Tolkien Gleanings #149.

* The next issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research has its first content, this being a long review of Holly Ordway’s Tolkien’s Faith and an essay on “Echoes of the Spanish Civil War in Tolkien’s Legendarium”. Both are freely available.

* Posted a few days ago, the .MP3 for the Oxford talk “J.R.R. Tolkien: The Making of a Philologist”…

“A talk by Professor Simon Horobin on Tolkien’s long-standing career and interest in philology. Part of the series to mark the 50th anniversary of Tolkien’s death organised and hosted by Exeter College and the Faculty of English.”

Poor sound-quality, regrettably, and almost un-listenable. Reminder to public lecturers… always make a podium recording of your own lecture, even if the institution is also making one.

* A been-and-gone event at the University of Chichester’s venerable Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction, on 11th December 2023. It was a public talk on “J.R.R Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Doctor Who: peculiarly British fairy tales”…

To mark the 50th anniversary of the death J.R.R. Tolkien, the 60th anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis, and the 60th anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who, Paul Quinn will be giving a lecture about fairy tales in the work of Tolkien and Lewis, demonstrating how the types of ‘fairy tales’ found in Middle-earth and Narnia, and fairy tales in general, impacted on Doctor Who.

* Gramarye, the journal of the UK’s Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction, has a call for content for the next issue. Deadline: 24th March 2024. Note that potential contributors can bag a… “complimentary e-book of the most recent issue” by enquiring.

* Advance news of Signum University’s UK Moot. Set for 27th April 2024 in the ancient city of York, and there to discuss the twin themes of… “Death and Immortality: The Great Escapes”.

* Freely available online, the new article “La artificialidad temporal o magia en los reinos elficos en The Lord of the Rings”. Seeks to use the Confessions of Saint Augustine as a lens to examine Lothlorien, as an elven creation which appears to stand apart from time.

* The new book Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A Critical Anthology ships tomorrow. Mostly the movement occurred in fantasy and science-fiction poetry, which meant it was almost unknown outside of those circles. The book has no Google Books preview, thus one can’t know if Tolkien is in it. There’s no mention of him in the blurb, and I’d suspect costly reproduction rights may have kept him out?

* And finally, Walking Tree has increased the prices of their books.