rings while in the hospital with an ulcer at age 21. Sibley scripted the BBC Radio 4’s 26-episode radio show of adaptation and more recently found reference to the drama in a letter from Christopher to HarperCollins in 1981: “I have been reading the scripts of The Lord of the Rings radio dramatization: Very good, I think.” Christopher sent a tape to BBC with all the correct pronunciations of all the names, but “the cast.. were not too keen on this”, unlike enthusiastic members of the Tolkien Society.

“Earth Under the Feet of Romance”: Hobbits and The Homecoming with Peter Grybauskas

Peter Grybauskas edited and commented on The Battle of Maldon together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, a 1953 translation by Tolkien published in 2023. In the Old English poem, English duke Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son has been slain by Vikings in battle, and his body is collected by young minstrel Totta and farmer-soldier Tída. Much like hobbits, the pair spontaneously burst into song and “lament their inability to pause their task for a couple of beers”. Grybauskas also referenced the passage in The Return of the King where Bilbo passed on his book to Frodo and Sam.

“It is dear to my heart”: An art-oriented recollection of a correspondence with Christopher Tolkien (1982-1988) with Denis Bridoux

In 1982, Denis Bridoux became the first person to receive permission by the Tolkien Estate to study Tolkien’s original artwork in the Bodleian Library. He has since discovered and reproduced artworks by Tolkien, along with making parallels between Tolkien’s work and that of other artists. Denis used his research to provide the designs of Beren and Luthien’s heraldic devices now displayed on the graves of J.R.R. and Edith Tolkien. Denis shared a recording of himself singing a beautiful rendition of “Namárie”.

Christopher Tolkien’s involvement in the publication of his father’s linguistic writings in Parma Eldalamberon with Christopher Gilson

Christopher Gilson took over editorship of the Tolkien linguistics journal Parma Eldalamberon for Issue #6 in 1983. He chronicled the evolution of the Quenya lexicon and Gnomish lexicon, which began around 1915 and 1917 respectively. Researchers found “striking differences” between the versions of Quenya used in The Silmarillion versus The History of Middle-earth. Gilson and fellow linguists met Christopher at MythCon in Milwaukee, WI in 1987 and again at the 1992 Centennial Conference at Oxford, where Christopher cleared them to look at the Tolkien manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. Gilson assured attendees that many Parmas are to come, and he is trying to get reprints for all issues available. He noted that “The biggest difficulty was learning to read Tolkien’s handwriting… many of his writings… are revised with newer writing over older writing…”

Scans Across the Water: Editing Tolkien’s Manuscripts from 4,000 Miles Away with Carl F. Hostetter

Carl F. Hostetter became an editor of Vinyar Tengwar around 1990, and his contribution to The Great Tales Never End focused on the “Herculean nature of Christopher’s editorial work”. His book The Nature of Middle-Earth included material on “Time and Aging” which he received as a giant stack of photocopied papers from box files of Tolkien material that had remained with Christopher instead of going to the Bodleian. Hostetter gave tips on deciphering Tolkien’s handwriting, which at times even Christopher called a “a fairly illegible scrawl”. Black-and-white photocopies sometimes made materials more legible, while Christopher went over photocopies with colored been to indicate where the original color was.

Christopher Tolkien as Medieval Scholar with Douglas A. Anderson

Douglas A. Anderson gave a truncated version of a talk on the education and career of Christopher Tolkien that he first gave during the Medievalist Congress in 2014 and included corrections told to him by Christopher. He highlighted translations by Christopher including The Saga Of King Heidrek the Wise published in 1960. He was considered on of the best lecturers at Oxford when he worked at the New College beginning in 1963 but resigned in 1975 to act as executor of Tolkien’s will, publishing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orpheo that year. Large amount of Christopher’s life was documented through letters, library books, and guest books. I was impressed by the number of books that Anderson had at his disposal and held up while citing them during his talk.

Working With Christopher on Illustrating The Silmarillion with Ted Nasmith

Ted Nasmith explained his process for creating the illustrations for The Silmarillion. He marked out potential scenes, drew about two hundred pencil sketches, and then created “color roughs” or studies of about seventy. The original illustrated Silmarillion was published in 1998, while a larger version with several new illustrations came of a few years later in 2004. Nasmith noted that Christopher was “absolutely disciplined” when autographing with perfect handwriting for hours at the 1987 MythCon. As an added bonus, Nasmith is a musician specializing in songs based on the writing of Tolkien.

Panel Discussion: Editing Tolkien with Dimitra Fimi, Peter Grybauskas, Andrew Higgins & John D. Rateliff (hosted by Shaun Gunner)

This lively and informal panal shed light on the wide range of editing methods as editors consider scholarly and general readership, the amount of often complicated information that should be presented, and the balance of original text versus commentary. The talk included additional information on working with the Boleain Library, Christopher’s oversight as an “editor-in-chief”, and reading Tolkien’s difficult handwriting.

A Fruitful Collaboration: Christopher Tolkien and Marquette University, 1974-2000 with William Fliss

William Fliss curates the J.R.R. Tolkien collection at Raynor Library at Marquette University, which has owned the manuscripts of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Farmer Giles of Ham, and Mr. Bliss since 1957. This initially created some “friction between the university and the Tolkien Estate” after the death of Tolkien when Christopher was named executor of his father’s papers. The University conceded that it owned the physical manuscripts, while the Estate owned the copyright to the stories. In 1985, Christopher started editing The History of Middle-earth and had access to 3000 pages of Rings manuscript, but not the 6000 pages at Marquette. He agreed to send the remaining manuscripts once he was done. “The Great Exchange” of information relied on the work of Head of Archives Chuck Elston and expert volunteers John D. Rateliff and Taum Santoski. Fliss read from personal letters and shared pictures of Christopher with Tolkien scholars.

Editing The Hobbit with John D. Rateliff

Mentioned during Fliss’ talk as an instrumental liaison between Christopher and Marquette University, John D. Rateliff worked with Taum Santoski to decipher Tolkien’s handwriting, much like researchers in other talks. The layers of writing on a single page might include pencil, black pen, blue pen, and red pen. In 1987, they joined Douglas A. Anderson at the 1987 Tolkien Conference at Marquette hoping to receive approval for a project on The Hobbit. Anderson was already far along on his project and published The Annotated Hobbit in 1988. Santoski and Rateliff got to work on The History of the Hobbit in 1989, planning that Santoski would prepare the transcript and notes on language, while John would cover the mythology. After Santoski passed away in 1991, Rateliff inherited the full project and finished fifteen years later in 2007. Rateliff noted that the rewrite of Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark” contained “one of Tolkien’s very most famous lines and most evocative passages… something that iconic can be an afterthought… Tolkien was a retconner of genius”.

Sunday Programme

“Wandering but not Lost” or another with a little wider view called “Where on Earth is Middle-earth?”, about the geography of the imagination with John Howe

Illustrator John Howe began with references to the book Switzerland in Tolkien's Middle-earth by Martin S. Montch. Howe lives in Switzerland and “can almost see the Silverhorn” from his house. He described the archetypes that Tolkien took from Swiss landscapes, which the author first saw in 1911 during a ten-day walk tour of the Alps. The Valley of Lauterbrunnen had physical similarities to Rivendell, while the myth of Swiss lake dwellers based on the misinterpretation of an archaelogical discovery made around that time may have contributed to Lake Town and the Men of Dale. Howe prefers the visitas of the Aleps over the Canadian Rockies and draws further inspiration from the landscapes of the Patagonia mountains in South America and the beaches of New Zealand for other artworks. Howe is also a cartographer, as he created a map of Númenor for Amazon’s Rings of Power series with help from Tom Shippey, and his most recent merch is a Middle-earth globe.

Forewords and Prefaces – or Apologies? Christopher Tolkien’s Prologues to The History of Middle-earth with Nick Groom

The author of Twenty-First-Century Tolkien: What Middle-earth Means for Us Today, Groom discussed the paratext appearing in the books, including maps, prologues, forewords, epigraphs, and more. The foreword is typically written by someone other than the author, so Tolkien wrote a foreword for The Fellowship of the Ring “because the book is allegedly derived from the writings of Bilbo and Frodo.” Christopher’s forewords explain the many versions of texts that he synthesized into The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The Book of Lost Tales. Groom noted that Christopher was aco-author along with an editor, and his “paratexts are therefore as much a part of Middle-earth as our Silmarils or hobbits”. As for the fictional Red Book of Westmarch where many of these stories appeared, Groom believed it was based on the Red Book of Hergerst, “drawing on a long tradition… such as Geoffrey of Monmouth”, who claimed his pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae came from an ancient book.

Lost Tales and Found Myths: Christopher Tolkien on the ‘Mythology for England’ with Sonali Chunodkar

A postdoctoral fellow at Krea University, Sonali Chunodkar had beautiful slides to match her engaging talk. She discussed “Tolkien’s early nationalistic project”, trying to link his fictional characters of Aelfwine and Eriol to Anglo-Saxon England. Many nationalist movements had begun at the time in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Finland; accordingly, Tolkien thought England should have a national myth. He noted that Aelfwine was “kin of Ing, King of Luthany”, who represented Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain. Ing quickly disappeared from Tolkien’s work as his views on nationalism changed; Christopher understood the problematic implications of this narrative and was relieved to find his father had dropped it. The Indiginous Aryan theory popularized by German philologist Frederick Max Müller, which was used to justify colonization, was cited in Letter 30 of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. While Tolkien had good intentions, he was “unable to clearly differentiate between the Indo-Iranian languages and from the people who spoke them”.

Christopher Tolkien’s Lectures at Oxford with Jessica Yates

Lifelong Tolkien scholar Jessica Yates attened Christopher Tolkien’s lectures shortly after beginning her studies at Oxford in 1967 and saved the detailed notes from the two courses she took with him, an astonishing acheivement in itself. Yates shared fascinating highlights from these lectures along with books cited during them. Viking funeral were compared to “the pyre of Sigurd and Brynhild and the former Indian custom of Sati… [and] the one in Beowulf”. Many forms of Attila the Hun appeared in myth as he “led an explanation west against the Goths and Franks”. The death of Visigoth king Theodoric I at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains paralleled the death of Theoden-king at Pelennor Fields in The Return of the King as confirmed by Tom Shippey. The famous Burgundians or Nibelungs appeared in Lectures 4 and 5 of the second course, along with Weland or Wayland the Smith. Tolkien’s iconic swans motif is compared to Voland and his brothers marrying swan women at the start of the Wayland story, while Wayland’s Smithy is an extant long barrow near the Uffington White Horse.

“We are as we are, and ye are as we find you” (Or Finrod Elfsplains the Gift of Ilúvatar): The ‘Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth’ as Core Text in Tolkien’s Legendarium with Sara Brown

The first in a pair of talks on the “Athrabeth”, Sara Brown began with the comment, “What did Christopher Tolkien ever do for us?… He published the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth!… And I’m not quite certain if he was right to do that.” The debate between the Elf Finrod and the Woman Andreth acted as a thought experiment on immortality versus death, and what this meant for the end of the world or eschatology. While mortal Atani or Men were doomed to die, which had been framed as “the gift of Ilúvatar”, Andreth felt abandoned by Ilúvatar and the Valar and believed “the gift is actually a punishment” and “death is a wrong that is done to us”. Finrod belittled and talked down to Andreth, asking “What did ye do?”, blaming her and her people for their victimhood. Brown reminded the audience that, “There is not Finrod. There is no Andreth. They are fictional constructs…” created by Tolkien, who wrote this story in 1959, further showing the multidimensional layers to his Legendarium.

It’s so meta: CJRT on JRRT on JRRT in CJRT within the ‘Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth’ with Kristine Larsen

During the second in the pair of talks, Kristine Larsen noted that the “Athrabeth” showed “Tolkien’s changing view on Elvish reincarnation”. Sorting through the nesting dolls of texts requires a study of metacognition, or how people understand their thought processes. Besides walking the audience through the layers of metacognition, Larsen presented complex diagrams to explain how the notes, fragments, extracts, intros, manuscripts, outlines, and other commentary fit together in this section.

Working with Christopher: Art, Prose, and Poetry with Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond

Dubbed “Tolkien Royalty” by the audience, this editing power couple sat before a wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves completely filled with Tolkien material. They first met Christopher in 1987 at the 50^th Anniversary of The Hobbit Conference hosted by Marquette and met again at the 1992 Tolkien Centenary Conference at Oxford. It was there that Christopher suggested that they write a book on Tolkien’s art, which became J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator. Subsequent books included Roverandom in 1998, Farmer Giles of Ham for its 50^th anniversary edition in 1999, the guide for The Lord of the Rings 50^th anniversary edition, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion in 2005, and The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide in 2006, and the 50^th Anniversary edition of The Adventure of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book in 2014. Their last correspondence with Christopher was on the The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, which published earlier this year. The couple alternates who gets first billing in the author statement, which “depends on who’s done the most work and other times just whose turn it is”. The Bodleian Library and the Estate were helpful, sending scans as PDFs, JPEGs, and TIFs.

Christopher Tolkien and ‘The Battle of the Goths and the Huns’ with Nicholas Birns

Nicholas Birns believed this essay had “implications for Christopher’s career as editor of the Legendarium”. The lecture covered the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in 451 AD, where the Roman-Visigoth alliance defeated Attila and the Huns. The location of the battle was debated, as English historians in the 700s cited a different location than Icelandic historians from the 1200s; however, Christopher believed the Icelanders were correct since the English had played “a kind of game of telephone” and lost touched with original material. The Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus featured the Danish king Frotho in his war against the huns, called by Tom Shippey “a defining image of the ‘virtuous pagan’” and another possible source for the name of The Lord of the Rings protagonist. Birns emphasized the “sheer amount of ethnic diversity in Europe at this time… it’s a different world, and all these peoples were teeming around and had names for each other in different languages”, not so different from Middle-earth.

Christopher Tolkien as Reader of His Father’s Work in “The Lay of Leithian” with Yvette Kisor

Yvette Kisor emphasized that Christopher was preoccupied with name changes, narrative changes, and the “Nargothrond element”, or the narrative being altered by a the Elves who lived in Nargothrond, including “Finrod Feligand honoring his oath to Beren’s father Barahir and brothers Celegorm and Curafin honoring their oaths to their father Fëanor” to create Elf villains, a contrast to Morgoth and Sauron. Speaking of Beren, this character appeared as an Elf in earlier versions but became a Man, what Christopher called a “cardinal change” to the text. Another cardinal change was the Elves departing over the sea to Valinor in ships, while the typical story is Ulmo uprooting an island to move the Elves, also known as Tol Eressëa.

Tolkien’s ‘Absent [Female] Characters’: How Christopher Tolkien Expanded Middle-earth with Robin Anne Reid

Robin Anne Read emphasized the need for “new spaces for feminist scholarship”. A study by Emil Johansson revealed that “only 18% of the characters Tolkien describes in his works are female”, yet many are fan favorites. Reid encourages scholars to look beyond the main women in The Lord of the Rings plus Luthien, create transformative works that includes women, and invent in scholarship on gender inequality. She noted that “people succeed more in Middle-earth when they are either working together… [and have both] masculine and feminine traits”.

‘He builded better than he knew’: Christopher Tolkien’s The History of The Lord of the Rings with Michael D. C. Drout

An advocate for digital work informing traditional literary studies (and my former senior seminar professor as an undergrad), Michael D.C. Drout stated that “Christopher Tolkien created the single greatest resource for the study of the composition and revision process of any writer working in English.” He presented dendrograms created using “hierarchical agglomerative clustering” done by Wheaton Lexos with each leaf of the tree representing a chapter in The Lord of the Rings. Chapter 10 “Strider” was incredibly different from the others, and Drout worked with a series of undergraduate students to find out why. They used rolling window analysis to focus on the distribution of words in the text and noted that the number of “the” and “I” changed in Chapter 10. Going back to The Return of the Shadow, they found major revisions to the plot that took place in this chapter, changing the flat character Timothy Titus to well-rounded but forgetful Barliman Butterbur, and the wild hobbit Trotter into the charismatic future king Strider or Aragorn.

Continuing Christopher Tolkien’s Work in a Digital Age with James Tauber

Inspired by Drout to join the field of Tolkien studies, James Tauber compared Christopher to Círdan, “dedicating his life to something bigger than himself” and passing on materials to people, just as Círdan gave the ring Nenya to Gandalf. Tauber runs the Digital Tolkien Project, which creates structural maps and parallel views as another way of studying the material. While Christopher and Tolkien did not like technology, Tauber believes “what father and son disliked most about the Machine was its use as a means of coercion.” Tauber is trying to be “respectful of the copyright situation”, and the project has currently annotated the text for The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion.

“Where Credit is Due” with Verlyn Flieger

The final speaker of the conference and another “Tolkien Royalty”, Verlyn Flieger eloquently spoke about Christopher as “such a towering yet reticent figure… both a star and a supporting player… The sole purveyor of his father’s works”. She noted that Christopher’s work covered three major aspects: problems, scope of achievement, and “the price he had to pay for his scholarly integrity”. Naturally, Flieger had to mention Tolkien’s handwriting: “calligraphically elegant… cantankerously illegible… you had to read not just his handwriting but his mind”. She believed Christopher’s books contributed to Tolkien studies with the same level of importance as “the Oxford English Dictionary and the Encyclopedia Britannica combined” for English studies. She cited what she believes is “the single saddest sentence in the whole collection… ‘You cannot do this anymore.’” written after the publication of The Lord of the Rings and leading him to write the “Athrabeth”. She did not agree with Tolkien and lamented, “I want my old story back! Once you know, then you can’t read even The Lord of the Rings the way you first did.” Even so, she admires the men who created the Legendarium: “one of whom invented a concept, the other of who preserved it, both of whom, eventually, dismantled it.”

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