Release Date 25 November 2025
Ebook available through all the usual online retailers.
These proceedings contain papers from the Tolkien Society Hybrid Seminar 2023. It is the first ever event and edited collection to focus purely on Númenor, the Númenóreans, and their legacies within and outside of Arda as a nexus of critical study. Through comparative, literary and philosophical, ecocritical, historical and religious readings, the volume examines the ways that Númenor and its people shaped and were shaped by Tolkien's writing and the world of Arda. By seeking to develop conversation centred on Númenor, the volume looks forward and hopes to foster and inspire future scholarship on the island, its citizens, and their legacies.
Introduction
Will Sherwood
Sea Goddess Worship and the Power of the King: Parallel between Aldarion, Uinen, Mataram Sultanate, and Javanese Queen of the Southern Sea
Putri Prihatini
Penguasa Laut dan Sang Raja: Paralel antara Aldarion, Uinen, Kesultanan Mataram, dan Ratu Laut Selatan Jawa
Putri Prihatini
Dealing with the Dead: Nuances of ancient Egypt and medieval theology in Númenor
Irina Metzler
"I often dream of it": Trauma and memory in the legacy of the Downfall of Númenor
S.R.Westvik
"Foretasting Death in Life": Desire, the Fall, and Attempting to Return the 'Gift' of Ilúvatar
Sara Brown
"All roads are now bent": Ethical Readings of the Corporeality of Númenor
Journee Cotton
Ecology of Imperialism: Environmental History for Númenor
Muhammed Alpaslan Tandırcı
The 'Akallabêth' and the Anthropocene: Myth, Ecology, and the Changing of the World
Erik Jampa Andersson
Monstrous (Im)mortality: Transhumanism and Ecocriticism in 'Akallabêth'
Kristine Larsen
"By the Waters of Anduin We Lay Down and Wept": Exilic Theology in the 'Akallabêth'
Rev. Tom Emanuel
Seducer-Destroyer: Sauron's Femme Fatale Sources and their Role in the Númenor Narrative
Mercury Natis
Elmar, the Experience of Captured Women, and Empires in Decline
Clare Moore
Númenor, the Mighty and Frail
"Taken together, these papers provide a significant contribution to Tolkien scholarship by examining the Númenor myths as a developing portrait of complex civilization whose collapse emerged from interacting ethical, ecological, theological, and political pressures, resonating well into the Third Age and even the Fourth. As with many conference proceedings, this volume exhibits substantial unevenness in quality, but this diversity reflects the seminar’s broad mandate and ultimately strengthens the collection by demonstrating the wide range of perspectives that can be brought to the study of Númenor and Tolkien’s work in general."
Journal of Tolkien Research - Douglas C. Kane
