Tolkien Gleanings #291

* New in the Cormare series from Walking Tree, the £20 paperback book Tolkien Among the Theologians (March 2025). Being the proceedings of a Houston conference, held online in October 2022. There appears to be no table-of-contents available as yet, but one can easily find various titles from papers given at the conference. These undoubtedly give a flavour of the new book…

   – Tolkien among the Oratorians. (Holly Ordway, keynote)
   – Tolkien and Calvin (lead paper)
   – Tolkien and Chesterton: The Orthodoxy of Middle-earth.
   – The Self, Rationality and the Exterior World in the Work of J.R.R. Tolkien and Fr. Victor White.
   – ‘Tolkien and Balthasar’.
   – ‘Franciscan themes related to the character of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry’

* “It’s odd how the Langobards [Lombards] keep cropping up” (Tolkien in the semi-autobiographical “The Lost Road”, speaking through the character Markison). This week the Axis Mundi blog considers “Tolkien and the Lombards, between myth and legend”.

* Engelsberg Ideas has a new blog article on “England’s mystical inheritance: Tolkien and Powell”. Compares Tolkien to his fellow poet/scholar and Birmingham contemporary Enoch Powell (ten years younger than Tolkien), focusing on parallels between Tolkien’s Shire and Powell’s conception of England. A relatively brief article, and there is probably a lot more to be said on the topic.

* Due for release in hardcover in a week or so, the children’s picture-book Painting Wonder: How Pauline Baynes Illustrated the Worlds of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

* A notice of a free public lecture in Brisbane, Australia in May 2025, “Shakespeare & Tolkien: Literary Giants & The Great Books”.

* And finally, for a hefty $99, ‘A Long-Expected Soundscape’. New to me, but described as chapter-specific audio apparently providing, via musical “score, ambience, and sound FX”, an enhancement of the…

“journey through J.R.R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. You can also use it as an accompaniment for reading the books or sync it with the official audiobook to get an incredible immersive audio experience”.

Here “official audiobook” means the new Andy Serkis reading, not the Rob Inglis audiobook. (Update: there’s also said to now be a version for the Inglis audiobook).