30-Day Character Study: Mairon | Day 11

Day 11 of SWG 30-Day Character Study. My character is Mairon | Sauron | Annatar.

Today's prompt: Drop Everything and Read, Part Two. Take at least a half-hour to read meta and scholarship written about your character.

My chosen reading was this paper:

Bourquein, Cameron (2024) "The Nameless Enemy: How Do You Solve a Problem Like “Mairon”?," Journal
of Tolkien Research: Vol. 20: Iss. 2, Article 3.
Available at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol20/iss2/3

I wanted to return to the previous theme of Sauron's original name from an academic view after writing my own musings down in the last prompt. As a casual Tolkien fan, I don't often read academic papers, but this paper was hugely interesting and thought-provoking, especially as I had just faced the question myself in a very fannish way.

I strongly recommend you to read the article yourself, but I want to point out the part of it which I found the most interesting: that the writer introduces several ways how Sauron is severed from his origins as Mairon, which thus becomes "a most marginal name", only found in an obscure comment by Tolkien, and is actively deleted in the histories in-universe.

I find it fascinating that in the fandom context, the fandom has happily adopted the name Mairon: this is how he's called in many fics and fan arts and headcanons. (Just like here in this blog.) I think this shows the marginal and transformative nature of fandom and certain fandom activities like fanfic writing.

I also found a list (by the author of the previous paper) of Tolkien scholarship related to Sauron, which I have now bookmarked: A Sauron Bibliography (Part 1).