Tolkien Gleanings #129.
* New in a peer-reviewed medical journal is the article “Why Psychiatrists Should Read (and Watch) Lord of the Rings” ($ paywall)… “Stories have considerable impact on our psychological health […] [Drawing on LoTR] six lessons will be discussed.” I’d add that there is also a newer media form, perhaps more psychologically potent in the long-term than either book or movies. The full-cast full-SFX unabridged audiobook with music. Such as that created for LoTR by Phil Dragash using Howard Shore’s music, and voices closely patterned on the excellent voice-work done for the LoTR movies.
* Coming in a few months in the Manchester University Press ‘Medieval Literature and Culture’ book series, Fantasies of Music in Nostalgic Medievalism. I’d imagine that music in Tolkien will be discussed, along with the Shore soundtrack. The book is set to ship on 19th December 2023, barring the inevitable postal and rail strikes, says Amazon UK. It’s an £85 single-author academic book and focuses on… “musical performance, [medievalist fantasy] literature, cinema and their reception […] in the period between the Second World War and the present”.
* A major exhibition titled ‘Fantastic Animals’ at the Louvre-Lens in France. It has one of those museum websites which tells you everything except what the clueless Brit wants to know: “is Lens a place, and if so is it easy to access from the UK?”. Google Maps eventually obliges… it’s a town 30 miles inland from the major and well-known passenger port of Calais. The show opens 27th September and runs until 15th January 2024, exhibiting… “more than 250 works – sculptures, paintings and objets d’art, as well as films and music — ranging from antiquity to the present day”.
* Another review of the new book Twenty-first Century Tolkien (2023), at The Notion Club Papers…
“the core problem of this book [is that the author] seems to like and approve-of — or at least take seriously as valid options — a great deal of what seems to me the most ignorant, incompetent and crass interpretations [of Tolkien’s work]”.
Alternative title on some listings, Twenty-First-Century Tolkien (added hyphen) or Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century (hardcover). Not to be confused with the recent academic collections Tolkien in the 21st Century: Reading, Reception, and Reinterpretation (2022) or Twenty-first Century Receptions of Tolkien: Peter Roe Series XXI (2022).
* A new report of a rural footpath walk in England, titled “Hunting Hobbits in Lancashire”. With excellent pictures. Though the author concludes that, while looking rather pretty, this local trail is probably not so ‘Tolkien’ as it claims to be…
“the big question: ‘how much truth is there in the assertions behind the Tolkien Trail?’. I’m no expert, and we can never know for sure, but it all looks rather flimsy to me.”
* New on Archive.org, a long run of Dungeon magazine, 1986-2010. Also new is a run of one of the main official news ‘zines for RPGs from 1981 to 2004. These may be of interest to those seeking to detect Tolkien themes, or to find Tolkien-influenced illustrations, in older D&D RPGs and their ephemera. May also interest role-playing gamers seeking certain types of older material.
* And finally, coming before Christmas, The Fellowship of the Knits: The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Knitting Book. A 208 page book, with what looks like high production values, and from… “the author of nine knitting books and over 500 published knitting designs”.