Tolkien Gleanings #388
* Who knew? There’s a Centre for Fantasy Literature Studies at the National Academy of Sciences in the Ukraine. The Centre was established in 2015, and they recently had a two-day online conference in January 2026 themed around “Music, Dance and Theatre in Fantasy Worlds”. Tolkien presentations included…
– “As Above, So Below: As Music, So Magic (in Tolkien’s Legendarium)”.
– “To Music of a Pipe Unseen: Music as Metaliterary Device in The Lord of the Rings”.
– “Lyrical Lauding in The Lord of the Rings: Adapting Tolkien’s Songs”.
– “Luthien’s Dance as Love Embodied”.
A book of free abstracts is available in English.
* The University Press of Mississippi is planning the academic chapter-book titled Returning to the Shelf: Memory, Reading, and the Afterlives of Childhood Books, on the topic of… “the enduring presence of childhood reading in adult life”. Either through “memories of early reading” and/or adult re-reading. Set for January 2029, with a submission of interest / abstract deadline of 31st March 2026.
* DoxaMoot: Orthodox Christian Tolkien Conference is set for 4th-6th September 2026, in North Carolina. Set to include a lecture on… “the theological and symbolic significance of Tolkien’s monsters”.
* New at the latest rolling edition of the Journal of Tolkien Research, book reviews of Numenor, The Mighty and Frail (2025) and Queer Approaches to Tolkien (2025).
* Sons of Wayland goes “Riding Through Tolkien Country” on a motorcycle. Though I have to say that we have no evidence that Tolkien visited Lydney Park in Gloucestershire. He wrote a paper related to the archaeology found there, but…
“there is no evidence that he participated in the dig at Lydney Park, stayed there as a guest of the Wheelers on a number of occasions, or even visited Lydney” (Hammond & Scull, Reader’s Guide, 2007 edition)
Which is not to say that he might not have stopped off to take in the site, perhaps while travelling to the south-west or Wales on holiday, at some later time. Anyway there’s a pleasing poster of the motorcycle route taken through Tolkien-like landscapes, and the route looks like a very fine sampling of the countryside to the west and south of Birmingham.
* MatejCadil has a new set of story-posters for The Hobbit, freely available on DeviantArt.
* And finally, here in the UK the Royal Mail has revealed their set of The Lord of the Rings postage-stamps. Turns out the set is just film-stills and marks the anniversary of the movie trilogy. Rather than marking the 100th anniversary of Tolkien beginning his many translations (Beowulf and Pearl in 1926, others later).
