Tolkien Gleanings #319

* The latest edition of the journal Translation Review reviews Reading Tolkien in Chinese: Religion, Fantasy, and Translation (2024) ($ paywall).

* Oronzo Cilli’s new article on “Tolkien, Trains, and Two Discoveries: Meccano and Hornby”. Hornby here refers to the famous brand of British model-railway trains, and their associated track layouts running through home-made miniature landscapes of lovingly crafted chicken-wire, papier-mache and pipe-cleaner trees. There was nothing unusual about this at the time, since ‘model railroading’ (as Americans may know it) was once a hugely popular male hobby in Britain. Even today, the hobby still sustains a regular glossy news-stand magazine.

* Dimitra Fimi on “Tolkien, Landscape Archaeology, and the First Age of Middle-earth”, specifically the great landscape monuments that endured into the Third Age.

* New in the journal The Literary Scientist “What Did She Know About Transformation That We Don’t?” (2025). Freely available online.

“An old woman lingers in Sir Bertilak’s castle, silent and unnoticed. Only at the end of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is her name revealed […] Far from a mere enchantress, her manipulation of life forms, elemental forces, and bodily change aligns with alchemy’s quest for transmutation, renewal […] In medieval thought, metals were purified into gold through trial, just as Bertilak becomes a vessel of endurance and near-immortality to test Gawain’s virtue. The Green Knight’s seasonal return and survival of decapitation embody alchemical ideals of regeneration and the Elixir of Life.”

* From the University of Birmingham, “‘Stille as the stone, or a stubbe other’: Mineral and Energy Imaginaries in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (2025). To appear in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, but already freely available online in Open Access.

“Situating the poem within the context of its geographical allusions to (in sequence [of travel]) regions of coal, lead, and wood/charcoal, it argues that these are components not simply of the poet’s worldbuilding but the text’s narrative logic. It locates Sir Gawain and the Green Knight within the Galfridian tradition – derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth […] engaged with the island’s terranean and subterranean riches.”

A useful focus on gold, silver, lead and charcoal. Though the author regrettably assumes Gawain ceases his journey in the Wirral, and that Hautdesert and its precisely-described topography is somehow a purely imaginary place. Yet the text itself clearly tells us he goes through the Wirral and carries on into very different and obviously real-world upland terrain — which incidentally had medieval lead mining at the time of the authorship of Gawain. re: coal the author might also wish to know that in 1257 Queen Eleanor had protested that Nottingham was too smoky and sulphurous due to sea-coal burning, and therefore uninhabitable for her and her court. Eleanor decamped for the cleaner air at Tutbury Castle in East Staffordshire. Sea-coal was being mined near Tunstall (North Staffordshire) from 1282 onwards, along a ridge only a few miles south of Sir Gawain’s likely route.

* In Italy at the end of August 2025, a two-day Tolkien Music Festival.

* The Narnia Fans website has an interview with the maker of the new book Painting Wonder: How Pauline Baynes Illustrated the Worlds of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (2025).

Tolkien Gleanings #318

* A new Prancing Pony podcast has a long interview with illustrator Ted Nasmith on YouTube. Apparently this is… “his first full-length interview”.

* Next year’s issue (summer 2026) of Forgotten Ground Regained: A Quarterly Journal of Alliterative Verse is to be a Tolkien special, apparently set to feature alliterative verse set in Middle-earth. The Journal appears to be free online, and has articles as well as poetry.

* I came across a 2013 auction page for a Tolkien letter of June 1957, on the speaking aloud (or not) of Sir Gawain and the lost rules of alliterative verse. Fascinating stuff. Surprisingly it’s not in the latest edition of the letters, judging by several searches for distinctive phrases and a look at the relevant 1957 dates…

“In dealing with a dead metrical practice, that has not left a record or tradition of ‘the rules,’ I think that most enquiries, and notably those dealing with the ‘alliterative’ tradition, become confused. They seem to me, to make an allegory, like the work of man attempting to analyse the callisthenics and physical rhythms of two tennis-players, including the differences between them, without bothering to enquire what is the function of the artificial white lines on the grass, or observing the wholly preposterous net. They may, or may not, succeed in saying something interesting about the motions of a man hitting a bouncing object with a racket, or about bodily motions in general, but they will say very little about lawn-tennis, in which human physique and artificial rules are in constant interaction.”

* Miriam Ellis considers the likely architectural and gardening dynamics of “The High Garden and Architecture of Tolkien’s Rivendell”.

* The Fintry Trust is set to host a talk on “Tolkien and the Autumnal Equinox”. Which is 22nd September in 2025, and the same date as Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday.

* At the Virginia Military Institute, the campus news service offers an article on “Ongoing Researches Into Tolkien’s Contribution to Biblical Translation”. Specifically, the Book of Jonah…

“Adams plans to present his paper at the VMI Undergraduate Research Symposium during spring [2026] semester, and hopes to get it published in one of several possible academic journals”

The undergraduate is reportedly puzzled as to why Tolkien chose Jonah. Possibly because the Gawain-poet tackled Jonah in his Patience, and for the connections with the German earendel cognate Orendel.

* Can a ‘zine obtain some recognition from the academic system? Perhaps not such a problem in a more fannish world, where fans and scholars and academics all productively mingle. But in more elitist forms of academia, it’s not so easy. Outside the Lines details her attempts at “Publishing a Zine Through Scholarly Channels”, and the details and her routes may be useful for some readers of Gleanings.

* And finally, “Paws on Parchment – New Exhibition Highlights Cats in Medieval Manuscripts”. ‘Paws on Parchment’ is an exhibition open now at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, running there until 22nd February 2026. Part of a series of themed animal exhibitions, ‘Paws’ is to be accompanied by ‘Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt’ opening on 27th September 2025 at the same venue.

Tolkien Gleanings #317

* A substantial-looking scholarly slate of speakers, set to give talks at the Tolkien Fest 2025 in Malta. The page has details of the talks, and the dates are 22nd-24th August 2025.

* This week Word on Fire taps into Tolkien to find “Hope for the Humanities” in academia.

* Signum University now has listings for its September and October 2025 online short-courses. Including: The Poetic Corpus of J.R.R. Tolkien: The Later Poems 1 (Volume 3: 1931-1967); Creative Quenya Translation; Exploring Tolkien’s “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”; and The Poetry of The Lord of the Rings (Book I), among others.

* New on YouTube from the East Yorkshire tourist-board, “Walking in Tolkien’s footsteps: East Yorkshire’s latest tribute”. Three minutes and well-edited.

* New on CivitAI, a free plugin (LoRA) which guides the SDXL local AI image-generator towards a particular style. The Manuscript Drolleries LoRA allows you to make images from text prompts aimed at generating… “grotesques, drolleries, marginalia and doodles [as if] from illuminated manuscripts”. Note however that CivitAI, the main AI creative models hub, is now effectively banned in the UK. Brits can still reach it if we have a VPN but, given the size of the downloads involved in AI (7Gb is usual for a single SDXL model), a VPN is not ideal. Sadly, very few models or LoRAs are put on torrents.

* And finally, that rare edition of The Hobbit which was discovered near Bristol, as mentioned in a previous Gleanings? It has been sold for £43,000. Which is around $57,000 U.S.

Tolkien Gleanings #316

* The latest rolling Journal of Tolkien Research is nicely “filling up the corners”, and the latest toothsome item is a peer-reviewed article on “The Matter of Time in the Faerie Realms of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings”, with specific focus on the Celtic otherworld and… “the complex interplay of time found in Celtic mythology”. Freely available online.

* A Signum University thesis defence is set for 6th August 2025, online on Zoom, titled “A Myth for Mankind: The Lord of the Rings, Modernism, and The Counterculture”. In the thesis … “special attention is given to the novel’s adoption by the American counterculture of the 1960s and 70s”.

* Kalimac’s Corner offers a short Mythcon report…

I got to the Tolkien trivia contest [… and there I was the only contestant who] knew that before Tolkien read chunks of The Lord of the Rings into a friend’s tape recorder, what he first recited was the Lord’s Prayer. To exorcise the machine, he said. And, being Tolkien, he recited it in Gothic.

* Mythopoeic Awards winners announced, for books published in 2024. In the ‘Inklings Studies’ category, the winner is The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien (2024).

* From the Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century (2022), “Fantastic Letters: Writing in a Fictional World”. Discusses Tolkien’s fictional lettering, alongside other key examples. Freely available online.

* The Mythmakers is being translated into Dutch, as The Mythmakers: De wonderlijke vriendschap tussen C.S. Lewis en J.R.R. Tolkien. Set for release on 30th October 2025.

* The Poles are set to enjoy what sounds like a new Polish translation of Tolkien. The title translates as Unfinished stories of Middle-earth and Numenor. The 600-page hardcover is due to thump heavily onto doormats on 12th August 2025, according to Amazon UK.

* A nice new discovery on DeviantArt, Gnome-the-artist, from the Czech Republic. Lots of quality Tolkien artworks, including imaginative portraits of Tolkien himself. Available without watermarks and (for those signed-up to DA) with downloads available at large sizes.

* And finally, The Tolkien Society calls for Tolkien to feature on a new Bank of England bank note. I’m guessing that the shortlist is drawn up a couple of years in advance, and thus the Society is anticipating that a Reform government will be quite amenable to the idea circa 2026/27? Personally I’d change the rather depressive choice of words, though. Perhaps more suitable would be “The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began…”

Tolkien Gleanings #315

Note: Due to growing censorship, I’m now 99% surfing with a VPN. I use Mullvad as the VPN and bounce out to the east coast of the USA. So when I say “freely available online” now, I mean for someone in the USA rather than here in the UK. Of various Tolkien sites, I find that only Walking Tree and the ‘Interactive Middle-earth Map’ sites are unreachable when using a VPN, with the map site giving a very obnoxious message to VPN users.

* A new Amon Hen No. 314 (August 2025) is available, for Tolkien Society members. The Editorial reveals they’ve finally found a new layout and design worker. Some Silmarillion focused lead articles, and among the other items are…

   – Christopher Tolkien’s Lectures at Oxford: Bibliography.
   – An all-too-short article on William, Tom and Bert (the trolls from The Hobbit), leading into a look at what can be known about trolls in general.
   – A DIY article on how to make a hobbit-hole door.

* A new issue of Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research (July 2025). Freely available online. Has a Finnish article which translates as “Spirituality in the fantasy fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien”, plus a clutch of book reviews…

   – Review of The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien.
   – Review of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Utopianism and the Classics.
   – Review of Celebrating Tolkien’s Legacy.
   – Review of Mapping Middle-earth.

* The new edition of the Spanish journal Selim: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature has a review of the Spanish translation of Tolkien’s Green Knight. Currently this open-access journal is down, unavailable either with or without a VPN.

* Signum University is to hold a three-day Moot here in the UK, Land of Dragons: How Myth Shapes Our Reality. Set for 3rd-5th October 2025, in Cardiff, South Wales. At present there’s a call for papers and session ideas. It will be possible to attend virtually, online, as well as in person.

* The regional U.S. news radio station TMJ4 has an article deriving from its ‘Milwaukee Tonight’ slot, “11,000 pages of Lord of the Rings drafts are in Marquette University’s archives”, profiling the archivist. Freely available online.

* The J.R.R. Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature 2025 is now… uploaded to Spotify. Rather an unfortunate choice, since Spotify is reportedly set to start deleting UK user accounts en masse. Doubly unfortunate since Zen Cho’s lecture was in part about censorship.

* New in the Protestant Christian magazine American Reformer, “Poetry and Monarchy in Tolkien”. Freely available online.

* New in The American Spectator “The Newest Doctor of the Church’s Influence on Catholic Literature”, focusing on Cardinal Newman’s influence on Tolkien.

* And finally, LOTRSilverCollections, a new Reddit sub-forum for those who collect LoTR merchandise and coins, if made with precious metals. Preciousss…