Tolkien Gleanings #247
* The Christopher Tolkien Centenary Conference now has the talks programme online. An all-star Tolkien event. Talks include, among others…
– “It is dear to my heart”: An art-oriented recollection of a correspondence with Christopher Tolkien (1982-1988).
– Christopher Tolkien as Medieval Scholar.
– Christopher Tolkien and ‘the Goths and the Huns’.
– Continuing Christopher Tolkien’s Work in a Digital Age.
* New at Atla blog, “Yielding New Perspectives on Tolkien: An Interview with Archivist Catherine McIlwaine”.
* Voyages dans les mondes de Tolkien (‘Voyages in the Worlds of Tolkien’), new from France. It appears to be a 144-page one-off book-a-zine from the glossy French travel magazine Geo. The quickie AI-generated cover doesn’t inspire confidence that it’s an authorised publication. One Amazon review states that there are a number of errors of biographical fact, and its interview with the French nation’s current Tolkien publisher somehow managed to overlook twenty years of work on Tolkien by Vincent Ferre.
* Addiction in The Lord of the Rings and the real world: insights for physicians. A short report in a medical journal, on a conference paper of note…
“At OMED24, this theme was brought to life as James H. Berry, DO, an addiction psychiatrist, and Tolkien scholar Lisa Coutras Terris, PhD, explored how the forces that ensnare characters in Tolkien’s work mirror the real-world grip of addiction.”
* Forthcoming in 2025, The Gospel of Gollum by Italian scholar Ivano Sassanelli. The book will consider…
“Gollum as a possible exemplification or personification of the passage from the Gospel of Luke: “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be” (Luke 12,34)? To answer this question, we will use an academic approach tasked with showing some of the most important aspects of Gollum’s life and [drawing on] Italian Tolkien scholarship.”
* An online continuing-education course at Harvard on “Tolkien’s Library”, set for spring 2025.
* An online seminar set for August 2025, More Perilous and Fair: Women and Gender in Mythopoeic Fantasy… “Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the publication of Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien”.
* New on YouTube, Tolkien, Lord, and Liturgy: An Interview with Dr. Ben Reinhard.
* New on Archive.org, the Greenwood guide A Century of Welsh Myth in Children’s Literature (1998). Now out-of-print and with a few paper copies available used at £50+.
* One of the many Black Friday sales is from publisher Harper Collins, the key publisher of official Tolkien books. Also, news of a forthcoming Tolkien ‘Myths and Legend’ Harper Collins box-set. Due in June 2025, it will include Tolkien’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Though in what version I’m not yet sure.
* And finally, can Harper Collins and the Estate please consider J.R.R. Tolkien’s Complete Book of the Dwarves and Dwarven-lore. It doesn’t exist. It should and could, I suggest.