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Will Sherwood

SPACE Preceptor

PhD in J.R.R. Tolkien and British Romanticism. Preceptor of Tolkien, Fantasy, and Romanticism

Will Sherwood is currently writing his PhD thesis I sit beside the fire and think’: J.R.R. Tolkien, British Romanticism, and their Cultural Legacies at the University of Glasgow under the supervision of Professor Dimitra Fimi and Professor Matthew Sangster. [see full bio...]

All Modules

Tolkien and the Romantics Non-Sequential Series

Discussion-based • Low intensity
This is the Landing Page for preceptor Will Sherwood's Tolkien and the Romantics series. Using the links on this page, you can explore each member of this series by going to its associated module page for more details.

Tolkien and the Romantics: Dark Romanticism and the Gothic Literary Tradition

Discussion-based • Low intensity
The Gothic genre has inspired many creative minds to explore the darker realms of human psychology and the wider world, sparking fear, terror, horror and repulsion in its audience. J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth is as much a ruined Gothic wasteland as it is an idyllic utopia. From Shelob's cave and the hypnotic Mirkwood to the Paths of the Dead and the Barrow-Downs, this module will examine Tolkien's use of Dark Romantic and Gothic techniques that were used by writers such as Horace Walpole, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and E.T.A. Hoffman to strike terror in the heart of their readers.

The module will follow an 8-lesson structure:
  • Lecture 1: The Funk of Forty Thousand Years: A Literary History of the Gothic
  • Discussion 1: Chilly Echoes in Tolkien's Middle-earth
  • Lecture 2: Bottomless Supernatural: Terror, Horror, Abject
  • Discussion 2: Conjuring Creepy Creatures
  • Lecture 3: The Weird, the Eerie, and the Dark Side of the Mind
  • Discussion 3: Defamiliarising Middle-earth
  • Lecture 4: Ruined Landscapes
  • Discussion 4: What is left? Can the Gothic recover Middle-earth?


Note: The hybrid 8-lesson structure above is the new format for this module moving forward.

Tolkien and the Romantics: Forging Myth and History

Discussion-based • Low intensity
J.R.R. Tolkien famously 'found' his legendarium, translating and editing The Red Book of Westmarch for his twentieth century readers. This is not the first time an author has 'forged' a 'lost' literary history as James Macpherson's 'Ossian' documents from the 1760s started a craze for forgeries. Thomas Chatterton's Rowley and Turgot manuscripts similarly fed off the Ossian controversy while questioning what it really meant to 'forge' a document.

The module will follow an 8-lesson structure:
  • Lecture 1: The 1760s, the Age of Forgery
  • Discussion 1: Which Red Book are we reading?
  • Lecture 2: The Growth of Romantic Nationalism
  • Discussion 2: The Book of Lost Tales: a mythology for which England?
  • Lecture 3: Oral Traditions: Immortality and Youth
  • Discussion 3: Vocalising Myth and History
  • Lecture 4: Textual Traditions: Mortal Anxiety and Tangible History
  • Discussion 4: Writing myth and history


Note: The hybrid 8-lesson structure above is the new format for this module moving forward.

Tolkien and the Romantics: Imagining and Dreaming

Discussion-based • Low intensity
The imagination and dreams are essential parts of J.R.R. Tolkien's world building which he explored across many stories from 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'On Fairy-stories' to 'The Notion Club Papers'. The same can be said of the Romantics who saw an important connection between the two. In works such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and 'Kubla Khan', Lord Byron's 'The Dream' and 'Darkness', and Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein', the imaginary and dream-like meet with awe-inspiring, melancholy or blood-chilling results.

Class Outline:
  • Class 1: The Realms of (Childhood) Faery (60m)
  • Class 2: Faery’s Enchantment (60m)
  • Class 3: The Terror of the Night (60m)
  • Class 4: The Past is an Imagined Dreamworld (90m)
  • Class 5: Visions of the Apocalypse (60m)
  • Class 6: Senses and Sensation (60m)
  • Class 7: Glimpses, mere Fragments (90m)

Tolkien and the Romantics: Nature and Ecology

Discussion-based • Low intensity
J.R.R. Tolkien's revolutionary depictions of nature have inspired many to respect and cherish the environment. However, if we journeyed back two hundred years, we would discover that radical British Romantic authors were also challenging how readers perceived their surroundings! In this module, we will use ecology to explore the many parallels and contrasts between Tolkien's Arda and the Romantic's portrayals of nature big and small: mountains and meadows, woods and wildernesses, daffodils and dead marshes. This will include examining how characters react to the environment, nature's existence as separate from our own, and the broader concern of the Industrial Revolution's destructive potential.

The module will follow an 8-lesson structure:
  • Lecture 1: Visions of Nature
  • Discussion 1: What do your Elf-eyes see?
  • Lecture 2: All things Sublime and Beautiful
  • Discussion 2: Sublime, Beautiful, or both at once?!
  • Lecture 3: I want to see mountains!
  • Discussion 3: One with our environment
  • Lecture 4: Ecology without Humanity
  • Discussion 4: What is actually out there beyond the Human sphere?


Note: The hybrid 8-lesson structure above is the new format for this module moving forward.
If you have any questions about the SPACE program, please reach out to [email protected].