Tolkien Gleanings #313
* The recent partial graphic-novel The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien has sold film-rights for a big screen adaptation…
Independent studio Burns & Co. secured the rights to produce an animated feature-film depicting the longtime friendship of classic Christian authors C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.
Animation magazine reveals a little more. While NarniaWeb cautions against too much rejoicing, noting the many announced-but-failed attempts at bringing a Tolkien/Lewis biopic to the screen.
* In a new book The Wheel of Time and Philosophy (2025), there is a chapter on “Tolkien’s Influence and the World of The Wheel of Time”.
* Yet another review of Tolkien and the Classical World. Put all the reviews together and they’d make their own chunky book, I should think. Mythprint Book Reviews 2025 also has a new review of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Utopianism and the Classics, along with a review of Sub-Creating Arda: World-building in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Work.
* A 40-minute recording from an Italian conference in September 2024 and now newly on YouTube, of a discussion on Tolkien e Lovecraft (‘Tolkien and Lovecraft: origins of the modern fantastic’).
* New from Norway, “Imaginary Realms in Fantasy writing: Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland and The Lord of the Rings” (2025). In English and freely available for download. Described as a final dissertation, but it is very short. Though it’s for a Teacher Education course, so perhaps they’re not expected to write a full 12,000 word dissertation. Explores how landscapes…
are narrated through the perspectives of their characters, who are defined as travelers [whose explorations are crucial to] the reader’s understanding of the worlds they traverse. Their journeys offer deeper insights into the nature of fantastical world-building. Additionally, this article provides content through the lens of Certeau’s philosophy on Spatial Stories, as well as Greimas and Courtes’ terminology of euphoria versus dysphoria.
* In the new issue of the Chesterton Review (Spring/Summer 2025), what appears to be a review of a book apparently titled The Messiah Comes to Middle-Earth: Images of Christ’s Threefold Office in The Lord of the Rings. I didn’t go further, since I was blocked by a captcha roadblock.
* The Mythprint newsletter Vol. 60, No. 2 (No. 405, Summer 2023) is now available for open download, after a two-year members-only embargo.
* Fellowship of Fans offers an account of “J.R.R. Tolkien: Professor of Anglo-Saxon”. Freely available online.
* From Gloucestershire, “An ‘unimaginably rare’ copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 The Hobbit has been discovered tucked deep into an old bookcase…
The book had come from the family library of Hubert Priestley, a famous botanist in the 1930s, and brother to Antarctic explorer and geologist Sir Raymond Edward Priestley. Priestley had strong connections to the University of Oxford where Tolkien was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. […] it’s likely that the homeowner knew Tolkien personally.
Up for online auction by a Bristol auctioneer on 6th August 2025. Yours for a mere 10th of a Bitcoin, by the looks of it.
* And finally… also from Gloucestershire, at the Gloucester History Festival there will be a public talk on “Tolkien’s Gloucestershire: The Real Middle-earth”. Set for 18th September 2025.