Tolkien Gleanings #158.
* The dedicated Tolkien and Alliterative Verse website has a new “‘Secondary Sources’ page now online”. In the near future the editors also hope to be… “adding works on Tolkien’s engagement with Middle English alliterative poetry”.
* The USA’s National Nordic Museum is set for a Tolkien round-table discussion on Tolkien and Norse mythology, to accompany a big-screen screening of the first part of the LoTR movie trilogy. At a guess, then, it might be the first of a three-part event? Anyway it’s set for 18th January 2024 in Seattle.
* “Shadow Shrouds and Moonlight Veils: The Forest as an Existential Scene in Tolkien’s Legendarium”, a brisk survey chapter from the Indiana University Press book Beasts of The Forest: denizens of the dark woods (2019). This chapter is now newly free via Academia.edu. Scholar has a special arrangement with Academia.edu, and those not signed up to .edu can get a downloadable PDF simply by searching Google Scholar for “Shadow Shrouds and Moonlight Veils”. In the book, the chapter is paired with “Fiendish Forests of Middle-earth: Tolkien’s Trees as Ominous Adversaries” (not yet online).
* A Signum University online course “J.R.R. Tolkien: A Life in Letters 1”, running as two parts in February, and then “A Life in Letters 2” as another two-parter in March 2024. Also in March at Signum, I see the courses “Tolkien, the Anglo-Saxon Minstrel” on Tolkien’s Anglo-Saxon poetic inspirations, and “Grief, Mourning, and Death in Tolkien’s Legendarium”. Booking now.
* In Finnish in the new issue of the open-access journal Fafnir, “Hautaamistavat J.R.R. Tolkienin fantasiafiktiossa” (‘Burial customs in Tolkien’).
* Also in Finnish, The Lord of the Rings as a four-hour stage epic, set to have its premiere in Finland’s capital in August 2024. With… “original music by the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra”.
* And finally, Progressive Rock Central begins a new series for 2024, “Tolkien and Progressive Rock. Part I. The 1960s and 70s”. Not a critical article, but rather a blog post with a very long set of YouTube embeds.