Tolkien Gleanings #111.
Gleanings returns from a hiatus during part of August, with a bumper “eleventy-one” post! I had planned to leave it until the end of August. But of course then barrel-fulls of the stuff began rolling in, despite my thinking that it might be quiet in August. So here’s a more manageable Gleanings post than might have appeared at the end of August.
* There’s to be a ‘Tolkien weekend’ at the Birmingham Oratory, 1st – 2nd September 2023. This also appears to form the official launch event for the new Holly Ordway book on Tolkien’s faith, a book (which according to its stated dates) should start shipping on 30th August. Pre-ordering now.
There’s also a long pre-release Word on Fire YouTube interview with Ordway about the new book.
* New on Archive.org to borrow, the major book Tolkien: a cultural phenomenon (2003). Beautifully written, at least to me, although one reviewer observed that the tone might be too didactic and British for American academics. The Archive.org scan is the expanded second edition with a heavyweight and politically astute chapter on “Tolkien in the History of Ideas”…
“In the first edition of this book in 1992 I treated what I called Tolkien’s ‘theological anarchism’ somewhat apologetically and marginally, as if it would be better cut away. But I now believe that it is essentially related to Tolkien’s overall ethical vision, and that that vision is a compelling one.”
* New on YouTube at the end of July, a recording of the talk “Pity & Tolkien” given at the ‘Interchanging Melodies’ online event in summer 2023.
* Early issues of Orcrist (1968-1977, 2017) from the University of Wisconsin J.R.R. Tolkien Society. These are being freely placed online, and a scan of the bumper 100-page issue #1 has just arrived. Issues now online contain, among other early scholarly articles…
– “Tolkien in the Letters of C.S. Lewis” (#1)
– “Saruman’s Vision of a New Order” (#1)
– “Color Symbolism in The Lord of the Rings” (#8)
– “The Conservatism of J.R.R. Tolkien” (#8)
– “What Are Ents Made Of?” (#8)
* The Quettar: Bulletin of the Linguistic Fellowship of the Tolkien Society Vol. 5 (1991 to 1995) has recently been recreated from scans, and is now available in paper via the Lulu.com print-on-demand site. The first four volumes (1980 to 1990) are also available in the same way. A free Index is available.
* Little Delvings in the Marsh (beta), my new custom search-tool for Tolkien scholars. Currently ‘in beta’ with a bare search-box and indexing 140+ websites, journals and pages. It doesn’t index wikis, forums, fan-fiction etc. You may see Google’s text-advert at the top of results (I don’t benefit from these). But the advert-bar is easily blocked via uBlock Origin or a similar good ad-blocker.
* New on Archive.org to borrow, From Narnia to a Space Odyssey: the war of ideas between Arthur C. Clarke and C.S. Lewis (2003). I’d never heard of the book before, despite my mild interest in Clarke (mostly in his ocean work and books, which could use some audiobooks if anyone’s interested). Clarke of course being the famous British futurist and best-selling science-fiction writer. He must have approved this book, since he wrote the opening and closing sections.
* The full Programme PDF for the International Congress on the Study of the Middle Ages (July 2023). This year the several Tolkien strands, as finalised, included some talks I’d not previously noted in Gleanings…
– “Dark are the Pathless Ways” (unknown content, but an intriguing title)
– “Travel and the Quest Motif in Tolkien’s Work” (paired with the above talk)
– “Tolkien Studies and the ‘Theological Turn'”
– “Oath-Making and Oath-Keeping in Tolkien – Literary Devices or Spiritual Statements?”
* Tolkien’s original of “The Root of the Boot” song (1923). The scan is freely available online via Leeds University. It’s different from Sam’s troll song in LoTR.
* Many thanks to ‘Elise’ for making me aware that there’s a 2019 Dimitra Fimi talk on YouTube. This is a good 50-minute overview survey of the uses of the fox in Tolkien (with audience singing, even), and I hadn’t encountered it before. I was interested to learn that there’s a 1826 Scots version of ‘The fox went out’ short folk-song — but curiously neither Fimi nor the audience mention that its line “The wind’s in the west” is also the same line in LoTR. The line is said by Sam, and is found very close to the appearance of the talking fox. I’ve just now found that this line was also known to Beatrix Potter, as found in a 1911 letter to her publisher explaining the use of the name Tod for her book The Tale of Mr. Tod (1912). It came via the same Scots folk-song, by the look of it…
“‘Tod’ is surely a very common name for a fox? It is probably Saxon, it was the word in ordinary use in Scotland a few years ago, probably is still amongst the country people. […] “Hey quoth the Tod / it’s a braw bright night! / The wind’s in the west / and the moon shines bright” — Mean to say you never heard that?”
I also wasn’t aware of the 1920s Tolkien poem “Regingardus the fox”, which Fimi mentions in passing, apparently one of a set of four poems inspired by medieval bestiaries. Nor did I know about Tolkien’s early 1909 boyhood “Book of the Foxrook” linguistic / animalic notebook.
* On Archive.org for free, What the children sing: a book of the most popular rhymes & games (1915). Apparently Tolkien’s wife Edith owned this, and this was where he took the notation for the old folk tunes (“The fox went out…” etc) as the basis for some of the Middle-earth songs. Thanks to someone in the audience of the Fimi talk (see above) for mentioning this.
* The art show for the forthcoming Oxonmoot 2023 should soon be available online via the kunstmatrix.com, a slick site which tries to emulates a white-walled gallery in a Web browser. One to bookmark, if you can’t afford to get there in person.
* It looks like Thomas Honegger’s book Tweaking Things a Little: Essays on the Epic Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien and G.R.R. Martin (July 2023) may have been published, though only in paper. No ebook, from which one might learn more about that’s in it, and how much of the book has been seen before as essays and papers. The publisher Walking Tree only gives the book’s vague higher-level section headings (e.g. “Languages”), each of which I guess may hold essays or essay-blends.
* A forthcoming book, or at least a title… Creating Creatures: The Science and Imagination Behind Tolkien’s Iconic Species. I see the author produced an “evolutionary history of the cat” book in 2023 summing up the many new discoveries on mysterious moggie movements in pre-history, and a 2017 book on the predictability (or not) of evolution. He’s a proper science writer, with a focus on creatures and evolution. Thus the new book on Middle-earth creatures looks promising, especially if it can be pleasingly illustrated without the copyright lawyers swooping down on it. No more details, as yet.
* Tolkien scholar Austin Freeman (Tolkien Dogmatics) on “Why Should Theologians Read H.P. Lovecraft?” (March 2023).
* And finally, Smaug in Georgia, USA…
“A dragon has fired up the residents of a small mountain town in north Georgia. […] The proposed [mountain-top] dragon, which would have been visible to passers-by, was slated to be more than 30 feet tall with a 160-foot wingspan and would resemble Smaug from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.”