Tolkien Gleanings #440
* GoFundme fundraising for the “Crickhollow” Tolkien letter is now at £16.5k, of the £19k needed for the town to pay the auctioneer’s bill.
* Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien (2006) is now available in Italian translation. I see the English version also now has an affordable ebook version.
* “Phonaesthetics and the Music of Words”, a new podcast interview with Dr. John Holmes of the University of Steubenville. Free on Youtube.
* Quite understandably, your breath may not have been taken away on hearing of the new Handbook of Critical Respiratory Studies (2026). But note that (gasp!) it has the chapter “Breathing as Metaphor and Lived Experience in the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda: A Cultural Analysis”…
“Breath pervades the Old Norse imagination as both metaphor and lived reality. This chapter examines representations of breathing in the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, analyzing how Norse cosmology and myth make meaning of breath in cultural context […] Breath figures in the affective atmospheres of the sagas: sighs of grief, battle cries, and communal horn blasts at Ragnarok all illustrate breath’s relational and emotional dimensions. The analysis also shows how breath is ‘enacted’ through material and ritual contexts, from magical objects like Odin’s horn and the dwarves’ impossible ‘breath of a fish’, to the embodied practice of oath-swearing and prophecy.”
* A new PhD thesis from Italy, Anthropology of the Fantastic: Intangible Heritage, Community Engagement, and Socio-Cultural Innovation in Museum Practice (2026). Researched at museums in Italy and Canada. Freely available online, in English. The thesis appears trapped in an online page-viewer with no download button, but one can winkle out the PDF download link.
“… investigates the potential of the fantastic as a tool for socio-cultural innovation and community engagement, examined through an anthropological perspective and applied within museum practice. [Seeks to demonstrate] how the fantastic can be mobilized within cultural institutions to foster participation, strengthen territorial relationships, and support processes of socio-cultural innovation”
* Signum University’s adult education programme SPACE has been renamed ‘EverLearn’. Their new list of September 2026 online short-courses includes “Tolkien’s Great Tales: The Fall of Gondolin” and “Beginning Quenya 2”.
* The touring exhibition The Magic of Middle-earth has now reached Bewdley Museum in Worcestershire, where it has just opened. It runs until 27th September 2026. If you time it right, you could also combine it with the first Medieval Hereford Festival in August 2026.
* And finally, the National Folklore Survey’s Folklore Matters podcast has begun a second series.