Tolkien Gleanings #214

* The Tolkien Society’s recent Tolkien and Romanticism conference now has a host of speaker videos online, newly uploaded to YouTube.

* Also new on YouTube, the Tolkien Society interviews Eric Reinders about Tolkien in Chinese translation.

* Newly added to the latest Journal of Tolkien Research, a long review of the catalogue for the recent large Tolkien exhibition in Paris.

* In French in a Polish university journal, “Les heros mythiques et leurs doubles dans les labyrinthes de Tolkien”, on mazes and labyrinths in Middle-earth. Sees Moria, Mirkwood, and Shelob’s tunnels as mazes. But overlooks the passage of the Dead Marshes, the winding paths to Ithilien’s secret cave/pool, and the maze-like Old Forest. The primal maze+monster myth (‘Theseus & the Minotaur’) has survived in art, painting, and literature for some three thousand years, and it seems interesting to try to see Tolkien as a contributor to that. The article is under Creative Commons Attribution.

* “Publisher overwhelmed by response to Welsh Hobbit”.

* New on Librivox, a free public-domain audiobook of the book Myths of Northern Lands: narrated with special reference to literature and art (1895). Gives an account of each hero / deity in turn.

* And finally… hand-written source notes for fairy-tales (and more), written by the Brothers Grimm. These are now to be scanned and placed online. The project will start on 1st September 2024 and run for three years. It will be especially challenging, as it’s said that current handwriting, “font, and layout recognition [systems] are not capable of producing usable full texts of annotated prints and simultaneously evaluating handwritten artifacts.” Sounds like Microsoft OneNote on a Microsoft Surface tablet to me, but what do I know? Assuming the project is a success, presumably with the aid of AIs, the results will be freely available online.