Tolkien Gleanings #421
* A new Middle English translation by Tolkien is to be published in a few days. According to the Telegraph ($ paywall), a ten-page heavily-annotated typescript was found at the Bodleian and realised to be a long-lost and unknown translation. It had been lost due to mis-sorting into a box of Sir Orfeo papers. His translation of the homily Sawles Warde will now be published for free on 8th June 2026 in an edition of the journal The Review of English Studies, as “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Soul’s Ward: A Critical Edition of His Unpublished Translation of the Early Middle English Homily Sawles Warde”.
A little research shows that the West Midlands alliterative dialect homily was written c. 1210 (sources differ, some say 1240), most likely in Herefordshire in the far south-west of the West Midlands. The homily was itself a partial translation and popular local adaptation/expansion of part of Hugh of St. Victor’s De Anima. Tom Shippey called it a “little allegory” of the guarding of the purity of the soul with a protective structure. The recent book Tolkien on Chaucer quotes a passing mention of it by Tolkien, found in a 1920s review by Tolkien of an edition of the Hali Meidenhad. Tolkien said there of Sawles Warde that it… “approaches the liveliness and picturesqueness, if not the humanity” of the Hali Meidenhad. A 1984 essay by Anne Eggebroten remarks… “the Sawles Warde author copies [Hugh’s] passages on heaven and hell more or less verbatim, [but] he expands and strengthens the castle metaphor, dramatizing it with a fuller cast of characters.”
* The Tolkien Guide has a review of the new book J.R.R. Tolkien and G.B. Smith, With Wind in our Ears, and also an interview with Giuseppe Pezzini. The recording of the interview is also on YouTube.
* A new special-issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research on Asexuality in Tolkien’s Legendarium. The usually ‘rolling issue’ format is this time forgone and we have a complete-in-one-go edition. As usual, freely available online. Includes amongst others…
– Introduction: Asexuality and Aromanticism in Tolkien’s Works.
– “Motions of Love and Friendship”: Elven (A)sexuality.
– “As Bachelors Very Exceptional”: An Asexual Reading of Frodo Baggins.
* Lawyers, Guns and Money has a new long post on The Art of Cor Blok in relation to his illustrating Tolkien. Freely available and heavily illustrated. The author notes that the artbook A Tolkien Tapestry: Pictures to accompany The Lord of the Rings can still be had on Amazon, and I’d also note that it’s a reasonable £20 in hardback.
* Elfenomeno has a blog post on a newly revised and expanded edition of the Tolkien FAQ book in Spanish. Apparently “fully up to date”, and the full title is J.R.R. Tolkien: Frequently Asked Questions (and a Few Odd Ones). The handsome new hardback book can be had from Legendaria Ediciones.
* And finally, new to me is a series of four French-language France Culture podcasts on Tolkien from the national broadcaster Radio France. From 2018, but still freely available in the UK and without captchas or region-blocking.