Tolkien Gleanings #260
* A listing for the Tolkien Seminars in Oxford, for Spring 2025…
– Tolkien the Mythographer
– Tolkien’s contribution to the specialisation of dwarves in popular fantasy
– Tolkien’s Forms of Detachment
– Tolkien and old English prosody
– Themes in The Lord of the Rings: A Defence and an Exploration
– Tolkien, Place, and the Past
– Tolkien’s Invented Languages and Their Use in Adaptations
* FanHistory Project Zoom Sessions, with the holders and curators of science-fiction fandom university collections. This is an online webinar series, set to run from January through April 2025.
* Tolkien fan-fiction hub the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild is having a one-day 20th anniversary event on either 17th or 19th July 2025 (the Web page seems somewhat befuddled about 2024 vs 2025, and 17th vs 19th). The submission deadline is 15th January 2025, and the call is open to scholars as well as fan-fiction writers.
* A few years back the Chinese communist authorities took a sudden and unexpected interest in science-fiction and fantasy fans, writers and communities. What seemed relatively benign at the time now looks different. A new journal paper reveals the “unexpected intensification” of censorship which followed, and how “government censorship caused once-thriving fan-fiction communities to break apart”.
* Signum University SoCal Moot, 15th March 2025 is to be themed around Samwise’s words “‘The Same Tale Still’: The Intersection of Personal Experience With History and Storytelling”. Presentations can be delivered in-person or online. Deadline: 15th February 2025.
* Almost Archaeology blog is on the track of “Tolkien’s archaeological trail”. Meaning, the real ancient places he is known to have visited. The well-illustrated post relates to the new ARTE feature-length TV documentary on Tolkien’s places.
* Recently published, the £100+ academic book Medieval Spaces in Comics: Affect and Ideology (2024). The blurb makes no mention of the titles discussed, but by search one can discover that the author doesn’t appear to have drawn on any large collection of comics on the theme. The titles discussed being: Beowulf: Dragon Slayer (DC, 1975); Northlanders (Vertigo, 2016); Angela: Asguard’s Assassin (Marvel, 2015); Black Road (Image, 2016); and an issue of Monstress (Image, 2018). Also draws, a number of times, on a 2012 indie equivalent of a Classic Illustrated-type compendium, titled The Graphic Canon. Tolkien is not in the Index. Nor is Robert E. Howard or his much adapted character Conan. Though, admittedly, neither LoTR or Conan is strictly ‘medieval’ as such.
* And finally, a pleasing Shire still life, newly painted in delicate watercolour for the German Tolkien Society and now posted online.