Tolkien Gleanings #264
* From Italy, new on YouTube, Franco Manni interviews Tom Shippey on Tolkien, mainstream literature and providence. Telephone call-box sound, but it’s steady and clear and has no drop-outs. Shippey offers amusing observations on Ugluk (an orc in LoTR). Comparing Ugluk’s difficulties in managing and directing orc-rabble, aggravated by squabbling orc factions, to the task of managing a university department.
* The book Tolkien’s Faith (2023) is now also available in Spanish, and this week ReL published a freely-available profile interview and book outline in Spanish. I translate…
“an educated Spanish Catholic today will learn peculiar things about the Catholicism that Tolkien experienced 100 years ago in England. His peculiar time and context [i.e. Edwardian England, initially] had practices and devotions different from those many practising Catholics know today. […] The Spanish translation of Ordway’s book is careful and attentive; it was done by Monica Sanz, a great connoisseur of Tolkien’s work, who in recent years has collaborated in correcting new Spanish editions of the British author’s books.”
* Karen L. Kobylarz’s blog this week reviews Tolkien’s Faith (2023). Talking of this book, one wonders when there’s going to be an audiobook version. Surely there would be enough demand?
* TradKitty has posted a new annotated reading-list of ‘Tolkien-related Books Interesting to Catholics’.
* A new book review in the latest Journal of Tolkien Research examines The Songs of the Spheres: Lewis, Tolkien and the Overlapping Realms of their Imaginations (2024).
* I think I missed this one. Back in November, there was an online event for two new books from Tom Shippey’s Uppsala Books.
I see that one of these books, Easter: A Pagan Goddess, A Christian Holiday, and their Contested History is now available (it was still ‘forthcoming’, last time I looked) and it is now also now listed on Amazon UK. Following a lot of neo-pagan confusion and confabulation, this book aims to clearly state and examine…
“the principal claims and counter claims that now surround the goddess Eostre (recorded once by the Venerable Bede in 725 AD) and the origins of the Christian paschal festival. It critically examines the substance and history of these ideas from their earliest sources to the present day.”
* Forthcoming from Uppsala Books, I see the title Northern Lore: A Thematic Guide to the Proverbs of Medieval England, Germany, and Scandinavia.
* And finally, Michael Kurek’s third symphony, the English Symphony, is to be released 7th February 2025. YouTube has a long sample from his Symphony No. 2 – Tales from the Realm of Faerie (2022).