Tolkien Gleanings #309

Tolkien Gleanings has been in abeyance for three weeks, due to my installing Windows 11 and porting over all the software and settings. Don’t worry, it’s a ‘Superlite’ version of Windows 11, not Microsoft’s full-on nightmare blue-screen bloatware. I was going to move to Linux Mint, but then I discovered the Superlite version of Windows 11 — no bloat, no Microsoft account, no adverts, no privacy-invading telemetry, no ‘apps’, no ‘your hardware is too puny’, no forced updates. All of that actively ripped out, rather than just suppressed via a few tweaks in the settings. It can even look and feel like Windows 7 (install Open Shell + StartAllBack, and change the wallpaper). Lovely. It’s just as fast on a trusty old workstation, and it means I can get all the latest software and access various local open-source AI tools.

* Now published Arda Philology 8, which has…

– Almost Certainly Almaida: An Investigation of Numenor’s Lost City-name.
– “Unrecorded” Germanic: An Art-language for England.
– Rank-frequency Distributions of Aesthetic Units.
– Vocalization of Spirants in Sindarin and Noldorin.
– Shorthand Signalling: A New Source for the Tengwar?

The latter by John Garth, and presumably related to the wartime signalling methods known to Tolkien. Also of note, a new podcast interview with John Garth on Tolkien and war.

* New from Eastern Europe, “Tolkien and ‘The Fear of the Beautiful Fay’: Breton Folklore and Christian Imaginary in Fantasy Literature”, in the journal Limba Literatura Folclo. Freely available online, in Romanian with English abstract.

* New from Glasgow, what appears to be a dissertation or thesis on “The Creative Uses of Irish Literature in Works by J.R.R. Tolkien”. I can’t tell which it is at present, because the university repository server has crashed (possibly this is related to the major cyber-attack which has taken out Glasgow City Council, at a guess).

* New in Historioplus: The e-Journal of the History Department of the University of Salzburg, “‘What about side by side with a friend?’: Dissecting the ‘Elves versus Dwarves’-trope, which looks at the primary-world historical origins of the notion. Freely available in English.

* Newly added to the rolling current issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research, “Bilbo’s Boethian Heroism”. Freely available online…

“… little scholarly attention has been paid to his development of Boethian ideals in The Hobbit, especially in regard to Bilbo’s heroic arc and the importance of luck on his journey. I argue that Tolkien develops Bilbo’s heroic identity and his famous “luck” as the actions of Fortune on behalf of Fate and divine Providence, interpreting the influential theology from Boethius’s ‘The Consolation of Philosophy’ as a new kind of heroism that fulfils the teachings of Lady Philosophy.

* The National Catholic Register reviews the new book The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination (2025), in “For Tolkien, the Mass Was Life’s Greatest Drama”.

* Kalimac’s Corner reveals, in a mid-June 2025 post, that…

“Tolkien Studies is alive and well. It’s just delayed. A combination of various personal difficulties, on top of never having quite recovered from the dent in our schedule caused by the 2022 supplement, are the cause. But the 2024 (tsk) issue should have gone to the publisher (more processing time) within a month from now.”

* Wormwoodiana brings news of the new book of essays Borderlands and Otherworlds (2025) which has, among others…

– Some Supernatural Fiction of the Early 1920s. [British literature survey]
– Charles Williams and His Circle: Four Vignettes.
– The Haunted ’Forties: Wrey Gardiner and Poetry Quarterly. [1940s British literature]
– Three Fantasias of the ’Forties. [“]
– Modernity and Tradition: The English Fantastic in the ’Forties and ’Fifties. [1940s and 50s]

* The Lingwe blog muses on “The Ulsterior Motive” and other unpublished writings of Tolkien.

* The Alas, not me blog has perceptive musings on “Dreamflowers and Lotus-eaters” in The Lord of the Rings.

* New on YouTube, a new batch of videos of the Oxford talks series, including, among others, “J.R.R. Tolkien at the BBC”. The BBC was the nation’s main broadcast network for the British Isles and Commonwealth.

* YouTube now has a recording of the 2025 Tolkien lecture, which this year was given by Birmingham’s historical-fantasy / romance novelist Zen Cho. Touches on the importance of fantasy for the reader’s inner-life, the evils of censorship and censorious peer-pressure, and the threat of AI as a quick-fix which may bypass “the effort of living in this world” (and the lessons that can teach us).

* Now online for free at Academia.edu, “Christmas Games and Paper Castles: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a Court Holiday Poem”, a chapter from Studies in the Literary Imagination (2023). I assume a two-year embargo has now expired, and hence the chapter is online for free. Get the PDF without signing up, by searching the title on Google Scholar. Excellent, but the author hasn’t read my book on Gawain and its setting. He usefully notes the appearance of ‘woodwoses’ as a fantastical addition to a court performance in 1348, citing a 1999 Yale University Press book…

“[For] the household of [King] Edward III, celebrating Christmas [in 1348] at Otford, there were masks for men, with heads of lions, elephants and phantoms (‘vespertiliones’) mounted on top, and separate masks of woodwoses and virgins. A few days later, at Epiphany, at Merton, there were 13 costumes for dragons and men with diadems.” — from The Great Household in Late Medieval England, 1999, p. 94.

* Five years in the making, and shipping this week, The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters. Also includes surveys of modern “Monstrous Angels”, plus “Demons and Monsters of Mesopotamia”, and “Ghosts of Mesopotamia”, which means ancient Babylon and the Babylonian Empire.

* A new June 2025 version of the freeware Anytxt, the best full-text search tool for desktop PCs. Can now “filter search results by filename”, along with all the other features such as the ability to run regex and proximity queries. Very useful for scholars with large digital caches of papers and books.

* The Free Online Library has a wealth of freely-available long-ago local newspaper articles, which roll out to the public once their usefulness to publishers expires. New at the Library is “1905 Mill View Was Tolkien Inspiration”, which is a short gushy 2012 article from The Birmingham Mail. One item of note is on the sources of the mill-pool…

“[The Sarehole Mill] water wheel is powered not by the River Cole, which flows nearby, but an adjacent pond which is fed by a now built-over head race along the Wake Green Road and a stream from Moseley Bog.”

Also a Roy Edwards letter to the Mail editor from Christmas 2012…

“I lived at Fern Cottage 32 years ago. My late mother loved to visit a magical ‘glade’ sited near Cardinal Newman’s burial site, Rivendale, in the garden at the back. This led to a desire to research Tolkien which revealed that he walked via the Lickeys to Barnt Green station to catch the train to Birmingham. A born ‘Rednal-ite’, I recognised many of the scenes depicted in the Hobbit as those relating to his route to the train – the blacksmith next door to the cottage; the trees blowing all around his home; the river running by the Tea Rooms; the Rose & Crown where Strider was met; the large Beeches of Milkwood situated at the top of Rose Hill; the climb up a cliff-like sandstone hill where he could well have met Gollum; Bittell reservoir and the final stretch to the train which breathed fire and smoke – could this be the Dragon? Tolkien’s brother often met him at the station. They would have spent time exploring the Lickey Hills. Thus fact provides inspiration for fantasies. In later years he frequently visited the Oratory summer home next door and even spent many of his courting years walking the hills. Finally, enter the lookout at the top of Beacon hill and you will not only see the Two Towers, but you will survey the vast view across the Malverns to the land of Mordor in the distance – Tolkien country if ever there was.”

His “across the Malverns to the land of Mordor in the distance” would be looking SW towards rural Herefordshire/Gloucestershire, which is hardly Mordor. Possibly the glimpse of the distant Ross-on-Wye hill-country was meant? Though it would make more sense if “Malverns” = Midlands, and thus the viewer would be looking towards the heavily industrial Black Country. Possibly a mis-typing of a hand-written letter?

* And finally… “Best places for a Tolkien fan to visit in England?”, with answers.

Tolkien Gleanings #308

* Now available for download by members, the latest Amon Hen #313 (June 2025) from The Tolkien Society. Among other items, a long review of the new book The High Hallow, a long report from Westmoot, and a lengthy report on the ‘Three Farthing Stone’ Smial meet at the Burlington hotel in Birmingham. In which Shrewsbury is suggested as their next meet-up venue, later in 2025. One of the Three Farthing members is reportedly…

“working on a book derived from his Oxonmoot talks, a reference book of Tolkien audio material”

* A new rolling issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research is now underway, opening with a review of the book The Map of Wilderland: Ecocritical Reflections on Tolkien’s Myth of Wilderness (2022). Freely available online.

* In the Christian journal the Kenarchy Journal 7.1 (2025), freely available online, the lead article is “The Great Music: Perfecting Love in Order and in Chaos”…

“The paper draws on the work of J.R.R. Tolkien to illuminate the way that this hope can be realised, pointing to a ‘higher harmony’ that is capable of including and transcending even the discord of the world.”

* Tomorrow (Saturday 7th June) in Dallas and on Zoom, a talk for the Lewis-Tolkien Society ‘Dr. James Patrick on Idealism and Orthodoxy at Oxford’, which examines…

“how the Oxford dons grappled with the challenge of defending Christian orthodoxy in the aftermath of Kant’s intellectual scepticism, Hegel’s metaphysics of World Spirit, and the reaction of British realism and Ayer’s positivism.”

This relates to (and perhaps updates?) his book Magdalen Metaphysicals: Idealism and Orthodoxy at Oxford, 1901-1945 (1985). The book is well out-of-print, but I see there’s now an Archive.org scan to digitally ‘borrow’.

* Tantor (formerly Trantor, before trademark trolls) is set to release two recent scholarly books as audiobooks. The Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien: Mythopoeia and the Recovery of Creation should appear in mid July, and Tolkien, Philosopher of War in mid August 2025.

* In Indiana, Ball State University Libraries has a Tolkien Exhibit, on show until the end of July 2025. This is a relatively small display in their Archives and Special Collections division…

“the exhibit features selections from the Deborah and Fritz Dolak J.R.R. Tolkien Collection, which was generously donated to Ball State in 2013 [and is being shown alongside new] student and staff interpretations of Tolkien’s world. Among the featured items are fantasy maps developed by Brendo Carvalho, a visiting cartography student from Brazil, and Rachel Cohn, assistant professor and foundations coordinator in the School of Art. Their work reflects the continuing inspiration Tolkien’s imagination provides to emerging artists and scholars.”

* On YouTube, First Timers considers Tolkien’s mastery of the art of foreshadowing and callback in LoTR.

* And finally… a Birmingham & Black Country Wildlife Trust Open Day at Moseley Bog in south Birmingham, 5th July 2025. Including two ‘Tolkien Tours’.

Tolkien Gleanings #307

* A Pilgrim in Narnia’s blog offers a summary of his soon-to-be-defenced thesis “Unveiling Hope: Do the Inhabitants of Arda Know How Their Own Story Ends?”…

“[…] the entire legendarium has been recorded and passed down from the Valar to the Elves and subsequently through the Hobbits. Therefore, all of Arda is revealed to be undergirded by the Music of the Ainur, which is more than a creation hymn – it is a sustaining breath, echoing through waters, songs, and the hearts of every individual. This Music is heard beside hearths, in dreams before perilous roads, and wherever water is found. Drawing from the legendarium, with modern scholarship simply providing context, this study argues that Arda is alive and looking forward to a final eucatastrophe where all sad things come untrue.”

* Anna Smol’s blog has a new post which offers “Some glimpses into Westmoot 2025”, including outlining the focus of her paper “Tolkien’s Myth-making and Dreams of Earendil” (on his early poetic uses of the character). There are also links to posted presentations from others at Westmoot.

* The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts has announced their 4th Virtual International Conference. This is to be themed ‘Embodied Spirits’ and is set for 17th-21st September 2025. The deadline for paper submission is 30th June 2025. Regrettably, their website is currently dead even to archive.is, but a search-snippet reveals that this year’s theme…

“invites engagement with how embodied spirits persist, haunt, and empower across both cultural and technological landscapes”.

* At The Imaginative Conservative, a new review of the book The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination (2025).

* One I missed in January 2025, an episode of Princeton University’s Madison Notes podcast, “Tolkien, Philosopher of War: A Conversation with Graham McAleer”.

* The Oxford Mail local newspaper has a few more details about the forthcoming Tolkien book. A central figure is apparently…

“William Morris [who led the way in] mass-producing small cars at affordable prices and donated millions to worthy causes. [The Oxford] businessman is thought to be the inspiration for a character known as the ‘Daemon of Vaccipratum’ in the never-before published story, The Bovadium Fragments. [The work may reflect] a bid to alleviate traffic by building a dual carriageway across Christ Church Meadow, an ancient open space in the heart of Oxford, [which] sparked a lengthy public debate well into the 1960s, when the plan was eventually abandoned.”

* John Garth will be giving a talk on “Tolkien’s Elves: A journey through the realms of Middle-earth” in London on 15th July 2025. Booking now.

* The Australian Book Review has a scathing theatre review of the recent Australian attempt at a musical of The Lord of the Rings. Freely available online.

* On DeviantArt, a pleasing and easy-to-follow comic-book style map of a part of The Shire by AP-Cartography. Possibly of special interest to those reading the early parts of LoTR to children, after completing The Hobbit. Especially since there’s a 5.1Mb free download of the high-res 300dpi version, which makes it suitable for printing and colouring-in. Or perhaps table-top tracing of a large print, to create one’s own version.

* Also of note, in terms of walks in the Shire, is the French book Promenades au Pays Ses Hobbits: Itineraires a travers La Comte de J.R.R. Tolkien (2012) (‘Walks with Hobbits: some routes through the Shire of J.R.R. Tolkien’). New to me, discovered via an auto-translation of the 2018 French Web page which describes all the attempts at Middle-earth mapping. It turns out to be a short and well-reviewed 120-page book which describes seven Shire walks as if they were primary-world walks, reported in guidebook style. Has small maps, copious footnotes to all the sources drawn on, and old spot-engravings taken from public-domain clipart which serve as illustrations. Not yet translated, but one might still buy the £6.50 Kindle ebook. Which would then justify the obtaining of a digital copy from elsewhere… which you’d then make into a .PDF file and run through Google Translate’s free AI translation of long documents.

* And finally… new on YouTube is Malcolm Guite on Tolkien’s Dragon Poetry. Readings of three versions of the newly published poem on the dragon Scatha (you’ll recall his hoard was the source of Merry’s ‘raise the Shire’ horn).