H.G.D. (Hamish) Williams, BA

EMPLOYMENT

2022-now. Docent, The Department of European Languages and Cultures (Chair of Culture and Literature), The University of Groningen.

2021-2022. Junior Fellow, The Polish Institute for Advanced Studies, Warsaw.

2019-2021. Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The Institute for English and American Studies, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena.

2018-2019. Docent, International Studies, Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, Leiden University.

2013-2017. Doctoral Candidate, Classics, The School of Languages and Literatures, The University of Cape Town.

PUBLICATIONS

Monograph

2023, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Utopianism and the Classics, London: Bloomsbury, in press (March 2023).

Edited Volumes

2022, The Ancient Sea: The Utopian and Catastrophic in Classical Narratives and their Reception, co-edited with Ross Clare, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, in press (December 2022).

2021, Tolkien and the Classical World, Zurich, Jena: Walking Tree Publishers. Reviews: Journal of Tolkien Research, 11.2: 4.1-5; Lembas, 196: 7-9; Mallorn, 47: 46-47; Mythlore, 40.2: 276-281. Honours: Nominated for Best Book (2022) by The Tolkien Society; course reading in ‘Tolkien: Tales of Heroism and Enchantment’, at the Petrarch Institute (2022)

Journal Articles

2023, ‘Mary Renault’s The King Must Die on Tolkien’s Bookshelf: A Comparative Study in Literary Thought’, Subcreatio, 1, in press

2022, ‘The Collapse of Minoan Crete in Mary Renault’s The King Must Die: Creative Sensemaking in Understanding History’, The Journal of Historical Fictions, in press

2022, ‘“One Must Tread the Path That Need Chooses”: The Choice of Need in Tolkien’s Moria Sequence’, Hither Shore: Interdisciplinary Journal on Modern Fantasy Literature 17, in press

2020, ‘Westwards, Utopia; Eastwards, Decline: The Reception of Classical Occidentalism and Orientalism in Tolkien’s Atlantic Paradise’, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 31 (3): 404-423

2020, ‘Tolkien’s Thalassocracy and Ancient Greek Seafaring People: Minoans, Phaeacians, Atlantans, and Númenóreans’, Tolkien Studies, 17: 137-162

2019, ‘Acts of Eating in the Apologue: Destruction and Delay’, Hermes, 147 (1): 3-20

2019, ‘“Hercules the Grocer?”: Low-Key Humor in The Twelve Tasks of Asterix’, Humor, 32 (4): 565-583

2018, ‘Mountains in the Apologue: Figures of Isolation in Society, Space, and Time’, Scripta Classica Israelica, 37: 69-91

2018, ‘Polymetic Heroism in the Wanderings of Odysseus, Odyssey 9-12 (the Apologue)’, Akroterion, 63: 1-20. Open access: <https://akroterion.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/981>

2014, ‘Role-Playing in Horace’s Ars Poetica: Some Observations into Empathetic Discourse in the Language of the Horatian Teacher Persona’, Latomus, 73 (4): 1060-1063

2013, ‘Shattering Tradition: A Rejection of Analysis by Genre in Horace’s Ars Poetica’, Akroterion, 58: 61-77. Open access: <https://akroterion.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/147>

Book Chapters

2022, ‘Classical Literature’, in S. D. Lee, A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, second edition, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, in press

2022, ‘Dionysiac, Apolline, Orphic, or…? Nietzschean Conflicts in Representing the Natural World in Christian Fantasy’, in L. Neubauer and G. Spirito (eds), The Songs of the Spheres: Lewis, Tolkien and the Overlapping Realms of their Imaginations, Zurich, Jena: Walking Tree Publishers, in press

2022, ‘The Five Ages of Tolkien’s Greek Thalassocracy: A Comparative Study of Númenórean Narrative History’, in R. Vink and J. van Breda (eds), Lembas Extra 2022: Númenor, Beverwijk: Tolkien Genootschap Unquendor, 61-86

2022, ‘Introduction’, co-written with R. Clare, in H. Williams and R. Clare (eds), The Ancient Sea: The Utopian and Catastrophic in Classical Narratives and their Reception, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, in press

2022. ‘Labyrinths, Minotaurs, Bulls, Axes, Goddesses – Minoan Horror in Modern Fiction: Agatha Christie, Lawrence Durrell, John Farris, and Stephen King’, Antikenrezeption im Horror, Essen: Oldib-Verlag, in press

2022, ‘Minoan Utopias in British Fiction, after the Thalassocracy: Lawrence Durrell’s The Dark Labyrinth and Robert Graves’ Seven Days in New Crete’, in H. Williams and R. Clare (eds), The Ancient Sea: The Utopian and Catastrophic in Classical Narratives and their Reception, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, in press

2021, ‘Classical Tradition, Modern Fantasy, and the Generic Contracts of Readers’, in H. Williams (ed.), Tolkien and the Classical World, Zurich, Jena: Walking Tree Publishers, xi-xxvi

2021, ‘Tolkien the Classicist: Scholar and Thinker’, in H. Williams (ed.), Tolkien and the Classical World, Zurich, Jena: Walking Tree Publishers, 3-36

2019, ‘Mountain People in Middle-Earth: Ecology and the Primitive’, in T. Honegger and D. Fimi (eds.), Sub-Creating Arda: World-Building in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Work, its Precursors, and its Legacies, Zurich, Jena: Walking Tree Publishers, 285-311. Reviews: Tolkien Studies, 16 (2019): 174-178; Journal of Tolkien Research 7 (1) (2019): Article 6: 1-9 (esp. 6, 8)

2019. ‘Tolkien’s Trolls: Intertextuality in ‘Roast Mutton’ and Monstrous Incarnations after The Hobbit’, in R. Vink (ed.), Lembas Extra 2019: The World Tolkien Built, Beverwijk: Tolkien Genootschap Unquendor, 111-127

2017, ‘“Home is Behind, the World Ahead”: Reading Tolkien’s The Hobbit as a Story of Xenia or Homeric Hospitality’, in L. Maurice (ed.), Rewriting the Ancient World: Greeks, Romans, Jews and Christians in Modern Popular Fiction, Leiden: Brill, 174-197. Reviews: Tolkien Studies, 17 (2020): 276

2016, ‘Between Exile and Hospitality: The Figure of the Xenos in Tolkien’s Faërie’, in N. Kuijpers, R. Vink, and C. van Zon (eds.), Lembas Extra 2016: Tolkien Among Scholars, Beverwijk: Tolkien Genootschap Unquendor, 177-190. Reviews: Tolkien Studies, 17 (2020): 282

2014. ‘Rediscovering the Creative Bard (‘Aoidos’): Some Observations into the Artistic Impact of Images, Eikones, upon the Narrative of Homer’s Odyssey IX-XII’, in P. Huttu-Hitunen (ed.), Song and Emergent Poetics / Laulu ja runo / Песня и видоизменяющаяся поэтика, Kuhmo: Juminkeko, 257-267

Book Reviews

2023, ‘Middle-earth, or There and Back Again, edited by Łukasz Neubauer’, Subcreatio 1/2, in press

2022, ‘A Wilderness of Dragons – Essays in Honor of Verlyn Flieger, edited by John D. Rateliff’, Journal of Inklings Studies 12.1: 154-157

2021, ‘Boekrecensie: Gleanings from Tolkien’s Garden: Selected Essays [Renée Vink]’, Lembas, 193: 15-19

Essays and Blogs

2020, ‘What the Covid-19 Crisis Makes Evident: The Value and Practice of Care Work Needs to be Reassessed’, co-written with K. Robbe, OpenMind https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/economy/global-economy/covid-19-and-crisis-of-privatized-care/

2019, ‘Tolkien and the Classics’, Classical Reception Studies Network https://classicalreception.org/tolkien-and-the-classics/

2019, ‘The Hospitality Quest: The Homeric Odyssey and Tolkien’s The Hobbit’, Fantastische Antike – Antikenrezeption in Science Fiction, Horror und Fantasy http://fantastischeantike.de/the-hospitality-quest-the-homeric-odyssey-and-tolkiens-the-hobbit-gastbeitrag-hamish-williams/

2019, ‘Classics in Tolkien and Lewis’, Lembas, 187: 235-236

2018, ‘Caradhras: Savage Nature Warrior, Servant of Sauron, or Character Projection? A Spatial Study of a Mountain in The Fellowship of the Ring’, Lembas, 183: 181-188

Creative Writing: Novels

2021, The Southern Tide: Tales from Basthinia: Book 1. Beverwijk, the Netherlands: Ranger (Uitgeverij Ijmond). http://ahvobraiths.nl/hamish-williams/