This sounds like an interesting lecture:
Matthew Dickerson presents “Beyond Romanticism” at Marquette University
October 23, 2008
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm
“Beyond Romanticism: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Practical Agrarian Romance”Professor Dickerson will explore one element of Tolkien’s comprehensive ecological vision expressed in his Middle-earth legendarium: the agrarianism of the Shire, and its contrast in the industrialized agriculture of Sauron and Saruman. While Tolkien’s works might be dismissed as mere romanticism–idyllic fantasy with no implications to our world–the talk will defend a claim that the underlying ecology in these works is fundamentally practical (at many levels). Thursday, October 23, 2008 4-5:30 p.m in the Prucha Archives Reading Room, John P. Raynor, S.J., Library (3rd floor).
