Tolkien Gleanings #43

* The Cracks of Doom: Untold Tales in Middle-earth ebook is now available as the expanded third edition. Newly added are a full set of notes for The Hobbit, plus many expanded or new additions for The Lord of the Rings. The book now totals 28,000 words. Despite the many new additions, I’ve dropped the price by a dollar to $5.99 (about £5, depending on currency exchange-rates). If you’ve already purchased the Kindle ebook edition, then forcing a fresh download should bring you the new edition at no extra cost.

* News of a Tolkien conference in Italy organised by Eterea Edizioni in collaboration with the Museum of Religions ‘Raffaele Pettazzoni’ in Rome. The conference theme is animals in Tolkien’s works. The organisers are interested in Tolkien in relation to medieval animal traditions, fairy-tales, and animals in religion. Also his main animal characters and shape-shifters (such as Beorn), and his lesser animals (badgers, birds, ponies etc). The call for papers closes 30th April 2023, for the face-to-face conference on 21st-23rd July 2023. Submissions must be in Italian. Further details from: info@etereaedizioni.com

* In relation to the above, note also the forthcoming “Tolkien’s Animals” special issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research. As I was typing that, it struck me that there’s very little mention of fish in LoTR. Despite the many streams, rivers, pools, lakes, marshes, oceans, bridges and boats. Where it is mentioned it’s what poor Deagol’s doing when he’s murdered, or Gollum’s slimy/smelly raw food and brief fish-riddle, or a mass of eel-like tentacles surging toward the doors of Moria. It’s amusing to think that, had Tolkien been a rod-and-line fisherman as well as a pipe-smoker, we might have heard just as much about the beautiful fishes of Middle-earth as about pipes and pipe-weed. As it is one gets the impression that, along with Samwise, Tolkien thought that the only good fish was a dead one deep-fried in batter and served with potato chips.

* Mises muses this week on “J.R.R. Tolkien on the danger of centralized political power”…

“many libertarians unfortunately fail to call upon one of the most articulate critics of centralized political power with unparalleled intellectual and cultural influence; J.R.R. Tolkien. While Tolkien is no doubt a popular figure among many libertarians, [there is] an unfortunate unfamiliarity with his work on a deeper intellectual level”

* Being released in a few weeks, the journal Hither Shore No. 18: Tolkien und Politik – Tolkien and Politics. It appears to be a 2023 release of a heavily delayed 2021 edition? Though the contents-list suggests it will have been worth the wait, with article titles such as…

~ “An examination of Tolkien and eco-anarchism” (English)

~ “Tolkien und die libertare kritik an staat und politik” (German. ‘Tolkien and the libertarian critique of the state and politics’)

~ “A re-reading of the Tolkienian concept of war” (English)

~ “Tolkien on heroism and politics” (English)

~ Also book reviews, and what appears to be a review article on “Tolkien’s Artwork: publications and exhibitions in Paris”.

* Hither Shore No. 18 also has a review of a book I’d not heard of before, Gleanings from Tolkien’s Garden: Selected Essays (2020). Thirteen articles, four new, from the co-founder of the Dutch Tolkien Society. I can’t find a contents-list online, and Amazon UK thinks the book’s unavailable. But the above Web link is apparently the one to use if you’re shipping the book to an address outside the Netherlands.

* There’s a new free audiobook version of Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance, just released on Librivox. I assume it’s the 1903 public domain version rather than the 1960 version. But the latter is free on Archive.org as a scan and might be of interest to Tolkien scholars. Especially those seeking a unified survey of the relevant 1903-1950s fairy scholarship Tolkien could have accessed or seen reviewed. Because the 1960 edition updated the 1903, being a…

“Second edition enlarged by a survey of scholarship on the fairy mythology since 1903 and a bibliography by Roger Sherman Loomis”.

* And finally, I see the documentary Tolkien’s Great War (Free Spirit Film, 2014) is now freely available on YouTube. The 33 minute film was… “produced for a centenary exhibition at King Edward’s School, Birmingham.”