Last week I attended Oxonmoot at Oxford University, which is the world’s largest celebration of all things Tolkien. With four days of lectures, panels, group discussions, and other activities (such as a hungry hobbit bake-off), it was an opportunity to completely indulge in one of my biggest fandoms. I got to make lots of LOTR jokes that people not only understood, but actually laughed at. I also did some writing at the cute pub where Tolkien wrote some of LOTR, and thus ticked off a life goal. Dreamboat.
But besides the nerding out, a few particular lectures really tickled my brain, and got me thinking about how to teach the fantasy genre and analyse elements of world-building. I’ll never rest until I can implement a fantasy unit on the curriculum at least once in my lifetime, so here goes a few lil reflections and ideas that may be helpful to anyone already living this best life and teaching the greatest genre…or for future Tess.
Key lectures
Putting the ‘She’ in Shelob: Feminity, Fear & Spiders in Pagan mythology- Daisy Butcher.
This PhD student knocked this lecture out of the park. She explored the symbolism of the spider in western literature and folklore, and specifically examined how this creature has come to be associated with fears of the feminine, such as: the ‘terrible mother’ archetype, the promiscuous woman, vagina dentate, menstruation fears, witchcraft and sorcery etc. I really enjoyed her drawing on Greek myths- such as Arachne, a girl transformed into a spider after she challenged Athena to a weaving contest, and even the web-like labyrinth symbol as associated with femininity and the unknown. Though this wasn’t touched on, there is a connection with labyrinth myths to Queen Pasiphae, the woman who birthed the minotaur and thus commissioned the labyrinth to be made to contain it. Cough- terrible mother- cough. The spider in European myth/lit is very much an other figure, and reminiscent of Freud’s notions of the uncanny (that which is familiar become threatening/strange). In LOTR, Shelob manifests as a brilliant encapsulation of the threatening female. Like all the female characters in LOTR, she is powerful, multi-dimensional, deeply characterised. A key passage from the text to focus on:
Sam came up behind as fast as he could urge his legs; but glad as he was to be free, he was uneasy, and as he ran, he kept on glancing back at the dark arch of the tunnel, fearing to see eyes, or some shape beyond his imagining, spring out in pursuit. Too little did he or his master know of the craft of Shelob. She had many exits from her lair.
There agelong she had dwelt, an evil thing in spider-form, even such as once of old had lived in the Land of the Elves in the West that is now under the Sea, such as Beren fought in the Mountains of Terror in Doriath, and so came to Lúthien upon the green sward amid the hemlocks in the moonlight long ago. How Shelob came there, flying from ruin, no tale tells, for out of the Dark Years few tales have come. But still she was there, who was there before Sauron, and before the first stone of Barad-dûr; and she served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness. Far and wide her lesser broods, bastards of the miserable mates, her own offspring, that she slew, spread from glen to glen, from the Ephel Dúath to the eastern hills, to Dol Guldur and the fastnesses of Mirkwood. But none could rival her, Shelob the Great, last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world.
Already, years before, Gollum had beheld her, Sméagol who pried into all dark holes, and in past days he had bowed and worshipped her, and the darkness of her evil will walked through all the ways of his weariness beside him, cutting him off from light and from regret. And he had promised to bring her food. But her lust was not his lust. Little she knew of or cared for towers, or rings, or anything devised by mind or hand, who only desired death for all others, mind and body, and for herself a glut of life. alone, swollen till the mountains could no longer hold her up and the darkness could not contain her.
The idea that Shelob takes “spider-form” rather than just being a giant spider is important; it suggests her energy or essence is something else (aka dangerous femininity). If you note Tolkien’s throwback to Beren you can see that she’s old- perhaps ageless- which is a typical characteristic for sorceresses and witches in western storytelling. There’s symbolism also in her draining all creatures of their blood, and in particular hunting the (infantilized) hobbits- she is not the ‘mother nature’ nurturer to all, but the opposite, the ‘terrible mother’ preying on any and all for her own greed. I also loved how Daisy drew comparisons to Gollum’s worshipping of her with that of pagan and Roman cults for female deities. Macbeth also comes to mind here, with the goddess Hecate leading her coven of witches. The semantic field of gluttony too suggests that her power is a consuming, unstoppable force, and we all know historically the patriarchal/medieval Christian fear of the insatiable woman. It’s important when examining the genre to see how abstract ideas are at once personified but also gendered. For Tolkien, the feminization of Shelob draws on a rich tradition of feminity=evil/threat/danger and we have the spread of Christendom to thank for that. This is an important contextual angle, and similarly one that should be challenged when reading more modern fantasy.
In all, this was a brilliant talk for exploring the spider symbol in literature, particularly in fantasy where western misunderstanding of the true nature of spiders (they’re usually quite good mothers and are seen as symbols of healing, wisdom, and protection in other cultures) implies a fear of the alien. When teaching fantasy, this is an idea to keep in mind and if teaching creative writing, it might be useful to brainstorm with a class common social anxieties as a starting point for crafting believable and compelling villains. This can be fun for most age groups, but might go particularly well with novel studies of:
- The Hobbit- an obvious choice, but villains for examination are broad and allow for a lot interpretation. The spiders, the goblins, the trolls, and Gollum. See my PP here for more ideas.
- The Wizard of Earthsea- the shadow creature as being an abstract idea personified.
- The Chamber of Secrets- Aragog and Ron’s fear of spiders
Prospective nostalgia in the Silmarillion- Ellen Duncan.
This was a gorgeous lecture that examined the role of time in Middle Earth, and specifically the conflict between immortal elves and mortal men. Ellen reflected on how the elves are characterized to really experience time in a sorrowful way; after all, when you live forever you become burdened with the truth that peace is a temporary state and that war is a natural part of the world’s social fabric. The elves’ yearning for peaceful past days can be paralleled with Tolkien’s experiences in WWI. He wrote the majority of his elvish languages from the trenches, and though he often referred to himself as ‘cowardly’ he also volunteered to serve in WWII. Loss is a key aspect of the elvish experience, and their rejection of the changing world at the time of LOTR actually stagnates them, their civilisations becoming beautiful and yet mournful time-capsules. By contrast, men are given “the gift of death” (as Tolkien called it) and therefore have a greater drive to create, to progress, to leave their mark on the earth as they shan’t walk it forever. This leaves the Dunedain, mortal men who lived hundreds of years and were ‘elf-friends’. In LOTR, Aragorn is one such Dunedain, who runs from his past due to the weakness of Isildur and fears the present because it means he’ll be crowned. I asked Ellen if she thought the Dunedain could be Tolkien’s bridging of this temporal rift, and if Aragorn was meant to present a unification of the two experiences of time, if not a total coming-to-peace with the anxieties of it.
I loved this lecture. Translating all this to teaching the genre or creative writing, students might consider how their characters experience time differently, particularly if they are developing part-humanoid characters. The concept of immortality automatically gives a sense of gravitas to a story, but students should consider: what are the consequences of this? As a higher-order concept, I’d recommend facilitating this kind of thinking among English Extension II students in Australia, or A-Level/PEP students in the UK. If you wanted to introduce these concepts to lower year groups, you might consider the following ideas and texts:
- His Dark Materials- the witches and particularly Seraphina’s comments about immortality and love
- The Philosopher’s Stone- the nature of man’s quest for immortality, Flamel’s riddles to protect the prize and the corrupting nature of this type of power.
- The Chronicles of Narnia- specifically the first book, and the “pools” of worlds. Compare the immortality of Aslan (a creator) with that of the witch (a destroyer/leech).
Just a few thoughts that might help enrich a study of the genre and related texts 🙂
Tess Moon 