Tolkien Gleanings #255

* A review of the recent Arte TV documentary on Tolkien’s places, in Italian. An auto-translation of the review makes the 90-minute film sound rather fair and thoughtful. The review also brings news that the film can be viewed free of charge until early March 2025. There are English subtitles, and I found no region-blocking in place.

* A new open-access article in Classical Receptions Journal, “The Meaning of Mr. Tumnus: classical epic and the making of modern fantasy”. Identifies the use of the faun as part of a masterly “layering of pasts” technique which was developed and used by both Tolkien and Lewis.

* Now online, the schedule for the conference A Flame Imperishable: The Christian Legacy of J.R.R. Tolkien.

* A bare listing for a talk in Oxford on 7th February 2025 at the Divinity School, on “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Forms of Detachment”.

* A new repository record for a forthcoming chapter in a festschrift book titled Florilegium Nordmannicum, on “La presence de la Volundarkviða dans l’oeuvre de J.R.R. Tolkien”. The record has the book as “2024”, but evidence elsewhere suggest it is delayed from 2023 and is now set to appear in 2025. The book’s Tolkien chapter is in French, and the English abstract reveals it examines the…

“omnipresence of the ancient and medieval Germanic world [in Tolkien, and specifically how he] “borrowed elements from the Völundr/Wéland smithy early on to feed his legendarium. Some traces have been erased after numerous rewrites, and others persist, reshaped, or concealed.”

* The European Conservative reviews the recent book Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century (2023). Not to be confused with the similarly-titled book Tolkien in the 21st Century (2022).

* And finally, in The Spectator Christmas special, Matthew Parris on “My mission to save the elm” (probable $ paywall). Elm being the elm trees, towering giants which the English landscape began to lose to the devastating Dutch Elm Disease in the last few years of Tolkien’s life.