Hither Shore 14 – Literary Worldbuilding
Hither Shore
Interdisciplinary Journal
on Modern Fantasy Literature
Jahrbuch der
Deutschen Tolkien Gesellschaft e.V. (DTG)
27-29. Oktober 2017, Augsburg
Buchinformationen
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- Preface
- Tolkien Seminar 2017
- On No Magic in Tolkien: Resisting the Representational Criteria of Realism
- Apologie der Phantastik
- How to Distinguish Secondary from Primary Creations? A Leibnizian Elucidation of a Distinction by J.R.R. Tolkien
- We are Middle-earth: Transmedia Worldbuilding and Media Convergence
- Worldbuilding and Mythopoeia in Modern Fantasy Literature
- Points of Departure through Strange Realms: Literary Worldbuilding in Tolkien, Jordan and Williams
- The Writer as a Scribe: Sub-creation in J.R.R, Tolkien and J.L. Borges
- Horrifying Armies of Darkness and their Function as Embodiments of Evil and Catalysts of Change within Sub-created Worlds
- One Pair of Eyes: Focalisation and Worldbuilding
- Then Smaug Spoke: on Constructing the Fantastic via Dialogue in Tolkien’s Story Cosmos
- Forms of Racism as a Facet of Worldbuilding in Fantasy Literature
- Sub-creating a World: from Artifice to Artefact
- Eucatastrophe and Tolkien’s Worldbuilding. A Theological Reading
- Deconstructing the “Historical” Background in Tolkien’s Foreword to Farmer Giles of Ham
- Standing between Spaces and Inhabiting Multiple Worlds with the Eld Green and Kyn Folk
- Satirical Worldbuilding: from Brobdingnag to Tralfamadore
- In Search of Individuality and Fundamental Reality in Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere
- Game of Thrones Seen through the Prism of Tolkien’s Theory on Fairy Stories
- “I regard men and women as all human”. Women’s History in the World of George R.R. Martin
- Romantische Weltgestaltung in H.P. Lovecrafts Werk
- Die Welt der Deryni und ihre Entstehung
- Conference Scholarship 2017
- The Voice of Nature in Middle-earth through the Lens of Testimony
- Discourses of Knowledge and Power: Invisibility and Seeing in The Lord of the Rings
- Summaries of the German Essays
- Zusammenfassungen der englischen Essays
- Reviews/Rezensionen
- Lisa Coutras: Tolkien’s Theology of Beauty. Majesty, Splendor, and Transcendence in Middle-earth.
- M. May, M. Baumann, R.Baumgartner, T. Eder (Hrsg.): Die Welt von
- Game of Thrones. Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf
- G.R.R. Martins A Song of Ice and Fire
- Tokien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review. Vol. XIII
- Julian T.M. Eilmann: J.R.R. Tolkien, Romanticist and Poet
- Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review. Vol. XIV
- Claudio A. Testi: Pagan Saints in Middle-earth
- Unsere Autorinnen & Autoren
- Siglen-Liste
Vorwort
The 14th Tolkien Seminar of the German Tolkien Society (DTG), held from the 27th to the 29th October 2017 in Augsburg, was dedicated to the topic of “Literary Worldbuilding”. The breadth and variety of the theme invited not only contributions on Tolkien, but also on numerous other authors. It was the biggest Tolkien Seminar of the DTG so far, with over 30 scheduled presentations, which sadly did not all get submitted for publication.
This extraordinarily strong resonance yielded a great variety of insights, considerations, theoretical approaches, etc. and demonstrated impressively how advantageous it is for the analysis of individual authors to examine their respective ways of literary worldbuilding in a contrastive manner; or how different perspectives onto the same work can benefit from each other. Not surprisingly, Tolkien’s well-established position as a theorist and practitioner of secondary world creation was reaffirmed by the presentations and discussions.
Even so it should be said that in this conference—despite the large amount of contributions—the topic could not be covered in its whole entirety, which is partially due to the wide spectrum of the works and authors examined.
The 20th anniversary of the DTG furthermore offered the opportunity to award for the first time the newly established ‘Travel Grants for Junior Researchers’, which enabled the contributions by Laura Seile, Germany, and Andoni Cossio, Spain. The grants are designed to cover travel and accommodation costs of promising up-and-coming scholars who would like to present their research at the Tolkien Seminar. The conference scholarship has its roots in one of the central concerns of the DTG: the promotion of new talents, especially in the field of academic research.
Another novelty was the venue, the University of Augsburg. Thanks to the highly successful cooperation with Stephan Köser and Sebastian Streitberger the Tolkien Seminar found a strong resonance. For all that I would like to thank you and everyone else who helped on-site, as well as Walking Tree Publishers for the cordial and active assistance and finally to the publisher’s team Susanne A. Rayermann and Kathi Bondzio, with the assistance of Larissa Zöller, Marcel Aubron-Bülles and Frank Weinreich.
Thomas Fornet-Ponse