Institutions A variety of institutions have developed to support Tolkien research. These include
The Tolkien Society and
The Mythopoeic Society. Tolkien archives are held in the
Bodleian Library in
Oxford and
Marquette University in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Publishers of scholarly books on Tolkien include
Houghton Mifflin,
McFarland Press, Mythopoeic Press,
Walking Tree Publishers,
Palgrave MacMillan, and
Kent State University Press.
Conferences In 1992, the Tolkien Society and the Mythopoeic Society held a joint conference for the centenary of Tolkien's birth, combining papers that were published in the conference proceedings, with a mixed programme of events over a period of eight days, 17–24 August 1992, in Oxford. The Mythopoeic Society has been holding conferences in the U.S. (and once in Canada) nearly annually since 1970. In recent years some conferences have been virtual.
Omentielva is a European bi-yearly conference on research into Tolkien's invented languages.
Fields A large literature examines Tolkien's
Middle-earth fantasy fiction from numerous points of view. Some scholars have investigated its
philological roots in languages such as
Old Norse and
Old English. Others have explored
its influences from literature of periods from
classical and
medieval to
antiquarian and
modern. Many have examined
its themes including
its poetry, its
Christian symbolism, issues of
feminism,
race, and
sexuality, and questions such as Tolkien's theory of
sound and language. Others again have studied the
literary devices that Tolkien used, such as his use of
frame stories,
interlacing of narrative, and his intentional creation of an
Impression of depth. These are overviewed in Blackwell's 2014
A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien, which effectively marked his acceptance into the English literary canon.
Constructed languages Tolkien's constructed languages,
Quenya and
Sindarin, the main languages of
Elves, have inspired
linguistic research.
Parma Eldalamberon and
Vinyar Tengwar are published by the
Elvish Linguistic Fellowship of the
Mythopoeic Society, a non-profit organization. The
Vinyar Tengwar and
Parma Eldalamberon material published at an increasing rate during the early 2000s is from the stock of linguistic material in the possession of the appointed
team of editors (some 3000 pages according to them), consisting of photocopies sent them by
Christopher Tolkien and notes taken in the
Bodleian Library around 1992. An Internet
mailing list dedicated to Tolkien's languages, called tolklang, has existed since November 1, 1990. ==Bibliography==