Peizhen Wu
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Peizhen Wu
@peizhenwu.bsky.social
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PhD Candidate in English Literary Studies at UIUC; Digital Humanities; Science Fiction; Fan Studies
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New #DigitalHumanities paper in Tolkien Studies! With Prof. Michael Drout we used Lexomic Digital Methods to map 15+ years of The Lord of the Rings revisions. We trace the recursive interactions between Tolkien's lexical elements and abstract narrative features. doi.org/10.1353/tks....
"The Course of Actual Composition": Analysis of Some Aspects of the Revision History of The Lord of the Rings Using "Lexomic" Digital Methods Peizhen Wu and Michael D. C. Drout As documented in the four-volume The History of The Lord of the Rings, the composition of J.R.R. Tolkien's great work was a long and tortuous process. Although some iconic scenes and lines of dialogue appeared in the very first drafts, much of the book's form and content developed only in the course of multiple re-writings and revisions over more than fifteen years. Christopher Tolkien's meticulous editing and publication of this archive provide a record of the creation and revision of a long narrative that is perhaps unique in the insight it provides into an author's creative process. In this paper, we attempt to identify some of the dynamics of Tolkien's writing by applying a combination of new "Lexomic" methods of textual analysis and more traditional approaches of close reading to both the archive of drafts and the final version of The Lord of the Rings. By identifying unusual characteristics of particular sections of the text and relating these to the history of the work's development, we are able to trace out some of the complex, recursive interactions between the concrete, surface-level phrasing of the text and its more abstract features, revealing some ways in which Tolkien's writing and revision process worked, and thus explaining some of the qualities of the text of The Lord of the Rings.
December 3, 2025 at 4:41 PM