Students from Visiting Assistant Professor of English Dr. Tara Moore’s graphic design course, Word, Web and Design, have created graphic design collages featuring selections from the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.
The collages, on display in the reference section on the landing floor of the High Library, blend typography, photography and creative editing.
Tolkien and Lewis’s weekly meetings helped shape the nature and constructed universes of their writings.
Tolkien’s Middle Earth and Lewis’ Narnia are considered gold standard examples of universe building in fantasy writing.
The bridge between fantasy and reality in art is often blurred, and Moore’s students’ visual analyses present one way to fill that liminal space. Often, it is useful to visualize abstract concepts and ideas as presented in Tolkien and Lewis’ writings.Ideas beget feelings, and imagery is an effective and relatable tool in doing so.
“There are far, far better things ahead than any left behind,” senior Marissa Kopp’s poster reads.
This, a quotation from Lewis, is enveloped by a photo of a woman looking at a forest from the perspective of a field of rocks.
The words “ahead” and “behind” are printed in cursive script, while the others are presented in a serif print font, illustrating the continuity within and between things that lie “ahead” and “behind.”
The use of the standard, print font likewise illustrates the nature of language and observation in and of itself, removed from such labels as “ahead” and “behind,” as commentary in character.
In person, senior Etownian Online Editor Anna Sorrentino discussed the importance of Lewis to her.
“Personally, I’ve been a pretty big fan of C.S. Lewis since I was a kid,” Sorrentino said, referring to her excitement to take part in this project.
“I had read ‘A Horse and His Boy’ like a 100 times,” she said.
Sorrentino observed that this choice of book is unique in that many people choose to skip this book in the “Chronicles of Narnia” series or read it but do not like it.
Senior Atikah Ahmat’s piece quotes from Tolkien’s “The Riddle of Strider”: “[f]rom the ashes a fire shall be woken / [a] light from the shadows shall spring /[r]enewed shall be blade that was broken / [t]he crownless again shall be king.”
Ahmat’s visual accompaniment portrays a chess piece, a king, standing upright among a field of other chess pieces lying on their sides, representing the nature of the upright positioning of life as cyclical and often unexpected.
Junior Damani Odom shared via Facebook message that she chose a quote from the first C. S. Lewis book she read.
“I was young [and] it gave me a whole world to get lost in,”
Odom wrote in her message.
According to Odom, the captivating worlds that C. S. Lewis created still inspire her.
Fantasy writing is popular among some college students and professors, who remark on its broad influence on storytelling and religion and vice versa.
Lewis and Tolkien’s highly detailed, borderline impenetrably constructed universes are cited as masterful and personally significant by many.
Elizabethtown College’s upcoming Scholarship and Creative Arts Day presentation includes two keynote presentations related to Lewis’ writing.
Directors of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College in Chicago, Ill., Drs. David and Crystal Downing will speak on Lewis’ hand-written personal notes and their relation to his eventual autobiography, as well as the unpublished letters of detective novelist Dorothy Sayers and her generally-unknown interest in the cinema.
In addition, both professors will again be speaking on Lewis and Tolkien’s “creative community,” and Sayers’ “The Mind of the Maker,” which explores divinity and its relation to human creativity.
These presentations will be Monday, April 15 at 3:30pm in the Winter’s Alcove of the High Library, and Tuesday, April 16 at 11am in the Gibble Auditorium.
The students’ posters will be on display in the High Library through the month of April.
