With the contribution of Regione Emilia-Romagna
Andrea Monda, Director of L’Osservatore Romano; Lukasz Neubauer, Koszalin University of Technology, Department of Foreign Languages; Guglielmo Spirito, Conventual Franciscan and Professor of Spiritual Theology at the Theological Institute of Assisi. Introduction by Giuseppe Pezzini, Associate Professor at Oxford University and Curator of the exhibition “The Tree of Tales. Tolkien and the polyphony of creation”

If every artist in some way expresses his or her individual creativity in particular forms, few writers like Tolkien have had the courage to take this position to its extremes, in an unconditional exaltation of his own aesthetic, linguistic and literary preferences. At the same time, for Tolkien even the deepest idiosyncrasies of the creative self are a ‘gift’, finally merging into a single choral project, as each trickle of water inevitably flows into the sea. The focus of this conference is therefore on the organic tension between the particular and the universal, and namely the tension between individual characters and general narrative, between the creative freedom of the artist and the master plan of the one and only, great Author (the ‘Ilúvatar theme’).