Tolkien Gleanings #206.
* In The Oxford Mail this week, “Memorial to be unveiled in honour of J.R.R. Tolkien”…
“The memorial created by sculptor Tim Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien’s grand-nephew, will be officially unveiled on 12th June before invited donors, guests, and members of the community.”
The memorial with a central “bronze relief” of Tolkien will be located somewhere unspecified within Pembroke College, Oxford. Thus it should be somewhat safer than otherwise from attack by activists.
* New in the journal English Studies, ““Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1953 W.P. Ker Memorial Lecture: An Updated Chronology and Related Findings”. Freely available online in open-access.
* New in The European Conservative, “Tolkien’s Secret”…
“neither style, nor narrative, nor even invented languages can explain the charm of Tolkien’s stories” [it is perhaps rather because] people cannot live without true stories, without sacred texts, without myths” [and yet in Tolkien the grand sweep of myth has been firmly anchored in a hard-won centuries-deep English common-sense and natural joy, and thus we see that] “Our own lives are part of that perpetual tale that Sam describes” near the end of The Lord of the Rings.
* The Journal of Tolkien Research this week begins a new volume with a review of Theology and Tolkien: Practical Theology (2023). I must say the theme is not immediately enticing to me. ‘Practical Theology’ is an unfamiliar phrase, and what on earth are ‘theodicy’ and ‘koinonia’? But the short review makes it seem quite palatable, and (in a way) a source study for LoTR. Tolkien knew his Bible, and thus scholars who don’t are going to miss possible sources or allusive hints. Though, as the review reassures, the book avoids the usual tub-thumbing Biblical source parallels… “One of the strengths of this compilation is its avoidance of simplistic allegory and cliched parallels with Christian doctrine”.
* In the blog The Imaginative Christian, a blog new to me, a recent post on “Utopia, the Shire, and World-Building”. This also muses on dystopia…
“Tolkien’s genius expands even beyond the basic world-building, of an idyllic society of the Shire — to even include [… the Saruman] character within that world who in his own thoughts comes up with and puts forth in practice his own idea of a ‘perfect world’, albeit more of a dystopian world.”
* The annual New York C. S. Lewis Society Student Essay Contest with prizes. Deadline: 29th June 2024.
* And finally, an upcoming Tolkien Letters Livestream on YouTube… “Help celebrate the one-year anniversary of our launch of the Letters Guide this weekend — we will show some of the new letters [recently found]”.