English Language and Literature Commons^™

Mythcon 44 - Green And Growing: The Land And Its Inhabitants In Fantasy, The Mythopoeic Society

Mythcon Programs

How does mythopoeic literature address the relationship between the land and its inhabitants, between the wild and the cultivated? What are their respective moral values, their dangers, and delights? Tangled forests, majestic trees, the ordered fields, the carefully tended gardens; or untamed, wild beauty: each offers a different kind of bounty to those who would live off the land. What role do advocates and protectors of the land play in fantasy literature, particularly as personified in characters such as Yavanna, Radagast, Sam Gamgee, and, of course, Tom Bombadil?