Tolkien Gleanings #126.

* A new PhD thesis in German for Heidelberg University, Die Konzeption von Konigtum bei J.R.R. Tolkien: zur rezeption und transformation religionshistorischer motive und religioser herrscherlegitimation in der literarischen weltkonstruktion von Middle-earth (‘The Conception of Kingship in J.R.R. Tolkien: on the reception and transformation of motifs of the history of religion and the religious legitimisation of power in the literary world-making of Middle-earth’). Freely available and kindly placed under full Creative Commons Attribution.

* A new B.A. dissertation for the University of Pardubice, “Philosophy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Arda”. Examines… “motifs of good and evil in Tolkien’s works” via frameworks of “Manichaeism, Augustinian and Boethian approach[es] to morality, and Aristotle’s virtue ethics”. In English and freely available.

* The book Translating and Illustrating Tolkien has an official publication date, 10th October 2023. This is…

“a collection of six papers presented at The Tolkien Society Autumn Seminar held online on Saturday 6th November 2021.”

* Italian artist groups, the Italian Association of Tolkien Studies and Eterea Edizioni, presents “Hobbits, Elves & other Folks: a Festival of the Fantastic, from folklore to fiction, by J.R.R. Tolkien”. 6th to 8th October 2023 in the capital city of Rome. With… “live music, presentations, talks, themed markets, a series of ‘fantasy and comics’ laboratories, workshops, open-air sessions of retro gaming + board and tabletop role-playing games.” Also, among other items…

  – “Middle-earth Bestiary, an exhibition focused on animals in Tolkien’s works, including in later publishing, games and pop culture.” Also has creative workshops for children.

  – ‘Light and Shadow: symbolism in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien’, a round-table in dialogue with the public”.

  – ‘Fantastic Religions and Where to Find Them: divinities, myths and rites in science fiction and fantasy’, with the authors speaking about a Quasar Edizioni book of the same name.

  – ‘Fantasy Illustration Survival Course, a workshop + illustration laboratory for publishing’ by Claudia Marrone, editorial illustrator.

* In other news from Italy, confirmation of the medium-sized 150-item exhibition ‘J.R.R. Tolkien 1973-2023: Man-Professor-Author’. This opens in November 2023 at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, and is “curated by Alessandro Nicosia and Oronzo Cilli”.

* And finally, the U.S. Sun features a handyman who says “I build hobbit holes for your garden”, for $10,000.

Tolkien Gleanings #125.

* Princeton University’s James Madison Program podcast this week has an excellent interview with Rachel Fulton Brown, about “Religion and Politics in The Lord of the Rings”. It start a little creakily though, so bear with it to 3:38 minutes. And note that the politics discussion is fairly short, and near the end.

* A University of Birmingham short report on “A Tolkien Weekend in Bewdley”, near Birmingham…

To celebrate his life and work, Professor John Holmes and doctoral student Dion Dobrzynski got together with the Bewdley Museum and the Guild of St. George to put on a programme of events at the museum and at Ruskin Land in the Wyre Forest.

* In Virginia, Christendom College is hosting an evening Tolkien event marking the 50th Anniversary of J.R.R. Tolkien’s death…

Professor Michael Strickland, from the Department of English Language and Literature, will survey Tolkien’s Middle English scholarship, particularly on Chaucer, and then further examine how his work on Chaucer potentially influenced Tolkien’s Legendarium as he was writing. Dr. Daniel McInerny, from the Department of Philosophy, will close the evening with a talk on Tolkien’s philosophy of stories, reflecting on the power of stories, and learning to understand our own lives as part of a greater story.

* In France, a library exhibition on Tolkien and science is on show from 3rd October to 10th November 2023. No details about how large it is. I assume small, and it may only be a few cabinets.

* In the last week or so I’ve heard several people talk about how this year’s autumn / fall seems ideal for a re-read of The Lord of The Rings. Can I suggest that Phil Dragash’s unabridged Lord of the Rings audiobook is well worth considering.

* And finally, a new Medieval Podcast episode on “Trees and Religion in Early Medieval England”, discussing the new book of the same name.

Tolkien Gleanings #124.

* The Knowing and Understanding C.S. Lewis podcast has posted part two of the Holly Ordway interview on the new book Tolkien’s Faith. I’d previously noted part one in Tolkien Gleanings, which is here.

* The De Limburger newspaper reports… “In the month of the fiftieth anniversary of J.R.R.’s death. Tolkien, the Dutch, Belgian and German Tolkien societies are holding an exhibition in the Gothic Sint Janskerk church, Maastricht”, which is in Holland. The article is paywalled, but I found a YouTube trailer video. The show was set to open, with accompanying readings and workshops, on 2nd September 2023. I’m uncertain if it then became a continuing exhibition. But the De Limburger article is dated 11th September, which suggests it may be continuing.

* New to me, Die Schweiz in Tolkiens Mittelerde (2021). A book with maps, in German, relating to Tolkien’s 1911 trek in Switzerland. I thought it might be a short pocket guide-book, since Amazon gives no page count on the paper edition. But Google Books has it as “296 pages” and gives the substantial-looking contents pages. The author seems keen to compare various areas to Mordor, Rohan etc.

* A new partial review of the book Meanings of Water in Early Medieval England (2021). “Partial” because paywalled, with a substantial free chunk. See also the new Creative Commons Masters dissertation “An Island Nation” (2023) on Middle English texts, in which “the second chapter turns to inland waters such as bogs, marshes, and mists” as they were understood by the English state.

* And finally, some readers may be interested in the new academic book The Medieval Worlds of Neil Gaiman (2023), available now from the University of Iowa Press.

Tolkien Gleanings #123.

* Video from the recent Oxonmoot 50 – Day 3. Four talks are covered by the three-hour video. Including two with titles which had previously made me interested, “Dyeing in Middle-earth” and “The Animals That Are Not There”. In the Questions, the “Dyeing” presenter later has a superb put-down of a “…but what about the TV series?” question.

* Been and gone, a Civic Society public talk on “Tolkien’s Connections with Malvern”. This was on 8th September 2023…

Dr. Bradley Wells will talk about J.R.R. Tolkien, the twentieth-century literary genius and famous author in the realm of fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings and his understated connections with the Malvern Hills and Great Malvern.

The talk was part of a surprisingly rich selection of cultural festivals and events being held in the town during autumn 2023. I note that Auden was also in the town, in his younger days as a teacher at Malvern school. Like Tolkien he had grown up in Birmingham, in his case in the slightly more southerly suburb of Harborne, from 1919-1939. Thus the Malvern Hills were very much ‘on the doorstep’ in Auden’s youth, as they were for Tolkien. Like Tolkien he retained few ties to the city after he left, although in Auden’s case there was at least one early ‘on the Malvern Hills’ poem and a rather sad Larkin-esque ‘farewell’ 1937 poem which evoked the urban topography and voices of the city. His “the most lovely country that I know” poem doesn’t really count, as that was about the view from the train “from Birmingham to Wolverhampton” and thus mostly evoking the eastern part of the Black Country. But that was the way of it, in those industrial and industrious days. The clever kids in smoky cities such as Birmingham or Stoke-on-Trent worked hard at school, assiduously avoided picking up the heavy local accent, noticed the industrial views from the train, and then… they mostly left as soon as they were able — never to look back.

* Catholic World Report has a short musing this week on “The magnanimous faith of J.R.R. Tolkien”. The author suggests that Tolkien’s feeling for magnanimity comes through in his writing, and this may be something that many readers find subtly appealing.

* And finally, the presumably new stage play Lewis and Tolkien is set for its premiere run in the USA…

Set in Oxford, England in the autumn of 1963 at the ‘Rabbit Room’ of the Eagle and Child Pub, [the events of this play are] something of ‘a return to the familiar’ for Lewis and Tolkien. Filled with humour, rousing debate, and reconciliation, the two men learn the true value of their friendship with a little help from a few pints of beer and the energetically curious barmaid, Veronica.

This is a Los Angeles theatre production, billed as a “world premiere”. It is not to be confused with the still-forthcoming Web series which filmed in London last year.

Tolkien Gleanings #122.

* A new thirty minute Brandon Vogt and Holly Ordway Interview for Word on Fire. Not the same as the previous Word on Fire podcast interview about Ordway’s new Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography book, which was a long pre-publication interview with Michael Ward.

* Wheaton College has two events celebrating the launch of Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography, on 25th-26th September 2023.

* A Spanish translation of the book Tolkien’s Faith will be published by Loyola in spring 2024.

* Holly Ordway has posted a new report on the recent Tolkien’s Words and Worlds event at Oxford University…

Simon Horobin’s excellent paper “‘Never Trust a Philologist’: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the Place of Philology in English Studies” was illuminating of the academic context that Tolkien found himself in when he arrived at Pembroke as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon.

* In northern England, the Barnsley Museum now has an official page for The Magic of Middle Earth touring exhibition. On this stop the exhibition will be free, and will run from… “30th September 2023 – 6th April 2024”.

* And finally, new in the classical antiquity journal Antigone, “Middle-earth Songs: 50 Years After Tolkien”.

Tolkien Gleanings #121.

* A new talk in London this weekend, Holly Ordway on “Beauty and Sorrow: Tolkien’s journey of faith”. At St. Mary’s Church, Sunday 10th September 2023. Her publisher Word on Fire has also just released a new and highly-polished official one minute trailer for Ordway’s acclaimed new book, Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography.

* In October, Ordway is in Houston with a talk on “Tolkien’s Faith and the Foundations of Middle Earth”, 2nd October 2023. Free and booking now.

* The first review I’ve seen of the recent book Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: What Middle-earth means to us today (2023). The reviewer finds it “a long wearying slog” and “a read that is about as compelling as a phone book”. Not to be confused with the academic collection Tolkien in the 21st Century: Reading, Reception, and Reinterpretation (2022).

* A new long and very informed article on “J.R.R. Tolkien on Philosophical Anarchism”.

* News of a new book, Tolkien on Chaucer, 1913-1959. From Oxford University Press and apparently containing everything Tolkien ever published or said about Chaucer. Including his translation of the Reeve’s Tale, which is said to be as yet unpublished. The OUP issued a contract for the book in 2021, and the French Tolkendil forum suggests publication toward the end of April 2024. Amazon UK is pre-ordering, but currently has no shipping date.

* And finally… this week’s TLS comments, on the week’s literary news and very much in passing, that…

“[it is] fifty years since Anthony Burgess declared in the TLS [in 1973] that “The Hesse cult continues, though the Tolkien one seems to be at an end”, getting it exactly the wrong way round.”

Thus back-handedly implying that the TLS even now thinks that the attention paid to Tolkien is due to a ‘cult’. Judging by their lack of coverage, Tolkien is not high on their book-reviewer Wish List. Also, pushing the idea of a “cult” aligns with a small group of TV-oriented fans who try to label and dismiss the majority of Tolkien fans as “an intolerant cult”.

The Hesse referred to above was the now little-read German writer Herman Hesse, not to be confused with Hess the captured Nazi leader.

Tolkien Gleanings #120.

* Ateneo de Manila University’s Events at the School of Humanities this September Web page includes news of a free lecture by the venerable Tom Shippey, titled “Sixty Years of J.R.R. Tolkien”. Set for 27th September 2023. “Online attendance option available”, and booking now. At the Department of English, so I assume it will be given in English.

* There’s to be a major Tolkien exhibition at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Roma (GNAM), Italy’s national contemporary arts museum. This was announced verbally at a festival in early July 2023, by the GNAM director. Update: Thanks to Sebastiano Tassinari for getting the exhibition’s title, “J.R.R. Tolkien 1973-2023, Man – Professor – Author” and the dates. It will run from 14th November 2023 to January 2024. It will be a mid-sized show of 150 items.

* CCS Universe notes “Astronomer Keynotes at International Conference Celebrating Middle-earth”…

“CCSU astronomer Dr. Kristine Larsen was one of two keynote speakers at the 50th Oxonmoot conference in Oxford last weekend […]. Her talk, focusing on letters Tolkien wrote to his children for over 20 years in the guise of Father Christmas, included references to eclipses, comets, constellations, and most especially auroras. In particular, she demonstrated how Tolkien’s artistic renditions of aurora in specific years echoed displays witnessed by astronomers in his native England.”

I didn’t see this on the official list of presentations, which I looked at in an earlier Tolkien Gleanings. Perhaps because it was a keynote talk, listed apart from the regular presentations?

* In Mexico, the event Tolkien: La fantasia del libro al mundo digital in September 2023.

* From Bangor University, via The Conversation, How J.R.R. Tolkien was inspired by medieval poems of northern bravery. A short article under Creative Commons Attribution.

“Fifty years on from Tokien’s death, that spirit of northern bravery endures as an alluring concept. What makes Tolkien’s fantastical world so appealing is the recurrent suggestion that the courage manifested to defeat the big monsters in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is the very same courage that can be found in hopeless situations of a more ordinary sort.”

* Charles Williams expert Sorina Higgins this week reports several projects underway…

  – An article on Tolkien’s only play, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.
  – A book [on Williams], An Introduction to The Oddest Inkling.
  – My life’s work! The long-anticipated Annotated Arthuriad of Charles Williams.

* And finally, France.info visits the Lamb & Flag pub in Oxford, recently re-opened as a community-run venture and reportedly doing a roaring trade.