Tolkien Gleanings #335
* More marvelous paintings of ents and hobbits by Miriam Ellis, and blog musings on the same.
* In Polish but easily auto-translated, Tolkniety has two new blog posts on Tolkien as a man of the north… but looking towards Rome.
* The latest issue of the Italian journal History of Education & Children’s Literature has an Italian-language article examining the portrayal of Gollum in The Hobbit: A Graphic Novel. The whole issue is under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike, and freely available online.
* Just published, the academic book The Germanic Heroic Tradition in Video Games (2025). It’s unusual in that it’s a single-author book by a tenured philologist, rather than a multi-author book from the Game Studies crowd.
Introduction: The Contemporary Middle Ages.
The Medieval Legacy: From the Renaissance to Globalization.
Half a Century of Evolution: The Shaping of Germanic Heroic Narratives in Mass Popular Culture.
Video Games as Playable Explorations of the Past.
Playing the Hero: The Germanic Archetype in the Digital World.
Into the Virtual Lair: Defeating Evil and Claiming the Prize.
Final Remarks: Germanic Heroism in the Digital Age.
* Tolkien scholar Dr. Lynn Forest-Hill announces… “my newly revised translation of the 14th century The Romance of Sir Bevis of Hampton has just been published by Witan Publishing, and is at last generally available in paperback from Amazon.”
* Fellowship & Fairydust has the moving new article “More Than a Thesis: Researching the Romance of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis”.
* Bud Plant is ‘calling it a day’ and retiring. The Comics Journal has a profile and a long interview with the well-known book dealer. For four decades he has been curating a catalogue of quality one-volume comic collections and fantasy artbooks. The CJ article is freely available online, as are the catalogues.
* The new journal The Incredible Nineteenth Century: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Fairy Tale has produced a third issue. No Tolkien, but it may now be of interest to readers as a potential publication venue. The “Nineteenth Century” is here considered to be the ‘long’ one, from 1789-1919.
* Stand Up for Southport previews the touring ‘Magic of Middle-earth’ exhibition, about to open in the coastal town of Southport (near Liverpool).
* An unusual new item from Denmark, Arda’s Herbarium: A Musical Guide to the Mystical Garden of Middle-earth and Stranger Places, being a collection of short synth-based musical pieces evoking the plants of Middle-earth.
“This fearless project was started in Spring 2022 to meticulously cover all known plants in Tolkien’s lore with a musical interpretation of each species in alphabetical order. The result is a growing versatile collection of archaic and atmospheric music covering somber synth tones and idyllic tunes as well as darker misty electronics, black metal and beyond.”
* And finally, Reddit asks (and of course, answers) “Is this The Full List of Gandalf’s Explicit Magic?” in The Hobbit and LoTR.