Tolkien Gleanings #137.

* Tolkien’s Oxford Eagle and Child pub is sold and saved, having being purchased by billionaire Larry Ellison’s Ellison Institute of Technology, which is also establishing a new science campus. The “renowned architect Norman Foster will renovate” the venue beloved of Tolkien and his friends, keeping it as a pub — but also adding a study space for “Ellison Scholars and EIT Oxford faculty” together with a new restaurant.

The pub in the late 1970s.

* The seventh PDF issue of my Tolkien Gleanings ‘zine is now freely available at Archive.org.

* Joseph Pearce reflects on “50 Years with J.R.R. Tolkien”.

* Quillette has an article musing on “Misreading Middle-Earth: Tolkien and the Contemporary Reader”…

“it is difficult to imagine [The Lord of the Rings] being written today. From the subtlety of its symbolism to the profoundly Catholic character of the prose, with its pseudo-Biblical narrative and baroque embellishments, many aspects of Tolkien’s style and storytelling would be unpalatable to most modern publishers”.

* Freely online, an undergraduate survey of “The nature of evil in Catholicism as represented in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien” (2022).

* The table-of-contents for Amon Hen #302 (August 2023). Has a book review of The Battle of Maldon together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, and articles including “Loose Lips Cost Lives” — which at a guess is likely about the need for caution when conveying information in Middle-earth.

* New on YouTube, Paolo Nardi and Alena Afanasyeva talk about “Tolkien in Russia”. “Discussing Tolkien’s reception in the Soviet Union and Russian-speaking countries. The Lord of the Rings was banned by the regime…”. 90 minutes, not in English. Appears to be popular both in terms of views and comments.

* The annual German language Tolkien Times PDF ‘zine / brochure, now available for free download (scroll down the page). Also has a review of Garner’s Treacle Walker in its German translation.

* And finally, scenes from Tolkien as Byzantine paintings.

The seventh PDF issue of my Tolkien Gleanings ‘zine, now freely available at Archive.org.

Tolkien Gleanings #136.

* Freely available in the latest newly-started issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research, “The Hen that Laid the Eggs: Tolkien and the Officer Training Corps”. Discusses how the young Tolkien’s OTC… “experience underlies the importance of military preparedness and the consequences of lack of preparedness among the free peoples of Middle-earth”. Expands on the author’s… “2011 paper in Tolkien Studies“.

* Freely available and new in English in the Hungarian journal Orpheus Noster, “Tolkien, the Practicing Catholic: The Early Letters”. May complement Holly Ordway’s recent book, since the author finds that Tolkien’s…

“actual religious practices of his everyday life have [not yet been] uncovered. This paper attempts to provide a brief glance into these by examining Tolkien’s early Letters”.

* The new long blog post “Space travel in The Notion Club Papers by “Incarnation. By being born” – What does Tolkien mean?.

* In the re-titled open access journal Archaeoastronomy and Ancient Technologies (now Cultural Heritage and Modern Technologies), the new journal article “The symbol of the crescent moon with a star on ancient and medieval coins” (2023)…

“In ancient times, the symbol of the crescent moon with a star may refer to a female divinity. […] Probably on medieval coins the crescent moon with the star was initially coined as a symbol of the Virgin Mary”.

Newly “coined”, or appropriated?

“In ancient times Venus took care of mariners, because she was supposed to be born of the sea; because she has ceased to take Care, the Virgin Mother is [now, as Mary] substituted to this Mother.” — Erasmus.

* Now apparently under Creative Commons on Archive.org, the PhD thesis Asgard Revisited: Old Norse mythology and national culture in Iceland, 1820-1918 (2017).

* And finally, a set of Jim Kirkwood re-releases sounds rather enticing…

“Announcement of these reissues has generated no small degree of excitement among fans of synthesizer music, especially those in the dungeon synth scene. […] Although held in high esteem by the dungeon synth scene, Kirkwood’s own output feels more in line with the British progressive rock and [1970s and early 80s] Berlin-school style of synth music that inspired him.”

Remastered re-issues of Kirkwood’s rare “Tolkien-focused” LP’s are set for release on 1st December 2023. For those interested there’s also a 1992 LoTR inspired sampler LP, and a higher-quality version which can be purchased to help support South Essex Animal Hospital.

Tolkien Gleanings #135.

* New to me, the long “Saving the Shire: Ascetic Renunciation and Love of Home in J.R.R. Tolkien”. Being the text of the… “Inklings lecture delivered by Richard Rohlin at the sixth annual Inklings Festival in October of 2020”.

* This week La Libre has an article on the new Lord of the Rings in French. Apparently with “previously unpublished illustrations by Tolkien”…

A [one-volume] version [of the Lord of the Rings] more in line with Tolkien’s wishes. The new complete edition, revised, corrected and expanded, is published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the author’s death. This is one of the editorial events of the Autumn” [being] “the new French translation” [of that] “already revised in 2014 by Daniel Lauzon [and which has here been] further refined by the translator” […] “It is based on the latest version of the English text, revised by Christopher Tolkien based on indications left by his father. It offers previously unpublished illustrations by Tolkien, and is supplemented by an index that Tolkien had wished to include during his lifetime, but did not have time to provide for the first publication of the trilogy in 1954-1956.

The article also notes that the character names are no longer French-ified for a French audience. The La Libre writer has actually seen a copy and pronounces the book, printed in Italy, of sumptuous quality. Said to be a “limited edition”, officially published on 19th October 2023.

* In open access, the Masters dissertation “Textual Conventions and the Encoded Reader in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Translation of Beowulf“ (2023).

* Due at the end of October 2023, the German book Aure entuluva! – Der Tag soll wieder kommen. J.R.R. Tolkien zum 50. Todestag. Ten essays from writers and thinkers for whom Tolkien was their path to Christian belief.

* Now on YouTube, the recent presentation to the Blake Society titled “The Edge of Human Experience: Blake and Tolkien’s Art”.

* And finally, “Exhibition celebrates works of Narnia and Tolkien illustrator Pauline Baynes”. Though it appears to be over already…

“Farnham Town Council was privileged to display a large collection of her work, generously provided by her relative Alberto Ceceatelli who brought the collection over from Italy for this very special occasion. The exhibition opened with a private view and during opening hours the council chamber was crowded with visitors until it closed at mid-day the following Monday. This was the first time the collection had been seen in [the UK] and it created a great deal of interest.”

Tolkien Gleanings #134.

* A new official website for Tom Shippey. The site made me aware of his interesting-sounding book Hard Reading: Learning from Science Fiction (2016).

* Here are transcriptions of two of the questions and answers which followed the recent Tom Shippey talk titled “Sixty Years of J.R.R. Tolkien”…

Q: What question would he have liked to discuss personally with Tolkien?

A: I’d have liked to talk to him about the nature of dialect studies. I think we now know a lot more about dialect than Tolkien did. [Based on the evidence then available, he would have thought] that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight came essentially from the county of Chester. I would have liked to say to him, ‘Excuse me Professor but I think that’s wrong. Actually it’s not Chester at all, is it?’. Chester was a very funny and strange county with special privileges in the middle-ages, and that meant its neighbours didn’t like it at all. Indeed they fought a battle over it. No, actually surely the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight came from the neighbouring county of Staffordshire. And I think Tolkien would have been pleased to have heard this argument, partly because Staffordshire was one of his ‘home counties’. There are three counties which meet in Birmingham — Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire — and those I think were the counties that Tolkien thought were his counties. And [as such] he would have been very pleased to have me argue that the great works of medieval literature in English all came from the West Midlands… and especially from those three counties.

Q: What gaps still need work, in Tolkien studies?

A: Well, I think that there are perhaps two great gaps. One is that we know that Tolkien spent a great deal of time and thought on producing a work called “The Lost Road”, but of course he never got round to doing it [i.e. to completion]. We do know quite a lot about what he intended, but it would be good to have a better theory of what he meant to do. And I think there are some hints and indications. But of course the only answer can be speculative… and academics don’t really like speculation. […] I made a start on it by writing a piece in the [2022] memorial volume for Christopher Tolkien [The Great Tales Never End: Essays in Memory of Christopher Tolkien], in which I discuss a poem by Tolkien which I think he intended to work up as part of “The Lost Road”. The other [gap] is that we now have a great mass of early material edited by Christopher Tolkien, and I think Tolkien critics have rather fought shy of studying this. Because there’s so much of it, and it’s so difficult and it’s so tangled. But I think it would be interesting once again to try to [use this material to] get back to the original sources… no, not to the original sources… to Tolkien’s original intentions.

* Currently on eBay, another copy of the very rare book Wheelbarrows at Dawn: Memories of Hilary Tolkien, with a number of sample images.

* In Italy on 14th October 2023, a scholarly Workshop: ‘Tolkien and the Arthurian Myths: in honor of the 50th anniversary of Tolkien’s death’… “This workshop is open to all Tolkien enthusiasts, literature students, budding writers and anyone who wishes to deepen their knowledge of Tolkien’s works and the Arthurian myths. Places are limited to a maximum of fifteen participants.”

* New to me, a book of Italian essays on Tolkien titled Albero di Tolkien. Topic titles, in approximate English translation, include among others…

   – The name of Snorri.
   – Walking through Oxford.
   – The use of traditional symbols in J.R.R. Tolkien.
   – Tolkien’s polytheistic sentiment.
   – Tolkien, life, death and immortality.
   – The figure of the hero in Tolkien.
   – Music and Middle-earth.
   – Tolkien and the figurative arts.

* On YouTube, the October 2023 Update for the Digital Tolkien Project.

* Tolkien’s Philology: General Works (1923-1925). Being a new Archive.org PDF compilation of his authoritative “The Year’s Work in English Studies” surveys for 1924, 1925 and 1926. These are also on Archive.org in their original format and context.

* And finally, the latest edition of the UK’s The Critic magazine reviews The Globe, a new book offering an entertaining brisk tour of the history of the ‘flat Earth’ fallacy. This book also touches on the use by Tolkien…

The book ends as rapidly as it began, with an account of the flat literary worlds created by the medievalists-turned-fantasy authors C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. [But] Hannam’s narrative is at its most illuminating when discussing the wide acceptance of the spherical earth theory in the European Middle Ages. Far from [being] drooling, dogma-blinded pantomime bigots […] mediaeval thinkers were keen cosmologists who by and large had read their Aristotle. Some, such as Bede in the 7th century, arrived at similar conclusions on their own.

Tolkien Gleanings #132.

* In ‘The Archivist’s Nook’ this week, the article “‘The Road Goes On’ – The Making of the Tolkien Exhibit”…

“The exhibit can be seen in the main reading room on the second floor of Catholic University’s Mullen library throughout the Fall 2023 semester, but a digital version of the exhibit (which may include some ‘extras’ as all director’s cuts do!) can be accessed online.”

* In the latest Journal of Tolkien Research, a new review of the book The Road to Fair Elfland: Tolkien On Fairy-stories: An Extended Commentary (2022).

* A 100-minute interview in French, new on Archive.org, Tolkien, l’Europe et la Tradition (‘Tolkien, Europe and Tradition’). Note the English subtitles file, found under ‘SubRip Files’. Glancing at these they appear to be quite comprehensible, apart from some lack of capitalisation.

* Booking details for “A weekly series of free talks by Oxford staff”, intended to “commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of J.R.R. Tolkien”. Appears to be “Members of the University only”, though one can hope there will also be .MP3 recordings at some point.

* New to me, and now on Archive.org, the book A Tolkien treasury: stories, poems, and illustrations celebrating the author and his world (2000). A very mixed bag, by the look of it. But some may be interested in the reprinting of Auden’s original response to the then-new LoTR, and some factual essays found among the poems such as “The Coinage of Gondor and the Western Lands”.

* In Los Angeles, the Nova Forum is to host a short course running 24th-27th October 2023. Titled Tolkien and the Mystery of Literary Creation…

“Professor Pezzini is the author of a forthcoming monograph on Tolkien to be published by Cambridge University Press in early 2024, the first scholarly study of his literary theory.”

I’d imagine the course’s class titles give a flavour of his forthcoming book…

  – The Cats of Queen Beruthiel: Linguistic Aesthetic and the Gratuitousness of Creativity
  – The Authors of the Red Book: Meta-textual Frames and Writing as Discovery
  – The Lords of the West: A Poetics of Cloaking and Freedom
  – Beren and Frodo: Intra-textual Parallels, Internal Figuration, and the Universality of the Particular
  – Gandalf’s Fall and Return: Sub-creative Submission and the Arising of Prophecy
  – The Last Stage: the Death of the Author and the Effoliation of Creation

* Also forthcoming, the Bodleian Library is to issue a new book titled C.S. Lewis’s Oxford in summer 2024. Much of which I’d imagine will overlap with ‘Tolkien’s Oxford’. Looks like a sumptuous and thick hardback tour, but reasonably priced and also said to include… “a number of new archival discoveries, including letters, tutorial reports and even an unpublished poem”. Pre-ordering now.

* And finally, at The Lowry in Manchester, The Music of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Seemingly only on Sunday 14th April 2024, and with no symphony orchestra mentioned. It has a child-friendly time at 3pm, so it may just be a children’s event with recorded music. There are no other events of that name to be found in 2024, so it’s not a touring show. Anyway… it’s booking now.