Tolkien and Beowulf at the Ateneo de Manila School of Humanities 

Fifty years since his death in 1973, J R R Tolkien continues to be one of the most widely-read authors. The Lord of the Rings has sold over 150 million copies and has been adapted for the screen (big and small), stage, and radio from the 1950s onward. Meanwhile, one of its sources, the epic poem Beowulf, has also been subject to various re-imaginings and remains part of many class syllabi. 

Both are coming to Ateneo de Manila this September. 

Readers of Tolkien will have an audience with leading Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey on 27 September 2023, 5:00 pm (Manila time). “Sixty Years of J. R. R. Tolkien” will have Shippey speaking live from the UK through an online stream at the Leong Hall auditorium on campus. Leonard Neidorf, professor of English at Nanjing University, will be physically present to deliver a response. Physical and virtual audiences will have a chance to engage with Shippey and Neidorf. 

Neidorf himself will deliver a lecture on “Beowulf and the Digital Humanities” on 29 September 2023, at 2:00 pm, at Leong Hall auditorium. Neidorf will discuss the possibilities and limitations of the digital humanities using his work on Beowulf as a case study. The lecture is purely onsite. 

Thomas Allen Shippey graduated from Queen’s College, Cambridge, and was a professor of Old and Middle English and of medieval literature. He is the author of two key works on Tolkien: The Road to Middle-earth and J R R Tolkien: Author of the Century. 

Neidorf was recently a research fellow of the university and is the author of The Art and Thought of the Beowulf Poet and The Transmission of Beowulf: Language, Culture, and Scribal Behavior. He and Shippey have recently collaborated on a new translation of and commentary on Beowulf, limited copies of which will be sold during the lectures. 

These lectures are organized by the Ateneo de Manila University School of Humanities and are funded by a donation from the Kwan Laurel family. 

The lectures are free, but Interested parties are asked to register through these links: 

“Sixty Years of J R R Tolkien”: https://forms.gle/ydcxzjE34JYyj4FR8 

“Beowulf and the Digital Humanities”: https://forms.gle/eCbnRiJJ2WHmr4nSA   

The university follows a no-registration-no-entry policy for those who do not have an active Ateneo de Manila lD.  

The featured image in the article is lifted from "Conversation with Smaug" by J R R Tolkien, extended using the Generative AI feature of Adobe Photoshop.