Tolkien Gleanings #343
* In the 150th Mosaic Ark podcast, Professor Robert J. Dobie is interviewed at length about his book The Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien: Mythopeia and the Recovery of Creation (2024). It’s resulted in a very long podcast, at over two hours. The first 25 minutes or so can easily be skipped, if you’re short of time and just want to get to the core discussion.
* Dates for the 2026 ‘Tolkien Days’ of the German Tolkien Society, 28th to 31st May 2026, 17,000 people are expected to attend the huge annual festival, in person.
* The Tolkien Society has set a date for its new book, Numenor, The Mighty and Frail. It will contain eleven papers arising from their 2023 seminar on the topic. To be released on 25th November 2025.
* A repository record and abstract for an article due in a forthcoming Edinburgh University Press journal, “World War Weird: Blackwood and the First World War”. Blackwood being the well-known English writer of supernatural tales, and a man some 20 years older than Tolkien. See also “Possible Echoes of Blackwood and Dunsany in Tolkien’s Fantasy” in the first issue of Tolkien Studies (2004).
* London’s National Portrait Gallery has just opened its “Writers Revealed” exhibition in Busan (South Korea’s equivalent of Birmingham). The large show… “explores six centuries of portraits of literary giants. Alongside the portraits, the exhibition includes intimate handwritten manuscripts, letters and illustrations, as well as rare, published editions of the writers’ works.” Tolkien is said to be included, alongside Shakespeare, William Blake, Lewis Carroll and many others British writers.
* The French journal Belphegor had a 2024 themed issue asking “Do the Middle Ages sell?”, with many articles on the use of mediaeval imagery in modern marketing and product packaging (e.g. board games). Mostly in French, but easily auto-translated. Freely available online.
* Arv: Yearbook of Nordic Folklore invites articles… “that study changes in the interaction patterns between human beings and beings that are more than human” (i.e. supernatural). Abstract deadline: 15th December 2025. The call states that the journal becomes open-access six months after issue publication, but there’s no sign yet of their back-issues going open-access. Possibly 2026 will be the first such issue?
* A 50 minute talk from the esoteric Fintry Trust on “Tolkien and the Autumnal Equinox”. New and freely available on YouTube.
* And finally, the latest Mediaeval Podcast is a special on Medieval Wolves, interviewing… “a leading expert on wolves in the Middle Ages”. Freely available on YouTube.