Ian Storey Lecture 2025 - Kevin Whetter: Mythological world-building from Atlantis to Middle-earth
In ‘Mythological world-building from Atlantis to Middle-earth’ Whetter explores how storytellers from Plato in the classical world to the unknown mediaeval poets of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight use myth and story to create what J. R. R. Tolkien calls rootedness or narrative depth.
Event Details
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Friday, January 31, 2025
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Trent Student Centre TSC 1.07
Cost: Free
K. S. Whetter pursued an undergraduate degree in English and Classics at Trent University; from Trent he went to North Wales for graduate work in mediaeval Arthurian literature, especially Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur (sic). As Professor of Mediaeval English at Acadia, Whetter’s teaching duties include courses on Arthurian literature, Chaucer, epic, and Tolkien. His publications include a book on genre-theory and mediaeval romance, a book on the manuscript contexts of Malory’s Morte Darthur, and articles on combat in the Morte and heroism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He and another Trent graduate co-authored an article on swords in Tolkien’s legendarium.
In ‘Mythological world-building from Atlantis to Middle-earth’ Whetter explores how storytellers from Plato in the classical world to the unknown mediaeval poets of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight use myth and story to create what J. R. R. Tolkien calls rootedness or narrative depth. Tolkien studied all of these authors, and the second half of Whetter’s lecture will focus on the storied ways in which Tolkien builds the mythical world of Middle-earth to give it this sense of rooted depth. The bridge between Atlantis and Middle-earth is the idea that Tolkien, like his friend C. S. Lewis, was attempting to critique Plato’s ban on poets — a bridging idea deliberately borrowed (and here acknowledged) from a lecture by Professor Storey himself.
Details of event as belows:
Kevin Whetter: Mythological world-building from Atlantis to Middle-earth
Friday January 31, 2 pm, TSC 1.07
Contact Info
Ngoc Bui, Academic Administrative Assistant, AGRS
agrs@trentu.ca
705-748-1011x7848