Tolkien Gleanings #274
* Free on YouTube, the complete playlist for videos from Tolkien Society 2024 Hybrid Seminar: on ‘Tolkien as Heritage’. Includes, among others, “Libraries and Middle-earth: fanworks, archives, and communities as heritage”. Translating the Serbian titles reveals, among others, “Tolkien’s eco-philosophy as the cultural heritage of the modern age”.
* Forthcoming in French in mid-March 2025, the short book Le Dieu de Tolkien (‘Tolkien’s god’). The author is curator of the tapestry exhibition ‘Aubusson weaves Tolkien’ and has contributed to The Tolkien Society’s Mallorn. In translation, part of the summary…
Tolkien wrote a work in which the Christian message appears as “an invisible lamp”. This is what this work proposes to study, which also calls on the knowledge that we have on the life of Tolkien.
* A new open-access journal. Imagining the Impossible: International Journal for the Fantastic in Contemporary Media hails from Denmark, and is published in English under a full Creative Commons Attribution licence. No Tolkien as yet, but the latest and third issue has a review of The Dragon in the West: from ancient myth to modern legend (2021).
* A new review of the book In The House of Tom Bombadil (2021)…
“Tom Bombadil saved Frodo twice — first from a tree, and the second time from a tomb — an interesting typology and parallel to Christ, who was crucified on a tree (wood) and rose again from the tomb.”
* In Seattle, the stage show “Lewis and Tolkien” at the Taproot Theatre, now extended through to 8th March 2025 due to popular demand.
* The Oxford Mail local newspaper reports that hands-on work is now underway to repair and restore the Eagle and Child pub, a key haunt of Lewis and Tolkien. The hoardings are up, and the workmen are in. The newspaper has pictures.
* Posted online circa 2020 but new to me, a set of Peter Klucik’s illustrations for an unpublished version of The Hobbit (1990). Not jarring and quite charming in a way, sort of vintage ‘Tenniel meets Peake’ via mediaeval paintings. Possibly quite useful to accompany a reading-aloud of the book with youngsters in middle-childhood, I’d imagine, since the pictures would be unlike anything they had ever seen and yet would be instantly understandable.
* Also new to me, from 2023/24, “The Voices of Ents in Tolkien” and “Harps in Tolkien: What Would They Sound Like?”.
* A black metal “monumental symphony” of the Second Age of Middle-earth is due as an album in spring 2025, announced in the press-release “Anfauglir ink deal with Debemur Morti Productions”. The band Anfauglir’s second album will apparently offer…
“a cinematic journey spanning over 3,000 years of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Second Age, following the downfall of the island of Numenor [across] four epic tracks”
* And finally, I found a picture of the Y.M.C.A. Writing Room hut at Whittington (‘Lichfield’) Barracks. Undated but almost certainly a temporary hut built for the First World War (a Japanese flag would not have been hung for the Second World War). Which could mean that this room would have been where Tolkien wrote some of his letters and perhaps even (if writing other than letters was allowed) poems, while doing his initial Army training under canvas tents on Whittington Heath. I’ve given the picture a new subtle colorising.
Update: Postcard World confirms the First World War date, listing the same card but postally used in 1915. “An interesting old card features the concert and writing room at the Y.M.C.A. hut at Lichfield barracks. The card was postally used and is in a very good condition. 1915.” This is the same year Tolkien was at Whittington (August to November 1915). There was as officer’s Y.M.C.A. hut at Brocton, but that was later and at a different camp. It seems unlikely that there would have been two separate such huts at a basic camp such as Whittington, one for officers and one for men.