Tolkien Gleanings #448
* New from Spain’s University of Salamanca, the open-access book Echoes of Fantasy and Reality (2026). In English. Contains, among many others, the chapter “Xenia: Homeric Hospitality In Frodo’s Journey”. This compares the ancient concept of xenia (hospitality) as found in The Odyssey, with the hospitality offered to Frodo.
* New from the blog at Benedictine College, “Odysseus, Tolkien, Lewis, and the Piercing Joy of Nostalgia That Brings Tears”. Being the free first chapter “Eucatastrophe in Ithaka: Reading the Odyssey with Plato, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien”, from the author’s book Falling Inward: Humanities in the Age of Technology (2026, revised and expanded second edition).
* The Thoughts on Tolkien blog considers Tolkien and Beowulf studies…
“Tolkien’s scholarly engagement with Beowulf deserves a closer reading and broader engagement from Old English and Beowulf scholars than it has received so far.”
* New on Archive.org, Parma Eldalamberon issue 23 (2024). Tolkien’s own texts, his three descriptions of the Feanorian alphabet, and his five texts on Eldarin pronouns.
Issue 23 appears to be no longer available at its original Bookpatch link, and Amazon UK can only offer it in the form of a single second-hand copy.
* The University of Chicago magazine has “Wonderland”, a long article on the making of their fine Korshak collection of fantastic art. Freely available online. A selection from the collection can be had as a sumptious but affordable hardback, Icons of the Fantastic: Illustrations of Imaginative Literature from The Korshak Collection (2025).
* Matej Cadil has a long article considering “The Curious Case of the Thinking Fox”, a creature seen early in The Lord of the Rings. (Substack, but free).
* The Notion Club Papers blog briefly argues that “Hobbits had disproportionately large hands”. Freely available online.
* And finally, the local press report that Shropshire’s forthcoming Brandywine Festival of role-playing hobbitry has unexpectedly released 1,200 day-pass tickets.