Abstract
Christopher Tolkien’s 12-volume History of Middle-earth is a remarkable achievement, yet Christopher repeatedly acknowledged how difficult the material was to present in print form and that “that there was no really satisfactory solution”. This paper contends that a printed book is not scholarship but just one way of presenting its results. It explores how digital philology can overcome some of the limitations of print, giving examples from the Digital Tolkien Project. It shows how structural markup, version alignment, parallel reading environments, and other approaches can make relationships between drafts and published texts clearer. Importantly, these methods do not replace Christopher’s scholarship; rather they extend its possibilities, reduce duplicated effort, and support new forms of analysis while keeping technology firmly in the service of philology.
Recommended Citation
Tauber, James K.
(2026)
"Continuing Christopher Tolkien’s Work in a Digital Age,"
Journal of Tolkien Research: Vol. 24:
Iss.
2, Article 13.
Available at:
https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol24/iss2/13
Included in
Computational Linguistics Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, Discourse and Text Linguistics Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons
Comments
This talk was presented online on 24th November 2024 as part of the Christopher Tolkien Centenary Conference.