Tolkien Gleanings #394

* The Tolkien, Medieval and Modern blog has a new Tolkien essay, “Faerie and the Edges of Possibility”.

* The Catholic Herald newspaper has the long new article “Sacramental imagination and the recovery of enchantment” via Tolkien. Freely available, at least for now.

* Another conference paper has been added to the new rolling issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research, “Tolkien’s Joyful Sorrow, the “Gift of Tears” of Medieval Mysticism, and John Donne’s Sermon “Jesus Wept”. Provides the primary-world historical/religious context for joyous weeping in The Lord of the Rings.

* Under active construction, HoMe Base, part of the Digital Tolkien Project…

“This site is intended to be the hub of the Digital Tolkien Project’s work on The History of Middle-earth series edited by Christopher Tolkien. We are at an early stage of development, working on The Book of Lost Tales (‘transversely’) and the Music of the Ainur / Ainulindalë (‘longitudinally’) although dipping into other volumes and chapters as research questions arise. Our goal is to provide a foundation for education and scholarship with an initial focus on metadata, search, data models, bibliography, and citation systems.”

* Who knew? The French editions of Barbara Strachey’s Frodo map-book, as L’atlas du Seigneur des Anneaux (2003, 2010), also had illustrations by BD artist Jerome Lereculey.

I also found that Lereculey produced limited-edition prints of the drawings (and perhaps others for LoTR?) circa 2003…

* And finally, on DeviantArt a new painting of Sam in “The Land of Shadow”.