Tolkien Gleanings #114.
* Now available, my free PDF Tolkien Gleanings, issue 6 (2023). At just 56 pages this is not as large and magazine-like as the previous issue 5. It just collects the blog’s Gleanings posts and also has a gallery which surveys ‘walking trees’ in Edwardian arts and literature. I’m not putting it on Gumroad this time, since issue 5 showed that no-one is interested in donating a few $’s — even when there’s a big substantial issue on offer. Thus issue 6 is only on the Archive.org site.
To get clickable Web links, you need to download the PDF rather than using the Archive.org flipbook preview.
* News of a new academic book, Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism Revisited, due to ship on 11th September 2022. It… “provides an overview of some of the most important critics of Enlightenment rationalism [including] Scruton and Tolkien”. £40 in ebook or paperback.
* A recreation of Tolkien’s “On Dragons and Dinosaurs” lecture for children, is “back by popular demand” as an event at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Free and booking now for 5th September 2023. More details at the British Society for Literature and Science page.
* Those interested in fantasy maps may want to look at a new research-summary open-access article by Japanese researchers, “A Study of ‘Map Sense’ that Supports the Accuracy of Maps, Through Interviews with Imaginary Map Creators” (2023).
* Tolkien Gateway now has the table-of-contents for Amon Hen 301 (June 2023). An especially hobbity issue by the look of it, with reviews of the new edition of The History of the Hobbit, and The Wisdom of Hobbits. Articles include “The House where The Hobbit was Born” and “Pippin, the Persistent Rebel”.
* Interesting musings this week on “Of Home and Hearth: Tolkien and The Wind in the Willows”…
Oh, we have all the pleasantries, and even similar homecoming plot points [of The Wind in the Willows (1908)], but simply acting respectable and avoiding the outside world will not cut it with Tolkien. His hobbit interest is [in] what happens when you take the smug bourgeoisie and put them in an altogether new and alien setting. That which Grahame’s narrative discourages, in terms of character curiosity and breaks from social conformity, Tolkien’s narratives encourage.
* New in an Italian newspaper’s culture section, “Roy Campbell, il poeta in esilio che ispiro l’Aragorn di Tolkien” (‘Roy Campbell, the exiled poet who inspired Tolkien’s Aragorn’). I can’t say I’ve heard this claim before, or if the evidence for it is valid, but it may interest some.
* And finally, The Times ($ paywall) reports the “Swiss village of Lauterbrunnen is under siege from tourists” this summer. The newspaper blames the especially potent combination of a Tolkien claim (‘the inspiration for Rivendell’) and the nearby mountain-top setting for a classic 1969 James Bond movie.