CONFERENCE WITH

The Tree
of Tales

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE 20 - 25 August 2021

Meeting for the Friendship Amongst Peoples

The tree
of tales

Rimini 20-25 August 2021

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exhibition catalogue

MAIN SPONSORS

TEAM

More than 100 people involved

A project of the University of St Andrews, in collaboration with the Rimini Meeting, the University of Oxford, the King Edwards School in Birmingham, more than 60 volunteers, and a committee of 20 Tolkien experts, including Martin Simonson, Guglielmo Spirito, Michaël Devaux, Alison Milbank and many others.

Meet the Team

THEMES

Collaborating with Creation

For Tolkien, artistic creation, and, more generally, any aesthetic commitment of language and human imagination, are gifts that help recover an attitude of wonder in front of reality. This is the discovery at the heart of Tolkien’s work, that all humans are called to collaborate with their own desires and thoughts to a greater design, to contribute with their own individuality to the great polyphony of creation, and thus to graft their own particular story into the great ‘Tree of Tales’. 

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(…) he saw the King’s Tree springing up, tower upon tower, into the sky, and its light was like the sun at noon; and it bore at once leaves and flowers and fruits uncounted, and not one was the same as any other that grew on the Tree. (Smith of Wootton Major)

J.R.R. Tolkien

(…) he saw the King’s Tree springing up, tower upon tower, into the sky, and its light was like the sun at noon; and it bore at once leaves and flowers and fruits uncounted, and not one was the same as any other that grew on the Tree. (Smith of Wootton Major)

J.R.R. Tolkien

Structure

The purpose of the exhibition is to accompany the visitor on the adventure of ‘rediscovering the wonder’, through a fascinating reading of Tolkien’s work and life, in three sections.

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Material

The exhibition will display original material belonging to the Tolkieniano collection of Oronzo Cilli, and the archives of the university of St Andrews, as well as original textual and audio-visual material, informed by original research.

Explore the material

Structure

The purpose of the exhibition is to accompany the visitor on the adventure of ‘rediscovering the wonder’, through a fascinating reading of Tolkien’s work and life, in three sections.

Explore the structure

Material

The exhibition will display original material belonging to the Tolkien collection of Oronzo Cilli, and the archives of the university of St Andrews, as well as original textual and audio-visual material, informed by original research.

Explore the material