Mr Benjamin Shotton

I am currently pursuing a PhD in History of Art at the University of Bristol. My project is supervised by Dr. Tamsin Badcoe and Dr. Lucy Donkin, and investigates the intersecting relationships between text and paratext in fantasy literature. My research focuses closely on the Middle-earth works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and examines the myriad frames, thresholds, and boundaries that spatialise and materialise his works.

More broadly, my research interests lie in print and material culture; my Master’s dissertation examined the woodblock prints of Toyohara Chikanobu, a printmaker whose images of the imperial family in ‘western’ dress contributed to the modernising edicts of Meiji Japan. I am also interested in graphic images of dress and fashion in the late nineteenth century, and in conceptions of fictive Orients in fantasy literature and art.