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Mount Doom Final.docx
Posted at May 15/2010 06:41AM:
kholmber: I enjoyed your paper and do know it would have taken some detailed movie viewing, which can be painstaking. I felt that the eruption prompted when Gollum provided the information of the ring’s location could be plumbed more and your discussion of it fleshed out, but I like the concept of the mountain as physical extension of Sauron. The ‘menacing ash cloud’ hanging over the city could also have given an opportunity for bringing in both historic (the 1783 Laki fissure eruption that Katey is researching) or contemporary discussions of the long-reaching impacts of volcanic eruption that far exceed the reach of lava through what’s going on with Eyjafjallajokull. I think you could have drawn in the Wragge-Morley piece that we read in class profitably (Wragge-Morley, Alexander. 2009. A strange and surprising debate: mountains, original sin and 'science' in seventeenth-century England. Endeavour 33 (2):76-80.) and if we were working through multiple iterations of these projects I would have you include that as well as ground the paper more firmly in theory. I love the concept of eruption as a ‘message’ to the people of Middle Earth and as physical manifestation of Sauron’s will to dominate; that is your own original idea and I think it’s a solid one. Original thoughts are more rare than they should be in academic work, so good job!
