Tolkien's Material Culture

Marie H. Loughlin is Associate Professor of English literature at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Her publications include Hymeneutics: Interpreting Virginity on the Early Modern Stage (1997), Early Modern Women Writers Engendering Descent (2022), Same-Sex Desire in Early Modern England, 1550-1735 (editor, 2014), and The Broadview Anthology of Sixteenth-Century Poetry and Prose (co-editor, 2011).

• 1. Introduction: Tolkien and Material Culture: The Lives of Fictional Things- The Things We Make/The Things that Make Us: Approaching Tolkien through Material Culture Studies- Paradoxes: Things in Texts and in the World, Or, Imagining and Realizing Middle-earth’s Objects - Overview2. “Sketchiness in the archaeology and realien”: Objects and Origins in The Silmarillion - Imagining the Origins of Material Culture in Myth: Things in the Worlds of the Valar- Building Relationships with Objects I: Inventing, Creating, Gifting, Inheriting- Building Relationships with Objects II: Possessing, Depositing, Losing, Destroying- Coda: The Birth of the Trauma Object: The Silmarilli3. Objects and the Cultures of Memory in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - Mathoms, Gifts, and Museums: Making Objects Mean in the Shire- Smaug’s Hoard and Dwarvish Treasures: Conflicting Cultures of the Object- Memory Objects/Trauma Objects: Receptacles and the Challenge of the Ring- The Library and the Book as Wonder Objects in Tolkien’s Oeuvre- Coda: Revisiting the Trauma Object: Frodo’s White Gem and the Red Book of Westmarch4. Monuments in Middle-earth: Remembrance from the First through the Third Age - Public Memory: Memorials, Genealogies, and the Construction of the Past in The Silmarillion- Monuments and Remembrance in Middle-earth’s Third Age: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - Grave Goods, Corpses, and Pasts beyond Memory: Barrows, Mounds, and Lost Tombs - Occupation and the Public War Memorial: The Shire Remembers the Battle of Bywater- Coda: Revisiting ‘Waste’ Receptacles: Trash Cans, Ash-heaps, Battle Pits 5. ‘Lose the Umbrellas?’: Marvellous and Quotidian Objects in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003) and The Hobbit (2012–2014), and J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay’s The Rings of Power (2022–)- The Object as Fetish in Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003)- Umbrellas, Hoards, and the Question of Culture in Jackson’s The Hobbit (2012–2014)- Payne and McKay’s The Rings of Power (2022–): Middle-earth’s Object Cultures and Fan NostalgiaChapter 6. Building Middle-earth/Building the Self: Digital Games, Licensed and Fan DIY Objects, and LEGO LoTR and Hobbit Building Sets - Lord of the Rings Online: Mathoms, Accumulation, Identity- (Un)Licensed Objects: Fandom’s Culture of Collecting, Creating, and Connecting- Actor Play: Re-inventing Narratives in LEGO’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit Building Sets7. Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index