The upcoming Phase III of this project will consist of reception and fandom studies centered on Sauron and will include one or more fan surveys. If you are familiar with Tolkien’s Legendarium either through his original works or adaptations and are interested in participating in these surveys when Phase III goes live, please follow the link below to sign up for our mailing list.
Wizard, Demon, Cat; Reformer, Satanist, Bureaucrat: a Diachronic Analysis of Three Modes of Sauron in the Legendarium in Light of The Book of Lost Tales
This paper argues that Sauron is a metatextual shape-shifter. Through diachronic analysis it identifies and charts three distinct “modes” of Sauron coexisting in Tolkien’s Legendarium. While Sauron’s most robust First Age appearance (in the tale of Beren and Lúthien) remained relatively unchanged from his introduction in the 1920s until Tolkien’s death, Sauron’s role in the Legendarium expanded significantly across Tolkien’s lifetime as Sauron became the primary antagonist of two additional Ages of Middle-earth. Some of the evolutions that accompanied this expansion are not retroactively reflected in the tales already written, hence these “modes” of Sauron could be said to remain in tension. This paper posits explanations for this lack of synthesis and also argues that aspects of each of these modes can be traced back to abandoned characters who appear in The Book of Lost Tales.
This paper analyzes Sauron’s “original” name, “Mairon,” in its various contexts (textual, temporal, and linguistic) and then applies it to a reading of the character in order to produce a “capsule characterization” or “minimyth” for the Lord of the Rings himself. The name “Mairon” appears only in a note to a single entry in a list of Eldarin roots, not published until 2007 in the journal Parma Eldalamberon. This niche location suggests one of the many ways in which this name is marginal: typographically, linguistically, narratively, and historically (as in the Secondary World). The name appears to have been conceived during a flurry of revision to the Legendarium following the publication of The Lord of the Rings, revision that elsewhere included additional work on Sauron. Apparently derived from maira (“admirable, excellent, precious”), the name is situated within a broader complex of entries expressing notions of greatness, art-making, service, usefulness, and value. Both “Maia” and “Mairon” are ultimately derived from the same root, suggesting a possible understanding of the pre-corrupted Sauron as in some way exemplary of his own order. The name is notably distinct from the names of most of the other Ainur, the majority of whom are named for particular domains of Creation with which they are associated (weeping, weaving, invention, birds, etc.); “Mairon” (“The Admirable”) is more closely aligned with Melian’s Quenya name “Melyanna” (“Dear Gift”) as both names suggest an implied “other.” Ultimately, the name “Mairon” is meaningful to a reading of Sauron and fits smoothly into a larger pattern of associations of the character with the notions of seeing (or not), being seen (or not), and how one is seen (or how one sees the self).
Jointly authored with Nick Polk.
Recent scholarship has addressed the connected problems of Tolkien as “Author/Author(ity)” and the exclusivist readings of Tolkien’s work that follow this construction (Chunodkar, Emanuel, Reid). This “constructed Tolkien” seems to parallel common readings of his Legendarium’s own Creator God, Eru—understood as the monolithic “Author” of Ea. Yet “subcreation” within Tolkien’s narrative and extra-narrative works is routinely exhibited not as monolithic but rather as (literally and figuratively) multivocal (and hence inherently queer).
In this paper Cameron will propose that the Legendarium can be read through the lens of “con-creation” (the total choice-making activity of all rational beings) both internally (as events in the Secondary World) and externally (as both a text and a pseudohistory in the Primary World). This approach levels the playing field between all actors in—and readers of—“The Drama,” providing a queer (non-normative) approach to creativity (and interpretation of creativity) when compared to “orthodox” doctrines of creation. Nick will further argue that con-creation resonates with process theologies of creation, particularly Jacob J. Erickson’s Irreverent Theology and Catherine Keller’s creatio ex profundis. Both emphasize the participation of a multiplicity of creatures in divine creativity, shaking off a monolithic determination of creation.
The Second Age began in crisis as the peoples of Middle-earth faced the aftermath of war—one violent enough to destroy a continent—as well as the loss of knowledge and skills as the Eldar returned to Valinor. In response to this “disorder,” indicative of “Arda Marred,” Sauron sought the “rehabilitation” and “reform” of Middle-earth “neglected by the gods.” Over the next two millennia, Sauron produced several works of craft that became building blocks to his eventual totalitarian empire: The Rings of Power, The Black Speech, and The Dark Tower. Building on the scholarship of Charles Huttar, Jerold C. Frakes, and Jonathan Himes, I will explore Sauron’s creations in light of their possible functions as tools of physical and metaphysical “reform” in Middle-earth by arguing that they may represent attempts at replacing metaphysical linchpins symbolized in Medieval thought via Boethius’s Wheel of Fortune, The Tower of Babel, and The World Tree.
Sauron’s relationship to corporeality, impairment, and disability is in many ways unique within the Legendarium. While not an incarnate being by nature he is nevertheless incarnate in two distinct “bodies” at the same time during much of the Second and Third Ages (himself and The Ring) both of which seem to exhibit at least some amount of agency. He is dismembered in the prose of The Lord of the Rings through metonymy and metaphor, yet those under his domination extend his bodily reach. His relationship to the aesthetics of his form (and the eventual limitations thereof) plays a narrative role as does his skill as a shapeshifter, and his capabilities as a necromancer include the “unnatural” manipulation of body and spirit independent of each other. Perhaps most curiously, Sauron twice himself receives physical injuries that persist across his own bodily transformations: a wound to his throat that drips blood and the loss of a single finger. That is, unlike Morgoth, Sauron maintains the ability to “shift” or “rebuild” his shape following these injuries, but cannot (or will not) “heal” these wounds as a part of that process.
Sauron is a master of deception and illusions, muddying the waters when it comes to readings of his relationship to his bodily form, but the above characteristics offer tantalizing glimpses into how we might read Sauron through the lenses of disability, impairment, and their understanding in Medieval thought. Building on the work of Flieger, Kisor, Metzler, and Moore, and utilizing both a Medieval understanding of the post-resurrection wounds of martyrs and saints as well as Price’s modern concept of “bodymind,” I will explore possible interpretations of the persistence of Sauron’s wounds and ask what might constitute impairment and disability for an Ainu, if their bodies are in fact reflections of their spirit.
Sauron is fundamentally a shapeshifter. Bodiless by nature, he takes different physical forms in the Legendarium, often for the purposes of deception, yet his most prominent narrative appearance in The Lord of the Rings is marked by his (apparent) physical absence. Here he is instead represented (and dismembered) in the prose through metonymy and metaphor, while those under his domination extend his bodily reach. His shapeshifting extends metatextualy: his characterization and narrative function changed over the course of Tolkien’s lifetime, creating dissonances when the Legendarium is viewed as a single corpus. Using the Gestalt Laws of Perception, I will build on the semiotics work of Gergely Nagy and argue that “Sauron” in Tolkien’s texts can be understood as a gestalt entity, one the reader creates by mentally constructing a whole from (seemingly) disparate parts—a co-creative action between Tolkien and the reader that may help explain Sauron’s varied interpretations in fandom.
Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-stories” outlines the author’s theory of Fantasy and includes Tolkien’s thoughts on the appropriate medium for such artworks: “Fantasy is a thing best left to words, to true literature. […] Literature works from mind to mind and is thus more progenitive. It is at once more universal and more poignantly particular.” Language as medium allows the reader/hearer to participate in the act of subcreation through imaginative generation of the Secondary World—each word chosen by the author activating in the encountering mind a complex matrix of associations with both individualized and “Platonic” examples of the referent. In comparison Tolkien identifies a tendency for visual representations of Fantasy to overwhelm these faculties, in essence dominating the viewer’s encounter with the Secondary World. This poses interesting questions for the application of Tolkien’s theory to many current examples of Fantasy in primarily visual media such as films and video games.
Final Fantasy is a series of JRPGs (Japanese Role-Playing Games) consisting of 16 major titles released for various video game consoles between 1987–2023. Applying Tolkien’s theory to a formal analysis of the changing graphical qualities of this series suggests a more nuanced understanding of what mediums are capable of inviting the kind of imaginative generation Tolkien describes and what may count as “true literature.”
Building on the work of MacLeod and Smol, utilizing the concept of “Visual Indeterminacy,” and combining the tools of art theory with an understanding of early JRPG graphics as pictographic/ideographic, I will argue that while more recent Final Fantasy installments, with photorealistic graphics and voice acting, function like interactive film, early Final Fantasy games functioned like literature despite their primarily graphical nature, allowing players the opportunity for the imaginative generation that Tolkien seems to have believed was integral to successful Fantasy.
From the beginning of Tolkien scholarship Mordor has been analyzed in light of its Hellish iconography; from the perspective of the narrative voice, what constitutes “Hell” in Middle-earth may seem clear. But what is Hell to Mordor’s chief inhabitant? What is Hell in Sauron’s Eye?
The Rings of Power has brought Sauron into the spotlight by interpreting him not as depersonalized evil but as a character in his own right. Actor Charlie Vickers has shared how he developed this character for the screen, adapting characteristics taken directly from Tolkien’s own writings: Sauron’s love of order and his desire to “heal” Middle-earth—a goal with its implicit suggestion of utopian vision. Is such a goal even achievable within the theological and metaphysical constraints of Middle-earth?
Drawing on Tolkien’s writings about Sauron from the 1950s, the biblical scholarship of Elaine Pagels, and the work of Jonathan McIntosh (among others), I intend to argue that Sauron’s goal strikes at the nature of Arda itself; to Sauron, Hell is Arda Marred, and his struggle to order it is ultimately his own struggle with the Problem of Evil—the very force he, in a feedback loop, comes to represent.
In Book 5, chapter 1 of Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris, the antagonist, Claude Frollo, criticizes Gutenburg’s press. With one hand pointing towards a book and the other pointing at Notre Dame, he states, “this will kill that. […] the book will kill the building.”
Using the underlying principles of Frollo’s statement as a jumping off point, and touching on Tolkien’s thoughts on the “fitness” of sound form to meaning, this talk will examine the interplay of form and content in communicating (and circumscribing) the “meaning” of a text, and particularly narrative texts. I cover several examples of original and adapted narratives relating to the work of J. R. R. Tolkien as presented in different media (printed literature, video games, film, and television series), drawing attention to how the “embodiment” of the text in the various media alters how the reader / player / viewer encounters (and potentially interprets) the content.
How to Destroy Your Enemies and Influence People: Disinformation in Numenor and the Epistemological Limitations of Mortality
Sauron the Evangelist: Sauron as Subversion of John the Apostle
A Competition of Marys: Varda and Nienna as Marian Listeners
The Infinite Variety of God: Fanfiction as Subcreation
Tolkien’s Felix Culpa: ‘The Melkor Ingredient’ as Original Sin
Necromancy and Verisimilitude in Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War