Tolkien Gleanings #183.

* Now freely available in PDF, “Never trust a Philologist’: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Place of Philology in English Studies”. Several C.S. Lewis poems are published in the article for the first time.

* New at the BARS blog, “Will Sherwood on the Romantic Echoes in the Manuscripts of J.R.R Tolkien”… “My research trip to Oxford has chiefly been concerned with locating Tolkien’s references, (mis)quotations, and criticism of the Romantics throughout his life.” Romantics here meaning the British Romantics.

* Tolkien colloquium 2024: ‘Emotions in Middle-earth’, which took place on 22nd March and is due to air on YouTube on 27th March 2024. Five talks in English.

* A seemingly new book titled Las Fronteras de lo Humano: La antropologia de C.S. Lewis y J.R.R. Tolkien (‘On the Borders of the Human: the anthropology of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien’). The summary seems to imply a philosophical tour through the creatures and the monsters, worryingly mentions the movies, and sounds like it may be drawing on contemporary understandings of anthropology. It doesn’t suggest any research on the historical context in relation to the anthropology of the time. A book on the influence of the pre-war British anthropologists (who ignored the Americans and only nodded to the French, it seems) would certainly be interesting, but this doesn’t seem to be that book.

* In the USA, “Wolters Centre to Host Tolkien Conference”. The focus appears to be how Tolkien was “able to bear witness to the Christian faith”. In an era that had become deeply hostile to fantasy, and was increasingly dismissive of those with deep Christian faith.

* New to me, and newly on Archive.org, a preview of the tracks on the album A Night in Rivendell: Selected Songs from The Lord of the Rings by The Tolkien Ensemble (2000).

* And finally, Folklife magazine has an article on the Swedish Eldandili Fantasy Choir. Part cos-play group, part choir, and all dedicated to “Singing Tolkien’s Middle-earth”. Freely available online.