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Presentation: Cassidy Winter – Invertebrates in the Works of Tolkien and the Societal Impact of Those Portrayals
- Hypotheses
- Shelob = Hobbit
- If Invertebrates written as evil by Tolkien
- What is an Invertebrate?
- Ungoliant
- Takes the form of a Spider
- Beorn’s Giant Bees
- Mirkwood Spiders
- Were-worms
- Shortcut to mushroom: Spider, Centipede, Earthworms
- Neekerbreekers
- Morgul Flowers and Flies(?)
- Sheblob – Spider
- Butterflies
- Gwaihir’s Moth pal – Film only
- Ants, Glowworms, snails
- Compiled list of all animal entries in Tolkien
- Invertebrate by clade and alignment
- Spiders mostly bad, butterflies mostly good
- Stats
- Horses good
- Reptiles evil
- invertebrates up in air
- Horses have a capacity for evil matched only by Humans in my opinion
Presentation: Ilana Mushin – Pride and Prejudice
- What does Tolkien mean by Pride / Proud?
- “proud and fair” in the dead marshes
- “pride and dispair” Gandalf to Denothor
- Pride is French word with positives connotations
- Once in Old English it started to become negative (haughty, overbearing)
- Middle-English – Gets back some positive meanings
- The Grammar of Pride / Proud
- To complex for me to summarize
- Around 30% uses were positive
- Negative 37%
- 33% not clear if it positive or negative
- Who is proud?
- Saruman
- Individual Elves (but sometimes Noldor)
- Denethor
- Folk of Gondor
- Shadowfax
- Turin
- Sauron and Morgoth are not described has having pride