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.

Tolkien Gleanings #131.

* Now freely online in English, the book chapter “Tolkien’s Great Escape and its Role in the Harry Potter Series: How the Concept of Death Shapes J.K. Rowling’s Novels” (2019). Specifically, Tolkien’s concept of death. Presented at a Czech conference in 2017, and presumably later published in the conference book.

* Freely online at the Valar Guild, the detailed essay “Concerning Estel: Who Foretold What, When; or The Strange Case of Foresight’s First Formulation” (June 2023).

* A free online talk by a PhD student, for the William Blake Society, “The Edge of Human Experience: Blake and Tolkien’s Art”. Set for 11th October 2023.

* How different is Tolkien in Chinese translation? Set for publication in spring 2024, the new book Reading Tolkien in Chinese: Religion, Fantasy and Translation (Perspectives on Fantasy series) is set to give the answers. I’m guessing there may also be self-censorship at play among translators and publishers, given the nature of the Chinese regime. And perhaps also fan-project counter-responses to that?

* A new open-access medieval journal, Eventum: A Journal of Medieval Arts & Rituals. The first issue has been published, themed ‘The Arts and Rituals of Pilgrimage’.

* Due before Christmas, according to Amazon UK, the book Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A Critical Anthology…

If a literary movement arises but no one notices, is it still a movement? […] this anthology collects for the first time over fifty speculative poets. […] Alongside such established names as C.S. Lewis, Patrick Rothfuss, Edwin Morgan, Poul Anderson, Jo Walton, P.K. Page, and W.H. Auden, this anthology also includes representative texts from cultural movements such as contemporary neo-paganism and the Society for Creative Anachronism.

No Tolkien mentioned, but perhaps that’s because the Estate refused?

* A new podcast series will be discussing the history of fresh produce, and the presenters may be interested in some pointers from Tolkien scholars. Since they say…

“we might even try to understand the produce of Middle-earth”.

* And finally, the New Zealand Saturday Evening Post recounts a tale of going “Hiking with Hobbits”…

“In New Zealand, place-names drip [as if] from J.R.R. Tolkien’s fountain pen — Elfin Bay, Lake Truth, Mount Aspiring, Demon Trail, The Tower — and Lord of the Rings fans now pilgrimage to [these] sets for Middle-earth.”

Tolkien Gleanings #130.

* Kristine Larsen’s Oxonmoot 2023 keynote conference address has been released as an open-access paper. “Everything I Ever Needed to Know About the North Pole I Learned from Father Christmas (and Karhu the Polar Bear [and Ilbereth the Elf])”. This… “investigates the Father Christmas Letters through a world-building lens”. Also with a weather-eye on the North Pole, as understood by science in the 1909-1939 exploration period.

* “The Words. Or Holes. Or Both: Writing as an Integrative Methodology for Trauma, an August 2023 PhD thesis for the University of Denver. Has an early chapter discussing Tolkien’s use of fantasy in relation to trauma and loss. The record-page only offers a free PDF preview.

* The French Tolkiendil Association and the French Universite Paris-Creteil have a pleasing new poster for their joint conference ‘Journees de Recherche et Rencontres sur Tolkien’. The event is set for 6th – 7th October 2023, at the University of Paris. It will focus on “issues relating to translation” and also the new scholarly understandings emerging from the growing awareness of Tolkien’s life and surroundings. The latest programme listing is in Italian here.

* Ad Fontes magazine has a lengthy new multi-book review this week, freely available, “The Whole Lewis”. This reviews a three volume biography (2019-2022)…

“Harry Lee Poe is to be praised and thanked for this outstanding biographical achievement of over one thousand pages in three volumes on the life of C.S. Lewis. It is to date the most extensive study on the development of Lewis’s life, written with a synoptic eye toward the primary sources — the Lewis family papers, Warnie’s memoirs, Jack’s letters — many of which were unavailable to the earlier Lewis biographers, and largely remain unavailable to the general readership. In this trilogy, Poe unfolds Lewis’s life like an accordion…”

* Diary dates for the UK’s Tolkien Society’s AGM and SpringMoot 2024. 12th – 14th April 2024 at Jesus College, Cambridge University.

* Advance notice of a new book Theology and Tolkien: Constructive Theology, “coming early 2024”. The book appears set to be a shelf companion to the just published multi-author academic collection Theology and Tolkien: Practical Theology (September 2023). For which I see there’s now a £35 Kindle ebook edition listing on Amazon UK. This appears to be due to be sent on 2nd October 2023. At which time the table-of-contents will be viewable, as part of the 10% free sample.

* And finally, new to me, the Tolkien Music List website. With a discography of ‘Tolkien tribute’ popular music of all types. Though with lots of metal bands listed, as you’d expect.

Tolkien Gleanings #129.

* New in a peer-reviewed medical journal is the article “Why Psychiatrists Should Read (and Watch) Lord of the Rings” ($ paywall)… “Stories have considerable impact on our psychological health […] [Drawing on LoTR] six lessons will be discussed.” I’d add that there is also a newer media form, perhaps more psychologically potent in the long-term than either book or movies. The full-cast full-SFX unabridged audiobook with music. Such as that created for LoTR by Phil Dragash using Howard Shore’s music, and voices closely patterned on the excellent voice-work done for the LoTR movies.

* Coming in a few months in the Manchester University Press ‘Medieval Literature and Culture’ book series, Fantasies of Music in Nostalgic Medievalism. I’d imagine that music in Tolkien will be discussed, along with the Shore soundtrack. The book is set to ship on 19th December 2023, barring the inevitable postal and rail strikes, says Amazon UK. It’s an £85 single-author academic book and focuses on… “musical performance, [medievalist fantasy] literature, cinema and their reception […] in the period between the Second World War and the present”.

* A major exhibition titled ‘Fantastic Animals’ at the Louvre-Lens in France. It has one of those museum websites which tells you everything except what the clueless Brit wants to know: “is Lens a place, and if so is it easy to access from the UK?”. Google Maps eventually obliges… it’s a town 30 miles inland from the major and well-known passenger port of Calais. The show opens 27th September and runs until 15th January 2024, exhibiting… “more than 250 works – sculptures, paintings and objets d’art, as well as films and music — ranging from antiquity to the present day”.

* Another review of the new book Twenty-first Century Tolkien (2023), at The Notion Club Papers…

“the core problem of this book [is that the author] seems to like and approve-of — or at least take seriously as valid options — a great deal of what seems to me the most ignorant, incompetent and crass interpretations [of Tolkien’s work]”.

Alternative title on some listings, Twenty-First-Century Tolkien (added hyphen) or Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century (hardcover). Not to be confused with the recent academic collections Tolkien in the 21st Century: Reading, Reception, and Reinterpretation (2022) or Twenty-first Century Receptions of Tolkien: Peter Roe Series XXI (2022).

* A new report of a rural footpath walk in England, titled “Hunting Hobbits in Lancashire”. With excellent pictures. Though the author concludes that, while looking rather pretty, this local trail is probably not so ‘Tolkien’ as it claims to be…

“the big question: ‘how much truth is there in the assertions behind the Tolkien Trail?’. I’m no expert, and we can never know for sure, but it all looks rather flimsy to me.”

* New on Archive.org, a long run of Dungeon magazine, 1986-2010. Also new is a run of one of the main official news ‘zines for RPGs from 1981 to 2004. These may be of interest to those seeking to detect Tolkien themes, or to find Tolkien-influenced illustrations, in older D&D RPGs and their ephemera. May also interest role-playing gamers seeking certain types of older material.

* And finally, coming before Christmas, The Fellowship of the Knits: The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Knitting Book. A 208 page book, with what looks like high production values, and from… “the author of nine knitting books and over 500 published knitting designs”.

Tolkien Gleanings #128.

* The hardcover of the new The Hobbit: Illustrated by the Author should have arrived in lockers by now…

“illustrated throughout with over 50 sketches, drawings, paintings and maps by J.R.R. Tolkien himself and with the complete text printed in two colours.”

* A Signum University online course “Tolkien and the Classical World”, run by Hamish Williams — the author of a book of the same title. Starts October 2023, and booking now.

* A new ‘Digital Tolkien Project’ update briefing, via YouTube.

* Joe Pearce is interviewed on Tolkien topics, on this week’s Register Radio podcast.

* Austin Freeman is interviewed about his recent book Tolkien Dogmatics, on the latest PostConsumer podcast…

“He will be a speaker at Urbana Theological Seminary’s 2023 Tolkien Conference where Chris Marchand (who runs PostConsumer Reports) will also be a speaker.”

* Holly Ordway gives more interviews about her new book Tolkien’s Faith, on the podcasts Conversations with Consequences, and Pints with Jack: The C.S. Lewis Podcast.

* On the Mythmakers podcast, An Evening with the Inklings… “our esteemed guests recreated the type of literary discussion that the original group would have engaged in”.

* And finally, The Jersey Catholic (Jersey, USA) has a new article on how “C.S. Lewis’ work continues to gain popularity 60 years after his death”. Illustrated by a large, if rather blurry, picture. Which I’ve here taken the liberty of enhancing and colourising. By doing this I’ve noticed that Lewis did actually have huge ‘hobbit’ ears. I had mistakenly thought that his large ears were a spurious artefact of an AI generated picture that I’d seen on a poster some months ago. I was wrong…

C.S. Lewis (AI enhanced, cleaned, colourised, enlarged to 4k. Original: 1955 portrait by Walter Stoneman – National Portrait Gallery, London).

Tolkien Gleanings #127.

* More details, and a nice banner, for the forthcoming Tom Shippey talk giving his latest thoughts on ‘Tolkien and Beowulf’. It turns out that the event is for university faculty and students only, but hopefully there will be a YouTube recording.

* “Tolkien’s fantasy as tapestry”, a talk by Alice Bernadac, curator of tapesteries, on the topic of the suite of giant wall-tapestries woven after Tolkien at Aubusson. The talk (billed as a “conference”) is at the Soreze Abbey School and is part of the current temporary exhibition ‘Image/Imaginary in the illustrated book, from Homer to Tolkien’ (runs until 8th October 2023), on show at the Cite Internationale de la Tapisserie d’ Aubusson.

* Free in the latest Omnes magazine, an interview in English with the founder of the Catholic Tolkien Association…

“The important thing with ATC is to have an environment where no one feels stupid for believing that Tolkien’s works have helped them in their faith. There are a lot of us whose faith has been helped by Tolkien’s works […] it has helped us in our faith and from there we talk, study, write articles… The question is to study him as a Catholic, which is what they have not allowed us to do, because they consider it a circumstantial thing.”

* A “coming soon” page for a book review? A bad habit to get into, I’d suggest. But the Anselm Society has a page for a review of the book A Well of Wonder: C. S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and The Inklings (2016), posted yesterday and with the review billed as “Coming shortly”.

* And finally, the UK’s coastal city of Hull now has a ‘Tolkien Triangle Trail’ with a basic map. The above is an Archive.org link, as the website is consistently “502 Bad Gateway” unavailable in my browser.