Tolkien Gleanings #131.
* Now freely online in English, the book chapter “Tolkien’s Great Escape and its Role in the Harry Potter Series: How the Concept of Death Shapes J.K. Rowling’s Novels” (2019). Specifically, Tolkien’s concept of death. Presented at a Czech conference in 2017, and presumably later published in the conference book.
* Freely online at the Valar Guild, the detailed essay “Concerning Estel: Who Foretold What, When; or The Strange Case of Foresight’s First Formulation” (June 2023).
* A free online talk by a PhD student, for the William Blake Society, “The Edge of Human Experience: Blake and Tolkien’s Art”. Set for 11th October 2023.
* How different is Tolkien in Chinese translation? Set for publication in spring 2024, the new book Reading Tolkien in Chinese: Religion, Fantasy and Translation (Perspectives on Fantasy series) is set to give the answers. I’m guessing there may also be self-censorship at play among translators and publishers, given the nature of the Chinese regime. And perhaps also fan-project counter-responses to that?
* A new open-access medieval journal, Eventum: A Journal of Medieval Arts & Rituals. The first issue has been published, themed ‘The Arts and Rituals of Pilgrimage’.
* Due before Christmas, according to Amazon UK, the book Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A Critical Anthology…
If a literary movement arises but no one notices, is it still a movement? […] this anthology collects for the first time over fifty speculative poets. […] Alongside such established names as C.S. Lewis, Patrick Rothfuss, Edwin Morgan, Poul Anderson, Jo Walton, P.K. Page, and W.H. Auden, this anthology also includes representative texts from cultural movements such as contemporary neo-paganism and the Society for Creative Anachronism.
No Tolkien mentioned, but perhaps that’s because the Estate refused?
* A new podcast series will be discussing the history of fresh produce, and the presenters may be interested in some pointers from Tolkien scholars. Since they say…
“we might even try to understand the produce of Middle-earth”.
* And finally, the New Zealand Saturday Evening Post recounts a tale of going “Hiking with Hobbits”…
“In New Zealand, place-names drip [as if] from J.R.R. Tolkien’s fountain pen — Elfin Bay, Lake Truth, Mount Aspiring, Demon Trail, The Tower — and Lord of the Rings fans now pilgrimage to [these] sets for Middle-earth.”