Tolkien Gleanings #321
* Cardinal Vices in Middle-earth (2025, forthcoming). A monograph as a chunky book, being also Studies in Linguistics, Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Volume 43 (Peter Lang)…
“a complex comparative analysis of the role of the seven cardinal vices and their opposing virtues as recognised by the Catholic Church” [as found in the vices and virtues of Tolkien’s Middle-earth]
* Red Quills on “What Tolkien Teaches Us About Mapmaking”. One might add “Write the labels more neatly” to the list. Which is what the publisher requested when asking for re-drawn maps for use in The Hobbit.
* Joshse discusses “Poetic Diction by Owen Barfield”. His long commentary after having reading the book…
Poetic Diction by Owen Barfield, was beloved by Tolkien and Lewis. […] C.S. Lewis wrote to Barfield about the influence he had on Tolkien’s philosophy:
“You might like to know that when Tolkien dined with me the other night he said, apropos of something quite different, that your conception of the ancient semantic unity had modified his whole outlook.”
In Poetic Diction, Barfield puts forth the argument that over time language becomes less poetic because, as rational beings, we cannot help but separate all of the different meanings out of rich older words to increase their specificity.
* New from Spain, the PhD “Dishonoured Sun: adaptation, transmission and reception of Sir Gawain in Medieval Europe from 12th to 15th century” (2025). Sadly not yet online, but there is an abstract.
* Also on Gawain and survivals, in a recent paper I noted mention of some recent dialect work… “In a previous study (Markus 2021: 124–135), I investigated the dialectal survival of the specific lexis in the works of the Gawain poet.” This reference can be tracked specifically to Chapter 8.3, “Test Cases for Scholarly Work with EDD Online”, in English Dialect Dictionary Online: A New Departure in English Dialectology (2021, $ paywalled). This ten-page investigation into Gawain is otherwise unheralded by the blurb or contents-list.
* New from Villanova University, the Masters dissertation “”Warm Life, As Now It Coldly Stands”: Figuring Longing, Loss, and Memory Through the Mnemonics of Fantastical Art”. Part three is “”All the land is empty and forgetful”: Memories of Middle-earth”. Partly free online.
* And finally, The Bodleian Library blog has a new post on “The History of the English Faculty Library (1914-2025)” which has some details of the place as the young Tolkien might have known it…
The English Faculty Library was founded in 1914 by an endowment from the English Fund, largely set up by Joseph Wright. It was established in Acland House, 40 Broad Street (part of the land where the Weston Library now stands). […] This was a labyrinthine conglomeration of multiple 17th-century homes which had been renovated and added to over the centuries. Pantin notes that, in the 19th century, two libraries had been added to the property. [… At 1914 the new Library] owned 342 books, many gifted by delegates of the Clarendon Press or Joseph Wright. It had a budget of up to £25 per year. Percy Simpson was appointed as Librarian on a part-time basis. By 1915, the EFL owned 800 books. In 1916, Wright organised an appeal to buy A.S. Napier’s library upon his death for the EFL. This contribution and others meant that by 1917, the EFL owned 4,250 books.