CLM writes: This afternoon I had the pleasure of attending a conference session featuring Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey at the 41st International Congress for Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI. The topic of the lecture was forging the national epic, using “forging” in both the sense of forgery and of creation. Mr. Shippey gave a fascinating and sometimes humorous talk about the national claiming of and identification with epic stories, sometimes involving claims on the same story made by multiple nations, and the process of definitively locating those stories based on examination of people and place-names. [More]