Tolkien Gleanings #138.
* Announced via an Amazon listing, another Tolkien map book. To be titled Maps of Tolkien’s Middle Earth and currently set for 9th April 2024. No details, but my guess would be it’s an expanded re-issue of the Brian Sibley map-box/book The Map Of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth (1994) and his subsequent The Maps of Tolkien’s Middle-earth (2003). The latter was expanded and inside were… “Tolkien’s Maps of The Hobbit, Beleriend and Middle-earth beautifully presented in an exquisite box-set”. Its special edition also had “a unique map of Numenor”. So my guess is the forthcoming 2024 item will at least be a reprint and perhaps another expansion, possibly with a few more maps?
* Also noted on Amazon UK, The History of Middle-earth Box Set in hardcover, set for a staggered release in mid January and then in mid March 2024.
* A new Mythlore (Fall/Winter 2023) has appeared. Among other items of interest in the journal are…
– “Otherworldly but not the Otherworld” (Tolkien may have drawn on Lanval and Sir Orfeo in building his depiction of Lothlorien).
– “The Sun, the Son, and the Silmarillion“ (a new Kristine Larsen paper drawing as usual on astronomical lore and science, and interestingly noting Tolkien’s hints at life on other planets).
– A review of the book ‘Uncle Curro’: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Spanish Connection (interesting to know that Hilary Tolkien served as a bugler in the First World War, re: “the horns of the morning”).
* The Imaginative Conservative briefly reviews the new Holly Ordway book Tolkien’s Faith (2023).
* On YouTube, a 30 minute conference talk on ‘Tolkien, Heroic Christianity and the Dangers of Neo-Paganism’ (September 2023). Makes many interesting points, not least that many inclined toward the mish-mash of neo-paganism might do well to investigate instead the many aspects of pagan beliefs and symbolism which were long-ago successfully absorbed by Christianity.
* New from Vernon Press, the academic book Weaving Words into Worlds (September 2023). Has the chapter “The Ecological Christian Labyrinth and the Significance of Trees in The Lord of the Rings”. This appears to try to link Tolkien’s uses of trees, within his labyrinthine LoTR narrative, with historical Christian uses of labyrinths and mazes.
* Call for papers: The Middle Ages in the 20th and 21st Centuries at the University of Stavanger in Norway. Deadline: 31st January 2024.
* And finally, a major joint three-society Literature and Science conference at the University of Birmingham, set for 10th-12th April 2024. The wide ‘literature and science’ theme is left open and thus suggests possibilities for a Tolkien topic, especially so in his home city of Birmingham. Tolkien was taken to the Great Hall of the University (then serving as a hospital) on being brought back from France, and this might suggest a paper on the Houses of Healing in LoTR and the value of traditional oral lore for rediscovering potent healing plants (“Ioreth, men will long remember your words”). The call for papers deadline is 1st December 2023.