Lord of the Rings

J. R. R. Tolkien’s long professional involvement with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1400) was at its peak during the writing of The Lord of the Rings (composed between 1937-1949, revised until c. 1954 and published during 1954-1955). Taking the previous fact further, this interdisciplinary paper aims to employ the principles for a meticulous study of Tolkien’s sources (Fisher) in conjunction with ecocriticism (Buell, Cohen, Garrard, Morton, Nichols, Palti, Ralph, Reynolds, Rudd, Simonson, Twomey and Woods) to explore how SGGK influenced LotR. In particular, the journey through the wilderness and the sojourn in the haven of Sir Bertilak’s castle/Hautdesert inside a forest seem to have been borrowed by Tolkien to later incorporate them in the form of the stopover in Caras Galadhon, Lothlórien. The close reading of those passages reveals striking similitudes that cannot be explained unless SGGK is the main source. In both cases, due to the looming natural threats, the narrative justifies Gawain’s and the Fellowship’s wish to find a refuge, which is correspondingly provided by a walled and seemingly protective space. Despite the apparent safety, the protagonists cannot avoid the perilous moral test they will undergo. The most remarkable parallels are those between Gawain and Boromir of Gondor, both of whom fail the trial yet are later revered for their insignificantly stained ethics. The critical lens of ecocriticism becomes key to unearth and analyze the borrowed material and to recover the relevant and central role of the forest in both episodes.

Explorations of Tolkien's latent theology abound, but very little focused scholarship proposes to discuss how Tolkien's legendari-um portrays an understanding of the Holy Spirit, especially in light of Tolkien's Roman Catholicism. This essay explores three major features of Tolkien's work that provide insight into this ghostly person of the Trinity. The Silmarillion provides detailed insight as to the exact identity of the " Flame Imperishable, " while its characters demonstrate the indwelling of this Flame. St. Paul explains the gifts of the Holy Spirit in his first letter to the Corinthians and Tolkien seems to mimic many of these gifts in the characters of the nine members of the Fellowship. Lastly, the Great Eagles represent the workings of the Holy Spirit, both as servants of Manwë and as agents of eucatastrophe.

In her article 'The soul factor: Deception in intimations of life in computer-generated characters' (2009), Kathryn S Egan argues that digital characters in cinema have no soul and are incapable of being empathized with. For evidence, Egan assesses the character of Gollum from Peter Jackson's adaptations of The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003, NZ, USA). This article finds, however, that there are many who have empathized with Gollum, in direct contradiction to Egan's findings. The author argues that Egan produces academic scholarship rather than phenomenological research, and that there is an opening for empathizing with and relating to digital characters such as Gollum. He posits that further research is required in the area of mediated characters and relationships, and that more precise language is required around terms like 'empathy' to accurately communicate the nuance in relationships between real people and digital or artificial characters. In addition, he suggests a term, 'directed empathy', to evoke the kind of empathetic relationship that exists between digital characters and viewers.

One of the main problems in the plastic deformation of materials is the determination of the coefficient of friction as well as the subsequent application of the simulation for comparative analysis. However forecasting process and matching between simulation and experimental data is still a problem. Causes of this are factors such as roughness, mechanical properties of the material, chemical composition, etc. which strongly influence the behavior of the material in the simulation of the process. In this study, an approach is proposed to determine the changeable coefficient of friction in the deformation process experimentally, taking into account implicitly the influence of surface roughness on the friction curves. For the comparative analysis between experiment and simulation of the process, the experimental data for objective assessment was introduced. Nevertheless, there are differences between experiment and simulation, which is most evident in high loads, using lubricants differing from more than 12 units for graphite lubricant, with more than 6 units with oil and with dry friction with 8 units.

The paper seeks to propose the adoption of an alternative metaphor to that of the “journey”, currently the most pervasive characterisation for the student’s experience of doctoral
education. The paper adopts a conceptual and rhetorical approach.
and offers a critique of the journey metaphor as a characterisation of the student’s doctoral experience and proposes instead the metaphor of the Quest, a cultural and literary form found
in most societies. It argues that the six elements of the Quest identified by W.H. Auden resonate with the contemporary doctoral experience and emphasise the uncertainty involved in research rather than the linearity implied by the journey metaphor.
The paper argues that the quest metaphor offers a cross-cultural basis for both staff and student development activities through which sense can be made of the research experience, student concerns can be surfaced, and potentially difficult issues raised for discussion in an unthreatening way. The paper is the first to apply the quest as a metaphor for the student’s doctoral experience and offers a new way of interrogating that experience which will be of use to those involved in supporting research students.

In this paper a new microstrip-fed planar triple-band antenna has been proposed which is applicable for wireless communication standards WLAN/WiMAX applications. The proposed antenna is composed of radiating patch loaded with open square-loop and arc slots and rectangular full length ground plane with defect on it. The geometry of the designed antenna has been parametrically analyzed and optimal dimensions are obtained through numerical computations by using a commercial electromagnetic field simulator. On the basis of conceptual design, a physical module of the antenna has been realized on ceramic filled polytetrafluoroethylene based dielectric substrate of and loss tangent, . The measurement results from the antenna prototype show dB impedance bandwidths of 630 MHz (2.16-2.79 GHz), 600 MHz (3.27-3.87 GHz) and 690 MHz (5.28-5.97 GHz) which can simultaneously cover the bandwidth requirements for all WLAN/WiMAX standards. The designed antenna exhibits nearly symmetric and omnidirectional radiations patterns over the three operating bands. The antenna prototype has shown maximum radiation gains at the frequency bands of 2.49, 3.54 and 5.6 GHz are about 5.71, 6.16, and 6.48 dBi. The experimental results are in good agreement with the results obtained from numerical computation and the designed antenna can be a good candidate for multiband operations in 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN and 2.5/3.5/5.5 GHz WiMAX standard wireless applications.

Link to full text journal article :
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10825-015-0699-8

Archaeology has been for many years identified with its own method, that of excavation. It is the way the public sees archaeology and many archaeologists think of themselves too (e.g. Holtorf 2007). However, Rodney Harrison recently pointed out the crucial role of the surface in archaeological thinking (Harrison 2011, in press).

The days of the classical heroes are over, as the days of Romance or Chivalric Romance and Epic that depict the hero in quest of the ideal are. A typical Romance situates the hero in a succession of challenges, each of which is overcome by him, who finally defeats the dark, evil force and brings peace and order to his community, thus offering to it the opportunity of living in a system defined by the norms of universal morality and enlightenment. The hero becomes a model of universal justice and stability, and he towers above all of his fellow men as a symbol of perfection and endurance of will against the powers of darkness. This plot of one-man challenge and task has been much fruitful in the creation of the stories of the pre-Christian times, the times of the foundation and expansion of Christianity, and the Medieval Age. During these eras such legendary figures as Osiris, Prometheus, Moses, Jesus Christ, and King Arthur of England have emerged as representative perfect super heroes and as universal and absolute role models. Known as monomyths, such stories have shown parallelism regarding the character and plot structure, all yielding similarities as dictated by Romance; this is mostly obvious through the continuous clash of good and evil. The clash creates a sustained tension in the reader whose moral understanding and conscience are kept busy in wondering whether the hero will lose the battle of righteousness or win it, announcing that human dignity has once again been victorious over evil forces. As suggested above, the days of such heroes are over, together with their references to super human qualities which have long been referred to as universal symbols that stand for ideal models for humanity. Such symbols, signifiers, refer to a sign both in

"On (very) new and (extremely) critical archaeologies, or, why one may remain forever eighteen years behind the truly new
Contemporary archaeologies are complex and diverse. It is easier to find things that differentiate prehistoric archaeology, for example, (e.g. Childe 1929) from the archaeology of the contemporary past (Buchli and Lucas 2001) than to identify what both share. The same claim applies to a history of archaeology as such. To simplify, to indicate the differences between culture-historical archaeology, processual archaeology and post-processual archaeologies does not cause many problems (Trigger 2006). However, in this article I claim that these archaeologies use in a very same way the ideas of what ‘new’ and ‘critique’ in archaeology are about. The thesis of this text is: there is usually not so much truly new in the ideas that are described as new and innovative (Žižek 2008)."

Artificial Culture is an examination of the articulation, construction, and representation of "the artificial" in contemporary popular cultural texts, especially science fiction films and novels. The book argues that today we live in an artificial culture due to the deep and inextricable relationship between people, our bodies, and technology at large. While the artificial is often imagined as outside of the natural order and thus also beyond the realm of humanity, paradoxically, artificial concepts are simultaneously produced and constructed by human ideas and labor. The artificial can thus act as a boundary point against which we as a culture can measure what it means to be human. Science fiction feature films and novels, and other related media, frequently and provocatively deploy ideas of the artificial in ways which the lines between people, our bodies, spaces and culture more broadly blur and, at times, dissolve.

Building on the rich foundational work on the figures of the cyborg and posthuman, this book situates the artificial in similar terms, but from a nevertheless distinctly different viewpoint. After examining ideas of the artificial as deployed in film, novels and other digital contexts, this study concludes that we are now part of an artificial culture entailing a matrix which, rather than separating minds and bodies, or humanity and the digital, reinforces the symbiotic connection between identities, bodies, and technologies.

a medievalist, often incorporated elements from medieval literature in his own mythological work. 1 When studying Tolkien's recreation of medieval sources in his own tales, poems, and grand epic, The Lord of the Rings, it is possible to perceive that Tolkien changed aspects of the stories he encountered-especially their endings. In several cases, over the years, he chose to re-imagine medieval poems that he loved, but with certain elements transformed. His concept of eucatastrophe informs his writing to such a degree, and so consistently, that there appears to be a "principle of eucatastrophe" that consistently guided Tolkien's revisionary processes. 2 Tolkien invented the term "eucatastrophe" in an essay, in which he defined it as the opposite of tragedy. He further defined it as the opposite of the "dyscatastrophe" of sorrow and failure, which, Tolkien admits, may be "necessary to the joy of deliverance." 3 For the philologist, eucatastrophe is a good catastrophe, the consolation of a happy ending, and "the eucatstrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale-and its highest function." 4 1 Many scholars have considered the reception of medieval literature in the work of

Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, to the audience that loved the Lord of the Rings films, is an exciting opportunity to revisit Tolkien’s fantastic world and see favorite characters acting out their earlier adventures. The reader of the books, though, is often likely to find the difference in tone between the children’s book and the vastly expanded films jarring. This talk will explore audience expectations, the difficulties of filming a “prequel” after a “sequel,” and issues of “anticipation” in relation to character development. This paper will be published in the proceedings of the NYC Tolkien Conference, and I will be shortly adding a video from the Marquette Lecture Series when available.

A first lenghty study on The Lord of The Rings, focusing mainly on the transformation of Characters during their voyage, and its on the symbolic meaning(s)

Um primeiro estudo sobre O Senhor dos Anéis, centrando-se fundamentalmente na transformação das personagens durante a viagem e no significado simb´lico da mesma

"This paper looks at the aesthetics of scale, spectacle, and vertiginous (simulated) camera movement in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, with particular emphasis on the computer-generated imagery and special effects that enabled some of the films’ striking visual set pieces.  A milestone in computer-generated filmmaking, Steven Regelous’ Massive software program was an advanced 3-D crowd simulation program specially  developed for Peter Jackson’s trilogy. Massive software and other digital effects enabled the visualization of vast battles, with up to 200,000 Uruk-hai fighters in the Battle of Helms Deep and other scenes.  This paper analzyes the program’s technical aspects and consider the philosophical and aesthetic implications of this new filmmaking tool.

"

«El Señor de los Anillos» es seguramente la obra épica más importante e influyente del siglo XX. Además de su valor intrínseco, el trabajo de Tolkien sentó los parámetros genéricos de la novela fantástica, inspirando el posterior nacimiento de diversos universos literarios. En la épica tolkieniana, como es sabido, se reconoce el influjo basilar del cristianismo. El reciente fenómeno audiovisual «Juego de Tronos», profundamente asentado en los usos culturales postmodernos, plantea una lectura radicalmente opuesta del género fantástico, de la axiología de los personajes y la moral política. No obstante, ambos cuerpos convergen en el empleo multidimensional de las pautas narrativas mesiánicas. En el presente texto pretendo identificar sucintamente dichas pautas y analizarlas desde una perspectiva interdisciplinar. Como conclusión sostengo la importancia nuclear de la narrativa mesiánica en la configuración argumental e histórica-contextual de las obras de Tolkien y George R. R. Martin.

In this paper, I examine the theoretical aspects of worldbuilding in Murasaki's and Tolkien's imagined worlds and accentuate the role of aesthetic landscape creation through which spatio-temporal layers are negotiated. As a starting point, I refer to Thomas Ryba's Husserl, Fantasy and Possible Worlds (1990), where he evaluates the believability of secondary worlds via Husserlian phenomenology. To shed light on Ryba's statement that authors must be "adept at describing the qualities of characters and the world in which they live" (232) through the lens of engagement, I contend that critically acclaimed imagined worlds such as Heian Japan in The Tale of Genji (c.1000 A.D.) and Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955) demonstrate two fundamental qualities: the physical environments possess aesthetic qualities and the emotional experience of the place is integrated into the fabric of worldbuilding, generating an aura of believability.

The purpose of this research is to show the changing face of cultural participation in hidden sub-cultures of the West. Through repackaging social partnership to adapt to post-modern realities, Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Gamers establish community, identity, and social mobilization through tabletop wargaming. This research is a call for anthropologists to expand their presence on social media as a means of understanding shifting images of culture. It is also a call for Christian participation in all segments of society.

Стаття присвячена питанням дослідження кіномузики у фільмах жанру фентезі. З початком XXI століття здобув популярність жанр фентезі, який з літератури поширився на інші види мистецтва, зокрема й на кіне- матограф. Музика стала допоміжним засобом для створення в уяві глядача фантастичних образів. Завдяки популярності фільмів жанру фентезі їхня кіномузика також набула значного розповсюдження й навіть була переформатована в автономні твори, які виконувались окремо від кінофільмів. Проте музика з фентезі-фільмів не є поширеним об’єктом досліджень музикознавців. Серед причин можна назвати ставлення до жанру фентезі як до «несерйозного» й «розважального». Тому мета статті – висвітлити й систематизувати науковий досвід дослідження кіномузики фентезі. Наукова новизна обумовлена незначною кількістю досліджень, присвячених цьо- му питанню. Роботи зарубіжних (американських, канадських, британських, польських, російських) й українських науковців, темою яких є дослідження музики фільмів у жанрі фентезі (дисертації, музикознавчі книги й статті) було проаналізовано й систематизовано за об’єктом (кінофільм, музика з якого стала об’єктом дослідження) та предметом (аспекти досліджень). Було виявлено, що об’єктом досліджень більшості науковців є кіномузика конкретного твору – трилогії фентезі-фільмів «Володар Перснів», а предметом досліджень – тематичні, гармо- нічні та стилістичні особливості. Особливу увагу вчені приділяли розгалуженій системі лейтмотивів – музичних образів кіномузики «Володаря Перснів». Значно меншою є кількість наукових робіт, об’єктом досліджень яких є кіномузика інших фентезі-фільмів, зокрема «Хоббіта» й «Гаррі Поттера». Також було виявлено недостатню зацікавленість українських музикознавців у дослідженні кіномузики фільмів жанру фентезі порівняно з західно- європейськими й американськими науковцями. Отже, можна зробити висновок, що, незважаючи на наявність актуальних досліджень, кіномузика фільмів у жанрі фентезі має напрями для подальшого вивчення.
The article deals with the fantasy cinema music study. The fantasy genre became popular with the beginning of the XXI century; it was spread to the other arts, particularly to the cinema. The music helped to create the fantastic characters in the viewer’s imagination. Owing to the fantasy cinema popularity its cinema music took the significant extension and was converted into the autonomous music compositions, which were performed separately from the films. But often the scientists doesn’t explore the fantasy cinema music, the reasons are that this genre is thought to be “unserious” and “entertaining”. So, this article aims to highlight and systematize the scientific experience of the fantasy cinema music study. This exploration is relevant because of a little amount of the fantasy music case studies. The author analyzes and systematizes the works of the Ukrainian and the foreign (American, Canadian, British, Polish, Russian) researchers (dissertations, scientific books and articles) according to the object (the cinema music being studied) and the subject (the aspects of the study). This paper reveals that the majority of the researchers examines The Lord of the Rings cinema music as an object, and the thematic, harmonic and stylistic features as a subject. The scientists concentrate on
the divaricate leitmotif system of the Lord of the Rings cinema music. The articles much less focus on the other fantasy cinema music, particularly on the Hobbit’s and Harry Potter’s. The Ukrainian researchers are found to be not such interested in this issue as there are the European and American scientists. In conclusion, despite the up-to date researches there are issues to study in the fantasy cinema music.

Análise de como os sistemas de calendários da Terra-média, expostos no Apêndice D d'"O Senhor dos Anéis", concordam entre si e com o nosso calendário gregoriano
Publicado [no original em inglês] em "Quettar", o Boletim da Comunidade Linguística da Tolkien Society, Nº 21 (1984)

Este capítulo constituye un análisis de la adaptación de Peter Jackson de El Señor de los Anillos como una narrativa visual medievalista que interactúa con otros textos visuales y escritos, tanto medievales como medievalistas. En esta polifonía de relatos que constituyen el entramado sobre el que se sustenta la adaptación de Jackson, El Señor de los Anillos, de J.R.R. Tolkien es el texto central, si bien no el único. Destacan, entre otros, la poesía anglosajona épica y elegíaca, las sagas escandinavas, las cartas de Tolkien, la literatura y la pintura victorianas, además de la multitud de ilustraciones realizadas a partir de la obra de Tolkien.

In May of SR 1480 Samwise Gamgee discovered two missing pages of his Gaffer's on again off again diary buried in a lockbox in the garden of Number 3 Bagshot Row. Most of the diary tells of Gaffer's coming of age party, yet there was a very important paragraph. 'Last week I was invited to Daisy Brandybuck's parent's home for a weekend. We snuck away after dinner in the moonlight along the Brandywine River and I received my first kiss from her soft lips. I heard a noise then opened my eyes and saw a tree moving across the river on the edge of the Old Forest and the tree had eyes! Daisy's brother then appeared with her father and we walked (or were hurried) back to the house; was I dreaming?' Sam immediately told Rose he needed to spend the evening and maybe several days with Merry and Pippin and he left the next day. Bill and Sam arrived and after tea and several half pints of ale and a pipe of 1420, Sam showed the two hobbits the missing pages. Pippin wanted to send Treebeard a message, even though this page of the diary was more than 100 years old. In the end Merry and Sam suggested more investigating. Merry inquired with the elder residents along the river and after two days they found no one who had actually seen anything similar, but three elders remembered hearing of a handful of incidents over the years.

▪ RESUMO: Pretende-se, nesse artigo, analisar elementos da maquinaria gótica dentro da obra de fantasia O Senhor dos Anéis. Será feita uma análise cronológica dos elementos concretos (como monstros e locações) e subjetivos (a atmosfera e sensações vividas pelos personagens) relacionados ao gótico e ao terror, e que função cumprem na referida obra. O objetivo é evidenciar o quão fundamentais são esses elementos para a construção da narrativa, de forme que caracterizam os desafios a serem superados pelos personagens. ▪ PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Maquinaria gótica. O Senhor dos Anéis. Atmosfera gótica. Introdução O que é o gótico na literatura? Para alguns, um movimento delimitado, sur-gido em meados do século XVIII e que durou até o fim do XIX. Para outros, uma tendência nunca finita, mas sempre fluida e adaptável. Independente dessas questões, há algo nessa literatura que a ultrapassa, seja em direção ao passado ou ao futuro, que é a chamada " maquinaria gótica ". Esse artigo não visa uma discussão de gênero, mas sim uma análise dessa maquinaria gótica em determinada obra. Primeiramente chamado de " parafernália gótica " por H. P. Lovecraft (2008, p.31-32), o grupo de motivos góticos passou, posteriormente a ser denominado de " maquinaria gótica " (VASCONCELLOS, 2002, p.127). Esse grupo consiste de basicamente os diversos motivos relacionados ao horror e terror: podem ser motivos concretos como o castelo assombrado, o fantasma, o vampiro, o lobisomem, a bruxaria; podem apresentar-se como situações apavorantes e petrificantes e no mistério sobrenatural ou ainda em qualquer outro elemento que possa causar assombro em um mero ser humano. Jerrold E. Hogle traça uma sistematização dos temas, espaços e possibilidades textuais apresentadas pelo Gótico:

Geographic distributions of names can be relatively static over many generations. This paper applies a mapping of English names to places in Great Britain to extract implicit correspondences between the names of hobbit families and their roles in The Lord of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien is found to have used family names that predominate near his childhood home in the West Midlands to connote characters close to Bilbo and Frodo, names from other parts of Britain to indicate relationships that are not so congenial, and names that do not occur widely in Britain to designate characters who are exotic or strange. The mapping is applied to the story of the Gamgee family, which exposes a story hidden in the Appendices.

This article aims to outline the distributed agency within the creation of computer--generated characters for live--action movies that use Motion Capture techniques. This technique requires a tight interplay between human actors, technical artefacts and digital processes. With the help of ANT the relationships within this heterogeneous collective can be presented more precisely in order to assign agency to human and non--human participants. Considerations concerning a combined interplay of humans and computer--driven actions result in the figure of the hybrid actor. Gollum, a computer--generated character from Peter Jackson's adaptation of the Lord of the Rings, serves as case example to carve out the attributes of this composite agent. The aim of the article is to show how these types of agents tackle the film industry's inherent ontology revolving around human actors and their products. The article contributes an insight how the mentioned network reacts to the emerging problem of crediting in the context of Motion Capture as technical innovation and how the involved community preserves their notion of artistry.

The success of a contemporary fantasy production such as Game of Thrones is heavily dependent upon the use of visual effects to bring its amazing world to the screen. This paper will attempt to interrogate such creations in order to establish a conceptual rapport between the fantasy genre and the psychoanalytic theory of fantasy. The most compelling account of psychoanalytic fantasy and film comes from Todd McGowan (2007), who offers a four-fold typology of cinema: fantasy, desire, integration and intersection, and it is to this third category that I will attend. However, where McGowan finds a dishonest experience in a cinema of “integration” that conflates fantasy with desire, and where he also passes over the fantasy genre without much consideration, I will, instead, examine the role of computer-generated imagery in the creation of contemporary fantasy film and television as a properly Lacanian “fantasmatic supplement” (the necessary presence of fantasy in our relation to the world) at the formal level.

I will suggest that it is, crucially, through the combination of live action with visual effects that a series such as Game of Thrones presents us, as spectators, with an aesthetic experience closely approximating psychoanalytic reality (i.e. how psychoanalysis theorises everyday experience). By paying close attention to “making of” featurettes I will suggest that they offer a particularly Lacanian perspective: laying bare the processes behind the creation of sequences such as The Battle for The Wall in Game of Thrones in order to demonstrate the ways in which the realms of desire (limitation, incompleteness; live action) and of fantasy (plenitude, wholeness; VFX) work together in order to constitute the world. In sum, this paper will offer a reappraisal of the current neo-Lacanian approach to film theory in order to claim, ultimately, that there is more reality in fantasy than in other, so-called, “realist” modes of film and television.

This paper examines Peter Jackson's re-visioning of J.R.R. Tolkien's Aragorn, using as its departure point Lawrence and Jewett's analysis of the distinguishing features of the American superhero monomyth in The Myth of the American Superhero, and contrasting it with the view of Tolkien's future king as the epic hero set forth in Flieger's classic article "Frodo and Aragorn: The concept of the hero."