About Me
Welcome to The Road to Arda Healed, a scholarship-focused substack about the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (with an emphasis on the character Sauron).
I’m Cameron Bourquein (she/her). My professional life has been focused on various design fields as well as the fine and performing arts, where I’ve worked as a graphic designer, web designer and developer, 2D and 3D animator and visualization artist, motion graphics artist, illustrator, production designer for indie film, set and costume designer for stage, a painter, a sculptor, briefly as an actor, and even as a landscape designer working mainly on therapy and sensory gardens for rehabilitation centers. Through it all, I’ve nurtured a long and deep love for the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.
In 2023 I began pursuing independent Tolkien scholarship formally, primarily focusing on Sauron, his development, his fandom reception, and his intersections with the metaphysics of Middle-earth. My work sometimes explores the metaphysics of Middle-earth more broadly, as well as Tolkien's thoughts on mental visualization as a necessary component of Fantasy. I have presented my work at IMC Leeds (2024), ICMS Kalamazoo (2024), The PCA National Conference (2023 and 2024), GIFCon (2023), Oxonmoot (2023 and 2024), MythSoc OMS (2023 and 2024), and Tolkien@UVM (2023 and 2024). My work has thus far been published in The Journal of Tolkien Research.
For an “all in once place” list of my scholarship (published or presented at a conference) check out CameronBourquein.com.
Why “The Road to Arda Healed”?
Much of my work (including the Sauron stuff) focuses on a period in Tolkien’s writing process situated between roughly 1948 and 1960, in which Tolkien was attempting to bring the “Silmarillion” material into accord with The Lord of the Rings. During this period, Tolkien also became focused on systematizing the metaphysics of his Secondary World and, as a part of this process, he began using the terms “Arda Marred,” “Arda Unmarred,” and “Arda Healed.” These refer respectively to Arda as it exists (marred by Morgoth’s discord and dissemination of his being into matter), Arda as it never existed except in the memory of the Music before Melkor’s discord (that is, Arda as ordered and perfect), and Arda as it might one day exist when the Drama (the unfolding of the events in Arda across Time) has come to an end and the marring of Morgoth has been healed.
These terms are the contemporary evolution of ideas that had existed in some form as far back as the earliest iteration of Tolkien’s “mythology,” much of which is contained in The Book of Lost Tales. Alongside them is a particularly intriguing idea: that it will be Men (read: humans) who will, somehow, be instrumental in the Healing of Melkor’s hurts. Arda Unmarred cannot be returned to or recreated and Arda Healed exists only in the far future, or so the inhabitants of Arda Marred may hope. In the meantime the road goes ever on: from the moment “Eä!” is spoken and to some unforeseen end, and Men, it seems, bear some responsibility for what that end will be.
Find Me Online
You can find me online in various spaces:
My personal scholarship website where I keep an updated list of the papers I have presented or will be presenting in the next year.
A sign-up hub for those wishing to participate in fandom reception research about Sauron through surveys.
My previous blog, now to be focused mainly on non-Tolkien obsessions (there are a lot of them) and more personal recollections. You may find a handful of posts from The Road to Arda Healed cross-posted there.
I try to cross-post updates on my scholarship and my thoughts on things like RoP both here and on Bluesky.
I try to cross-post updates on my scholarship and my thoughts on things like RoP both here and on X.
I don’t use this page a lot, but who knows what the future holds!
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