Tolkien Gleanings #437

* The latest Entmoot Podcast is a long interview with the editors of the recent ‘Asexuality’ special issue of the open-access Journal of Tolkien Research.

* A Tolkien-focused report from the Oxford English Graduate Conference 2026. Substack, but free.

* Personal Canon Formation on “Tolkien and the Myth of Decline”. Substack, but free.

* The Middle Ages in the Modern World conference calls for papers, for 22nd-24th June 2027 in Oxford. Note especially the suggestion for “Oxford and medievalism” as a possible theme. Deadline: 30th September 2026.

* Law & Liberty magazine considers “The Seeing Stones of Modern Warfare” in relation to Tolkien. Freely available online.

* The cover is now available for the forthcoming Tolkien comic biography I mentioned previously on Gleanings. The format is a ‘BD’ — a eurocomics format that usually takes the form of a relatively short high-quality graphic novel, printed oversized on good paper and in hardback, and usually with a self-contained story. The book is due in mid August 2026, in French from Futuropolis. There are also now a few more details about the approach taken…

“Alternating intimate biographical moments from his life and scenes from his novels, the authors show us how these personal events are at the source of the mythology that Tolkien created.”

* An Interactive Timeline of Middle-earth, newly online and free at Elfenomeno.

* I’m pleased to learn of Pavane: a Critical Companion (2024), via an excellent long review on the BSFA website. Freely available online.

“Pavane is a particularly British work, a book made up of a cycle of stories, and one imbued by religion, sense of place, and the mythical past of the English countryside. [In an alternative history where Catholic Spain triumphed over England, there is still] faery magic, a component of a specific form of British myth and fiction dating back to before Shakespeare, [which] features in [the sections] “The Signaller” and “Lady Margaret”. Roberts mines the English countryside, and often specifically Dorset, to explore a hidden faery world, creating an emotional resonance for the reader with the landscape itself.”

This classic fix-up novel of 1968 has had some terrible covers over the years, but the U.S. Doubleday first-edition hardback was quite pleasing. The edition’s blurb cannily managed to intrigue readers of both Lovecraft and Tolkien, while the art gave a very subtle nod towards the Sphinx and the Machine of The Time Machine…

* And finally, this week the Throwback Review reviews the book Middle-earth Role Playing (1984), and notes the large hinterland of expansion books it spawned in the 1980s. There was a second edition of the main gamebook, and…

“[the publisher ICE also] produced a huge body of regional sourcebooks, adventures, and campaign material, and that may be what many people remember most fondly. Even players who did not love every corner of the [main book of] rules often loved the books. MERP invited you to roam far beyond the most familiar corners of Tolkien’s fiction, turning Middle-earth into a place you could explore in layers. That sense of scope was one of the game’s great accomplishments. It helped teach a lot of players that a roleplaying setting could feel like a scholarly hobby in itself, something to read, collect, and immerse yourself in even when you were not actively playing.”

On Archive.org, one can find the Iron Crown Enterprises Consumer Catalog Spring ’87. This notes a Lords of Middle-earth Vol 1., the first in three part series, with the first profiling all “the great ones” of Middle-earth and beyond. The second book in this series focused on the Men and Mannish races, and the Third on Dwarves, Orcs, Trolls, Elves and Hobbits.

Also of interest as reference/inspiration for fan-fiction writers, though it seems that getting hold of a set in paper would cost a small fortune today.

Tolkien Gleanings #436

* A new rolling issue of the open-access Journal of Tolkien Research is underway, Volume 24, Issue 2. This currently includes, among others, a lead article on “Tolkien, Modernism, and Mass Art”, a review of Arda Notebooks: The Best of I Quaderni di Arda (2026), and the conference paper “”Then Daddy began a story”: Storytelling in Tolkien’s home and our own”.

* From Finland, the new Masters dissertation, “Miehia, jotka rakastavat miehia: Miesten valinen emotionaalinen laheisyys Taru sormusten herrasta” (2026) (‘Men Who Love Men: Emotional Intimacy Between Men in The Lord of the Rings’). Freely available online.

* The new book Lunar Gothic: The Influence of the Moon on the Gothic Imagination (2025) has the 16-page survey chapter “Illuminating the Darkness: Lunar Representation in Children’s Literature”.

* The latest edition of the journal Literary Imagination has the article “Leavis, Lewis, Eliot, and the Prospect of Disciplinary Renewal” ($ paywall), which surveys the battle over Eng. Lit. between C.S. Lewis and the Leavis-ites. The free introduction appears to serve as a fairly good abstract for the paywalled article.

* More Tolkien letters are up for auction at Sotheby’s. Tolkien’s 1960s correspondence with Eileen Elgar, a resident of Tolkien’s favourite Miramar Hotel in Bournemouth. An August 1966 letter to her remarks that Tolkien was set to embark on a Mediterranean cruise that would travel as far east as Smyrna.

Turkish Smyrna in 1966 held little of the old Greek magic and Ionian free-thought, since in 1922 the invading Turks had totally burned the Greek and Armenian quarters of the city along with most of their inhabitants. Tolkien’s fellow passengers likely went directly from the modern Turkish port-city, on the day-trip to ancient Ephesus which was an hour to the south. That would have been the attraction, not the city. By 1966 the Austrian excavations there were substantial and allowed tourists to walk down the grand marble Arcadian Way and sit in the vast ancient drama theatre which once held 25,000 spectators. But it was the Christian associations that would have been the draw for many.

This theatre was later a gladiator arena, and at that time also a key site for the apostle Paul and his followers. Ancient Ephesus also has a Marian association, in that Mary would appear to have lived there after the resurrection of Jesus (John 19:26–27: “the disciple [John] took her [Mary, mother of Jesus] to his own home”). Possibly the tourists would also have visited a reputed ‘House of Mary’, conveniently located in the hills just a little south of ancient Ephesus, a house which had been ‘discovered’ via a 19th century nun’s religious visions.

Did Tolkien see the place? Perhaps. Edith was with him on the cruise, but had fallen and badly injured herself on the first day of the cruise. They thus did “little sightseeing” in Tolkien’s own words. She was however well enough to be carried ashore at the port, but if Tolkien then left her to take the coach to visit ancient Ephesus and the reputed ‘home of Mary’ must remain a mystery. It would be a pity if he hadn’t done so before returning home, after sailing so many thousands of miles.

Mallorn 22 also notes in passing… “Parallels between the ‘Seven Sleepers’ of Ephesus and the Seven Fathers of the Dwarves”. The legend, said to have been very popular during the mediaeval period, is also somewhat similar to that of the ‘sleeping King Arthur and his knights’ belief in Britain. The legend in brief…

The Roman Emperor Decius was engaged in vicious personal persecution of Christians, visiting his provinces in person to see that it was done. At Ephesus he had seven pious lads brought before him, but they courageously and eloquently testified for Christ before the Emperor. Due to their courage they were given some time to repent, which they rather sensibly used to flee together to a wilderness cave. Soldiers eventually found the cave, but miraculously saw no-one there and then tightly sealed the cave entrance with rocks. Two hundred and eight years later the sleeping lads awoke in the cave, thinking they had only slept the night. The rock wall was now easy to push away, and they went back to the city. There the lads — having aged not a day — were amazed to find crosses above the gates and that the people had become Christians.

* And finally, Tolkien Oddments has “More on Madlener”. You’ll recall that Josef Madlener’s painting “Der Berggiest” was once said to be the inspiration for the appearance of Gandalf. In the new article, the complete postcard set is considered. My own thoughts on Madlener’s shepherd appeared in August 2025 in Gleanings #329, concluding that the outfit was the traditional one for shepherds from the high parts of Provencal (SE France, neighbouring the Swiss Alps). The traditional outfit worn by the Swiss shepherds, which Tolkien might have noticed in the Swiss Alps in 1911, was very different. Thus he would not have seen a real-life ‘Madlener outfit’ on his Swiss walking trip.

Tolkien Gleanings #435

* The latest edition of the French open-access journal Babel: Litteratures Plurielles has a review of the book Tolkien et la religion. Comme une lampe invisible (2024, Sorbonne University Press). A second edition, updated and expanded, of the 2016 first edition. The long review is in French, but sadly not easily auto-translated because the site blocks access with captchas. Thankfully Archive.org has no time for such blocking and happily archives it, from which one can then get an English translation done via Microsoft…

The review mistakenly places Birmingham in the “North” of England, but it has always been in the Midlands.

* New on YouTube from the University of Oxford, “A New-found Tolkien Translation”. Being their short official video on the newly-found and now published “Soul’s Ward”.

* The Spanish Tolkien Society has a new blog post which assembles an annotated links playlist, for the free YouTube podcast that reads and analyzes the letters of Tolkien in Spanish. This podcast has currently reached letter 181.

* The latest edition of the paywall book-journal Studies in Medievalism XXXV (2026) is a special issue with… “essays exploring the intersections of politics and theory through medievalism in film, literature, gaming, and political movements.” No Tolkien, but it may interest some.

* Fandom Pulse looks like it’s wrapping up its lengthy historical survey-series offering a “retrospective on Tolkien’s rise to superstardom”, seemingly with added attention to the various political lenses through which people have viewed his works over time. They now have a links-set for all 12 parts. (Substack and $ paywalled).

* Talking of the history of Tolkien fandom, Kalimac’s Corner was there, back in the day. This week he has a blog post recalling an aspect of “Tolkien in the old days”…

One feature of the early Tolkien fandom days of the 1960s whose import is hard to recapture today is the little cries of bliss that Tolkien fans would emit whenever a major publication dared to acknowledge that Tolkien existed, and maybe was important, by publishing an article about him.

And yet, as his example shows, the journalists and editors concerned were almost always utterly cynical about such things.

* The new book Fairies: A History has been published, to good reviews. It’s billed as a more wide-ranging survey than the author’s previous British Isles-focused book on the topic, Twilight of the Godlings: The Shadowy Beginnings of Britain’s Supernatural Beings (2023). The author, an expert on both British and Baltic folklore, describes his new book as…

the most wide-ranging history of fairy belief attempted in modern times […] it is a history of fairies, written by a historian and seeking to apply historical methods to humanity’s centuries-long relationship with the fairy realm. [… It was written] in a post-religious, postmodern Europe [in which] the old prejudice against fairies as a serious object of study is breaking down. For the first time, it is possible to give fairies a proper history — and to share that history with a genuinely curious and open-minded reading public. [… as well as the British Isles, the new book] makes frequent excursions to Iceland, Scandinavia, and Central and Eastern Europe, in addition to the Americas and Australasia”.

Interviews about the new book can be found on the podcasts What Magic Is This? and I Might Believe in Faeries.

* And finally, talking of delightful and unexpected apparitions… a charity shop (U.S.: ‘thrift shop’) in Tolkien’s home city of Birmingham was given a “fairly ordinary” box of donated second-hand books. From which emerged… a £38k first edition of The Hobbit. Nice!

Tolkien Gleanings #434

* Inkings Quarterly newsletter brings news that The Inklings Project is offering teaching fellowships for classroom teachers of U.S. school grades 6–12 (translates as ages 11 to 18). Deadline: 1st August 2026.

* The Inklings Quarterly also notes the 2026 “Undiscovered C.S. Lewis Conference” at George Fox University in Sepember 2026. On pursuing the speaker list, I note a keynote talk from John Garth on “The Undiscovered J.R.R. Tolkien”.

* New to me, the open-access journal Fandom | Cultures | Research, from the University of Marburg in Germany. Four issues so far, with some German but mostly English items. No Tolkien fandom items as yet. But the latest issue has a review of the book The Politics of Fantasy: Magic, Children‘s Literature, and Fandom in Putin’s Russia, while earlier issues have a couple of conference reports on the topic of doing archival / historical research on fandoms. (The journal and its fellow Marburg journals were not on JURN, but I’ve now indexed them).

* Talking of archival materials… new on Archive.org is a scan of Computer Games magazine for January 2003. Which was a Lord of the Rings special-issue.

Has an informed article surveying the history of relevant fantasy RPG videogames, with a timeline. Plus a discussion across two articles on Tolkien’s influence on videogames to 2003. The second of these is from Daniel Greenberg, then “the Creative Director for the Tolkien Franchise”…

“Middle-earth has plenty of magic. Not the promiscuous magic-inflation of Dungeons & Dragons, but magic intertwines everything in Middle-earth [and it also offers] plenty of overt spells, cast not just by Wizards, but by Dwarves, Elves, Men, Wraiths, Dark Lords, etc. (Everyone but Hobbits). However, in order to tell a story about the little guy (literally) making a difference, the powerful magicians must be offstage most of the time. Some confuse this with a lack of magic in Middle-earth. Middle-earth also has lots of treasure hunts. The Hobbit is all about a treasure hunt. To a dungeon-like fortress. To kill a dragon. The Lord of the Rings is a treasure hunt, too, only in reverse. [And with plenty of RPG-like ‘valuable loot use’ as well]”.

* The annual conference of Germany’s Society for Fantasy Research will discuss the theme of ‘Violence and Fantasy’. Set to be held at the University of Cologne, 17th-19th September 2026.

* And finally… RAMzine reports that the band Hubris take on J.R.R. Tolkien for their White Shores album, and that the band will be touring the UK in October 2026…

“Swiss post-rock band Hubris are heading into Middle-earth. The instrumental quartet from Fribourg have built four albums on Greek mythology, but composer and founder Jonathan Hohl has turned to the source he keeps coming back to. […] More than a fantasy tribute, [their new studio album] White Shores sits with J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing on mortality and immortality.”

The album is not yet released, but the eight-minute lead track is free online, on Bandcamp.

Tolkien Gleanings #433

* The latest edition of the German open-access journal Das Mittelalter: Perspektiven Mediavistischer Forschung (‘The Middle Ages: Perspectives In Mediaevalist Research’) is a special issue on ‘Medieval Patterns in Modern Fantasy’. Includes, among others (titles approximately translated)…

   — The neo-medieval grammar of fantasy worlds.
   — Color semantics and color symbolism in the Middle Ages.
   — Praise the art (how videogame players engage with religious art in games)
   — Runes on screen in The Last Kingdom and The Green Knight.
   — Audiovisual aesthetics of the medieval.
   — Druid? Magician? Teacher? Bard? On the reception of Merlin in analog games.
   — Elves and Fairies (short review by Thomas Honegger of Elfen und Feen, 2024).

* In the latest edition of the paywall journal Marvels & Tales, partially-free reviews of (among many others)…

   — ‘The Magical Forest’ exhibition at the Estonian Children’s Literature Centre.
   — The Exeter Companion to Fairies, Nereids, Trolls, and Other Social Supernatural Beings: European Traditions.
   — Giants and Dwarfs in European Art and Culture, ca. 1350–1750.

* Walking Tree Press have now published Tolkien: History Meets Legend (2026). The book aims to show some of the ways in which… “Tolkien excavated the mother lode of his own [biographical] history to create legends.”

* The Notion Club Papers argues that “The Sea Bell” is not autobiographical for J.R.R. Tolkien; but for Frodo. And that Tolkien’s “The Death of St Brendan” is autobiographical for himself.

* From the UK, the PhD thesis The Tale We’ve Fallen Into: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and the post-Christian quest for meaning (2026). Explores the LoTR’s reception among a sample of twenty contemporary non-religious readers. Suggest that a truly enchanting fantasy can perform a ‘secondary’ religious function for some readers. Freely available online.

* New Renaissance Mindset reviews Tolkien’s translations of Pearl, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Sir Orfeo.

* The University Bookman reviews the book The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination (2025).

* Dimitra Fimi’s blog reveals a new book in the making. It will be..

“a new, deep and meticulous exploration of The Lord of the Rings, that will allow me to share fresh thoughts and ideas on this great book since my big monograph on Tolkien nearly 20 years ago. ‘The Slow LotR Re-read’ you’ve been following [on the blog] was not just an impromptu idea: it is the scaffolding of a second book, on Tolkien.”

Also of note…

“I have officially opened my entire historical [SubStack, usually part-paywalled] archive to everyone [for the summer, until 7th September]”

* And finally… new at the Sothebys auction house, a Lord of the Rings, 1961 edition with a taped-in note on the creation of the dwarves. Signed in biro. Tolkien liked biro pens as soon as they first appeared for the public (September 1946, ninepence each at Woolworths).

Tolkien Gleanings #432

* The Spanish Tolkien Society has launched the Aelfwine Essay Award 2026. Now in its 22nd year, the competition offers substantial cash prizes for the winners. Deadline: 9th August 2026. So far as I can tell, English is acceptable and those writing directly in English do not need to provide a translation. Those writing in languages other than Spanish (or Catalan, Basque, or Galician) or English must also provide a good translation of their essay into either English or Spanish.

* Elfenomeno has a new English text interview with Quenya specialist Helge K. Fauskanger…

“Through ‘Ardalambion’, his Quenya course, and now ‘Speak Elf Yourself’, he has helped make a complex and often fragmentary field accessible without losing sight of its philological demands. In this interview, we speak with him about Tolkien, Elvish, linguistic invention and the strange vitality of languages that were never quite meant to be ‘finished’.”

* John Garth looks at the Welsh claims for Crickhallow as a primary-world inspiration for Tolkien ($ Substack, article mostly paywalled). That Tolkien is talking only about the placename seems obvious in the letter, but I assume Garth’s paywalled article also evaluates the various local claims for the place and its surroundings (as the supposed inspiration for Buckland, Bucklebury, the Brandywine Bridge or even Erebor).

* A forthcoming paper I’d missed noting here, set to be presented at the forthcoming Leeds International Mediaeval Congress in July 2026. Kristine Larsen’s “Medieval Timekeeping in Middle-earth and Valinor”. I’d assume it’ll be in the Journal of Tolkien Research in due course.

* In the early 1960s the Finnish Moomintrolls artist Tove Jansson spent nearly two years working on illustration for The Hobbit. Twelve full-page black-and-white drawings, ten half-page illustrations, plus smaller chapter decorations. The result was the Finnish language edition in 1962. Now English readers will be able to enjoy these same illustrations, in a new English edition titled The Hobbit: Illustrated by Tove Jansson. The book is set for publication in September 2026.

* And finally, new on Archive.org is a scan of Pipes And Tobacco Magazine for Winter 2001, with a long article surveying instances of leaf-growing, pipe smoking and related small pyrotechnics (e.g. Sting is edged with “a blue flame”) in Middle-earth. It doesn’t discuss Tolkien’s own primary-world preferences in pipe brands and tobacco blends.

Tolkien Gleanings #431

* An unusual late Tolkien item is ‘on the block’ at Forum Auctions, as Lot 162. Teenager David Best had translated The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and other poems from The Lord of the Rings into English runes, in four school notebooks with illustrations. Then… “Best sent off these notebooks to Tolkien who wrote back thanking him for his efforts and supplied corrections.” The resulting bundle of notebooks and letters is now up for auction.

* New Renaissance Mindset reviews Roverandom, and Mr. Bliss and Farmer Giles of Ham in the latest book editions. All freely available online.

* In Italian on YouTube, Paolo Nardi considers Tolkien’s dragons, in relation to their distinctive effects on time and memory. Note that YouTube can auto-dub into English, these days.

* Luminous Libro podcast interviews C.S. Lewis expert Dr. Louis Markos on “Christology in Fantasy”.

* The C.S. Lewis Institute usefully outlines an important recent talk posted on YouTube under the easily-overlooked title of Dawn Chorus.

* Another new kind-of-a-biography of Tolkien is due soon. The King Under the Mountain: In Search of J.R.R. Tolkien is due in mid September 2026 from Constable, as a 320-page hardback and Kindle e-book. The paperback follows in summer 2027. The book is billed as…

“part biography, part critical study and part a fan’s notes […] D.J. Taylor unpicks the myths that Tolkien created around himself, as well as the social, political and cultural contexts that informed his work”

* New on Archive.org, a microfilm scan of the Library of Congress Bulletin for May 1986, which notes that the then-editor of the OED had studied Middle English under Tolkien.

* Artist Matej Cadil has a new illustrated post, “The Druedain: Who Are Tolkien’s Wild Men and What Forgotten Past Do They Reflect?” He also shows his fine 2022 illustration of “The Forbidden Pool” in Ithilien. ($ Substack, but with a large chunk of the article for free).

* Jake Weidmann celebrates pipe-smoking with his new fine-art print of Tolkien and Lewis. Pre-ordering now.

* And finally, two literary immortals battle it out in “J.R.R. Tolkien vs H.P. Lovecraft”, fully animated as if a videogame.

Tolkien Gleanings #430

* Author Brandon Sanderson has posted his recent Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature talk online, as text. The video recording appeared on YouTube a few days ago.

* A new Masters dissertation from Canada, “Formative Fairy Stories: Edmund Spenser’s and J.R.R. Tolkien’s construction of British national identity through fantastic narratives” (2026). Freely available online.

* From Eastern Europe, the new dissertation “Poetic Devices in Selected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien: Translation and Analysis” (2026). Being an attempt to translate into Czech. Freely available online.

“The thesis does not aim to provide a technically perfect translation. It seeks to present a text that preserves the type of verse and rhyme used in the original, while at the same time being as close as possible to the original text in terms of its mood, as well as being comprehensible to a 21st century reader at the same time.”

* Artist Miriam Ellis this week considers new questions that arise from the new Tolkien letter relating to ents on the far northern border of the Shire.

* Tolkien’s enduring legacy is now causing “overtourism” in the Cotswolds. As explained in a new conference paper from Ireland, “(Over) Tourism and Tolkien’s Doors of Durin: Challenges And Opportunities for St Edward’s Local Parish Church”. Freely available online.

“This paper considers the impacts of overtourism on the local parish church in the English Cotswolds that allegedly inspired Tolkien’s Doors of Durin. [This Grade 1 listed church, c. 13th-15th century, is now] a destination for approximately 200,000 visitors a year (the equivalent of ten coaches every day).”

Image: My restored and colourised postcard of the door and trees. Possibly from the late 1920s, I’d say, judging by the lettering style and the typography on the back. So far as I can tell, there’s no hard evidence Tolkien ever saw them.

* And finally, Tolkien’s imagination has inspired a mighty suggestion for celebrating America’s 250th year. The Lewis And Clark American Argonath Project, two 250 foot tall monuments.

Tolkien Gleanings #429

* Newly online, the German Inklings Yearbook, as Inklings Jahrbuch fur Literatur und Athetik 42 (2026). This has the proceedings of the ‘Fantasy for Children / Children in Fantasy Symposium’ of 2024, plus book reviews. Freely available online and under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. Includes the paper “Fairy Lands Forlorn: (Re-)Enchantment in Fantastic Children’s Literature”, plus book reviews for…

   — Tolkien Studies Vol. XX.
   — The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien.
   — Germanic Heroes, Courage, and Fate: Northern Narratives of Tolkien’s Legendarium.

* I’d overlooked two talks at the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society this term, now given and gone. But I’m noting the titles here, and hopefully search will (in due course) reveal recordings or papers placed online…

   — 5th May: “J.R.R. Tolkien and the Patriotism of G.K. Chesterton: Little England, The Shire, and Notting Hill”.
   — 19th May: “Cordial Dislike or Careful Distinctions? Exploring Tolkien’s Complicated Use of Allegory”.

* From the USA, a new Masters dissertation “Creation as Calling: The Intersection of Faith and Craft” (2026). Freely available online..

“analyzes the literary strategies used by C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Brandon Sanderson to embed faith into their narratives. It compares Lewis’s use of allegory, Tolkien’s concept of ‘applicability’ and sub-creation, and Sanderson’s complex worldbuilding as three distinct but complementary models for presenting spiritual truths without overt religious instruction.”

* The Fantasy Hive blog takes a trip to the lovely island of Corfu, and visits the Spiros Gelekas gallery devoted to the art of Middle-earth.

* A casting call for a forthcoming film…

* And finally, a timely discovery as three days of 90-degree dragon-breath weather (and consequent media hysteria) sweeps across England. Who knew that 2023 saw the release of a full labour-of-love restoration, SFX upgrade, and 4k Blu-ray of the major fantasy movie Dragonslayer (1981)? Not me. The news passed me by completely, until now.

Tolkien Gleanings #428

* An elegant new interactive map, Middle-earth Storyteller. It shows the movements of each character across time, along a unified timeline and a dynamic map of Middle-earth. More characters, such as Radagast, are set to be added soon. Freely available.

* In the latest Edinburgh University Press journal Moreana, devoted to Thomas More studies, the article “From Utopia to Faerian eutopia: Thomas More, Ernst Bloch, and J.R.R. Tolkien”. ($ paywall).

“This article attempts to reconstruct Tolkien’s understanding of utopia, through his letters and his familiarity with utopian literature — particularly Thomas More’s Utopia. It positions Tolkien’s writings in relation to Ernst Bloch’s philosophy of hope and within the broader twentieth-century crisis of utopia, marked by the disillusionment caused by the rise of totalitarian ideologies.”

* The latest issue of The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy reviews Tolkien, Philosopher of War (2024). Freely available online.

* New Renaissance Mindset reviews Tolkien’s The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. Freely available online.

“What gives the collection its lasting importance is that Tolkien’s critical positions are inseparable from his creative practice. He is not writing from the sidelines. The arguments in these essays illuminate The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the whole architecture of Middle-earth, just as the fiction gives the criticism its authority.”

* In the latest issue of North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies, “Phantastic Art: George MacDonald’s View of the Imagination”. The issue is dated 2024 but seems to be late, being placed online only in the last few days. Judging by the date on the article itself, it is to be dated as 2026. Freely available online.

* New in the first issue of the journal Life Writing, “Editing Friendship: Arthur Greeves and Walter Hooper as Custodians, Curators, and Censors of the C.S. Lewis–Arthur Greeves Correspondence” ($ paywall)

* Newly uploaded to Archive.org, a run of the journal Filologia Polska (‘Polish Philology’), 2015-2025. Freely available.

* In the latest issue of the Virginia Tech undergraduate journal Philologia, “How the Symbolism of Color Illustrates Honor in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. Freely available online.

* In Spanish, the latest issue (No. 11) of the free PDF magazine La Antorcha is a special issue on prayer. It includes the short article “Tolkien and the Hidden Prayer” which suggests that… “delving into how the author of The Lord of the Rings understood prayer allows us to discover new dimensions in his work.”

* Stafford Borough Council now has a listings page for the Tolkien Weekend at Great Haywood on 11th to 12th July 2026, along with contact details for the organisers.

Picture: Sherbrook Vale circa the 1930s, a short walk from Great Haywood. Colourised.

* And finally, “Tolkien’s Argument for Solitude” as a 30 minute YouTube talk. Notes the history of hermits and the Desert Fathers and monastic traditions in Christianity, and then relates hermits to the relative isolation of Beorn, Tom Bombadil, Treebeard and Gollum. Of course, Beorn does have his animals and very lively visiting bear-kin, and Bombadil has his lively young Goldberry. So they’re not really alone. Radagast might have made an interesting addition, though admittedly not so much is known about him.

Tolkien Gleanings #427

* This year’s J.R.R. Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature was given on 19th May at Oxford Town Hall, by author Brandon Sanderson. The one-hour recording of his talk is now freely available on YouTube. Sanderson talked about some key elements Tolkien introduced into fantasy that were lacking: absence of cynicism and irony; a world built with a many-layered authenticity and crafted with a scholar’s care; magic that can act at many differing levels within the plot; he re-made elves / goblins / dwarves / ‘the little-people’ and wove them into a coherent whole; and he added a gripping ‘save the world from the dark lord’ plot. Sanderson went on to defend fantasy as a genre. Yes, fantasy can be a temporary escape but it can also bring hope to many, and hope can spur good things in the real world.

* Talking of ‘revolting dark lord’ story plots. In the November 2025 issue of Modern Philology, “The Night Departure: Tracing Medieval Epic from Ariosto to Milton” (£ paywall)…

“reading ‘Paradise Lost’ against ‘Orlando furioso’ and its chivalric predecessors allows Satan’s revolt to be situated in a long line of rebel baron epics […] The epic quality of the Fall, usually ascribed to the artful debasement of classical models, is also indebted to the medieval poems of feudal revolt. Recognizing the persistence of the older epic form has important implications for both poetic and political readings of the poem.”

* From South Africa, a Masters dissertation which offers “A psychobiography of J.R.R Tolkien: exploring his psychological development and creativity” (2025), through the lens of a psychological theory from the period (“1950, 1968”). Freely available for download.

* The knowledgeable Exodus 90 podcast… “unpacks the First Book of Kings [Hebrew Bible] and how it relates to J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision of kingship”. Freely available on YouTube.

* Also new on YouTube, Nerdvana visits Oxford, Blackwell’s bookshop, the Bodleian, and Tolkien and C.S. Lewis sites. With a steadycam, thankfully.

* There’s been lots of local newspaper coverage for the UK’s first official Brandywine hobbit festival here in the UK. The above Web link is to coverage in the nearby local newspaper for the town of Shrewsbury.

* And finally, “Crickhowell launch fundraiser to buy Lord of The Rings letter”. Given that the letter also has Tolkien expanding on a bit of the plot of LoTR, I suspect it’ll go for more than the relatively modest guide-price. The town may find they’re having to stump up a lot more than they expect. Especially as they’ll be up against American institutions with deep pockets.