Tolkien Gleanings #376
* The Oxford Tolkien Network’s 2026 seminar talks are underway. On 10th February 2026 there will be a talk on “Tolkien’s ‘Luxuriant Animism’: Unseen Beings and the Animacy of Arda”.
* From the Philippines, “Hobbits, Ents, and Pope Francis’ ‘Laudato Si’: Environmental Echoes and Religious Resonances from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings” (2025) ($ paywall). See also the earlier article “Tolkien, Middle-earth and ‘Laudato Si'”, which is open-access.
* A newly-found open-access journal, in French. Feeries: Etudes sur le conte merveilleux, XVIIe-XIXe siecle. “Feeries is dedicated to tales of the marvelous, mainly in French, from the 17th to the 19th century”. The journal currently runs from 2004-2025, and includes many book reviews. Publication in HTML format means the articles and reviews are easily auto-translated.
* At the University of Malta, “Tolkien’s Elvish Mirror: Language, Myth, and Europe’s Search for Self”, set for 24th-25th April 2026. Intended as… “a focused discussion among scholars and experts on the role of J.R.R. Tolkien’s approach to language in the cohesion of European identity.” Thomas Honegger will give the keynote talk.
* The Wall Street Journal reviews the new book The War for Middle-earth ($ paywall).
* The Tolkneity blog reviews the book Tolkien’s Faith, in Polish.
* Chesterton and Friends blog notes the dogged continuation of an effort to have the church recognise Tolkien as a modern saint.
* Today in the U.S. there was a “Documentary Sneak Peek and Q&A” event for The Forge of Friendship: J.R.R. Tolkien & C.S. Lewis…
“Through almost ten years of production, built on interviews with over forty of the top Lewis and Tolkien experts, with beautifully shot reenactment scenes in the historic locations of Oxford and Europe, The Forge of Friendship promises to capture the world’s attention.”
* And finally, an article on “Tolkien and The Desk That Built Middle-earth“…
“It tells us something uncomfortably unfashionable about how creativity actually happens: slowly, physically, somewhere specific. Brown furniture, long written off as dull, irrelevant and unwanted, turns out to have been quietly winning all along. It doesn’t chase relevance. It doesn’t need reinvention. It waits.”