Tolkien Gleanings #50.

* Forthcoming is a new scholarly book from Kent State University Press, titled Pity, Power, and Tolkien’s Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many. Due toward the end of 2023, with Amazon UK currently offering a shipping-date perilously close to Christmas, “12th December”. The publisher’s blurb has the book as a…

remarkable work of close reading and analysis, Thomas P. Hillman gets to the heart of the tension between pity and the desire for power in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. As the book traces the entangled story of the One Ring and its effects, we come to understand Tolkien’s central paradox: while pity is necessary for destroying the Ring, it cannot save the Ring-bearer from the Ring’s lies and corruption. […] Instead of turning his interpretation to allegory or apologetics, Hillman demonstrates how the story works metaphorically, allowing Tolkien to embrace both Catholic views and pagan mythology.

* Also forthcoming later in 2023, a new graphic novel about the young Tolkien, provisionally titled Tolkien: Lighting Up The Darkness. That title may change before publication, since the Estate would appear to have a clear case of trademark infringement regarding the front-cover’s sizing, styling and colour of ‘Tolkien’…

The book lists as “112 pages”, so it’s not the sort of chunky 240-page graphic novel that an English reader might expect. Indeed, those 112 pages are probably padded, since I see the French site Tolkiendil mentions “82 pages” of actual story. Which suggests it’s a French BD. Yes, turns out that it’s an English translation of a BD already available in French, Tolkien: Eclairer les Tenebres (2019), and in Italian as Tolkien: Rischiarare le Tenebre (2021). A Tolkiendil review picked up some small factual errors, but was generally positive. The interior art looks excellent.

* The new French fannish magazine Generation Cites d’Or #10 (2023) is a “Tolkien Special”, with articles.

* And finally, in May 2023 Canada’s Maple Moot will happen in Toronto, taking the theme of ‘Northern Spirit’…

“an ancient virtue […] we will explore the meaning of Northern Spirit, its thematic influence in Tolkien’s legendarium, and its origins in fantasy and literature.”

Tolkien Gleanings #49.

* Newly published in the UK, the hardcover edition of the Tolkien book The Battle of Maldon: together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth. The previously unpublished material here is reported to be Tolkien’s own prose translation of the Anglo-Saxon “The Battle of Maldon”, and his unpublished lecture “The Tradition of Versification in Old English” (late 1920s?).

* A one-hour YouTube lecture on “J.R.R. Tolkien on Homes and Havens” (2021). The audio is excellent. This has now become a paywalled scholarly article of the same title, published in the new edition of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture (Spring 2023).

* A recent Texas Tolkien Talk Podcast discussed the recent biography The Gallant Edith Bratt with the book’s author Nancy Bunting.

* A Signum University announcement this week, Introducing “Tolkien Illustrated: Picturing the Legendarium”. This being a trailer for a Summer 2023 online course at Signum, booking now and starting…

“Monday 1st May 2023, with a one week break from 19th-23rd June for Mythmoot. […] ‘Tolkien Illustrated’ will include two 90-minute live lectures Mondays and Thursdays 10:00-11:30 AM ET (3:00-4:30 PM GMT) and one one-hour discussion session per week as assigned (four hours total weekly).”

* And finally, a demo of a fragment of The Silmarillion as read by an ElevenLabs AI-generated TTS voice. Rather pleasing and clear, considering it’s just a quick demo generated from YouTube clips of the older ‘grandpa’ Tolkien speaking to the media in the 1960s. So far as I’m aware, there’s no legal infringement. You can’t copyright the sound and accent of a voice, due to the ‘prior art’ spread among millions of previous voices.

Tolkien Gleanings #48.

* Now available, tickets for the Second Annual Tolkien Lecture with John Garth. To be given on a Friday evening, 12th May 2023 at the Elgar Concert Hall of Birmingham University (UK). Booking now on Eventbrite. I’ve never been in this Hall, but the venue sounds suitably large. Thus I imagine that the free tickets for “The Houses of Healing: Tolkien, Fantasy, and the Road to Recovery” won’t immediately all be taken.

* The Church of Scotland reports “Tolkien talk returns by popular demand”…

“J.R.R. Tolkien and The Hope of Easter”, Dr. Hood’s new talk will take place at 7pm on Wednesday 5th April 2023, and will also be streamed online.”

* In Canada on 30th March 2023, the public lecture titled “Tolkien, Middle-earth, and the Lost Inheritance of England”…

“Mark Doersken [discusses how Tolkien] sought to engage with the lost tales of pre-Conquest England and in the process changed the modern fantasy landscape. This talk is part of Literature Matters: Literature in the Community Series at the University of Saskatchewan.”

* Amazon UK is listing a new academic book of 230 pages, set for publication at the end of September 2023. Titled J.R.R. Tolkien in Central Europe: Context, Directions, and the Legacy. It’s a Routledge collection and, as you might expect from this publisher, the book sounds rather theoretical-political…

“The essays move between and across theories of cultural and social history, reception, adaptation and audience studies, and offer methodological reflections on the various cultural perceptions of Tolkien’s oeuvre and its impact on twenty-first century manifestations.” [also] examines the entanglement of fantasy and Central European political and cultural shifts […] across different domains from communist times through today.”

* And finally the Novium Museum in Chichester, England, launches ‘The Magic of Middle-earth’ exhibition on Saturday 1st April 2023. This is a large popular touring show, free at some venues but here with a £4 ticket price. The show will run through the summer and close on 24th September.

Tolkien Gleanings #47

* The Franciscan University of Steubenville (Pittsburgh, USA) is set to hold a Tolkien Conference in the Autumn/Fall. Titled “A Long Expected Party: A Semicentennial Celebration Of Tolkien’s Life, Works, And Afterlife”, the conference will run 22nd-23rd September 2023. Submissions of papers… “reflecting on less studied elements of Tolkien’s legendarium and recently published works” are welcomed, with a 30th April 2023 deadline.

* A listing for a French exhibition catalogue, Sur les Traces de Tolkien et de L’imaginaire Medieval (‘In the Footsteps of Tolkien and the Medieval Imagination’) reveals a large exhibition in summer 2023. The… “exhibition will feature over 250 drawings and paintings by John Howe […] concept illustrator on the two cinema trilogies The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. […] The exhibition is accompanied by authentic objects from the medieval period and punctuated by pictures that would have been contemporary for the young Tolkien, drawing notably on the works of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.” The 192 page hardcover catalogue is currently dated “21st June 2023” by Amazon UK.

* New from Word on Fire, a one-hour panel talk on YouTube… “Andrew Petiprin moderates a conversation between leading J.R.R. Tolkien scholar Dr. Holly Ordway and leading C.S. Lewis scholar Fr. Michael Ward. The pair debate and discuss J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, two Christian literary giants of the twentieth century.”

* New on Archive.org to borrow, a scan of the book War and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (2004). If the book interests, note also the course listing at Signum University for Autumn/Fall 2023, “Tolkien’s Wars and Middle-earth” with John Garth.

* And finally, a review of a recent book with chapters offering Orthodox Perspectives on Tolkien’s Fantastic Realm (2021). Among others… “Richard Seraphim Rohlins splendidly adds to the best of Tolkien scholarship by explaining in close detail the reference to medieval church architecture made by Tolkien…”.

Tolkien Gleanings #46

* The National Archives reports that… “Two handwritten letters penned by J.R.R. Tolkien have been discovered for the first time”…

“Written in 1945, shortly after Tolkien’s appointment as Professor of English Language and Literature at Merton College, Oxford, the letters are part of an exchange with the British Council about funding for his research into early English languages.”

* The editors of the forthcoming academic journal The Incredible Nineteenth Century: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Fairy Tale…

“will host an online conference via Zoom on 31st March – 1st April 2023. The theme is “Beginnings” and we will be exploring how, in many ways, the nineteenth century saw the birth of science fiction and fantasy as we know them as well as the scholarly study of folk and fairy tales.”

Sadly the deadline for registration for attendance has now passed, but hopefully recordings will become available on YouTube.

* A handy YouTube playlist for “G.B. Smith and J.R.R. Tolkien: a meaningful friendship”. This being a scholarly conference at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 21st-22nd March 2023.

* Listed as due in mid September 2023, a new edition of Letters from J.R.R. Tolkien. “Featuring a radically expanded index”, and set to be a volume of 704 pages from “William Morrow & Company (15th September 2023)”, according to Amazon UK. No further details.

* And finally, a sale listing alerted me to the fact that that there was once a place called “The Ring” at Tolkien’s Great Haywood in mid Staffordshire…

“Samuel Wyatt’s other group at Great Haywood was regrettably demolished in about 1965. Known as the Ring, it comprised a hollow hexagon formed of 16 cottages with a communal bake-oven in the centre of the inner yard.” (Country Life, 1977). One of the cottages served as a schoolroom. Erected sometime after the Great Flood of 1795, to house many of the former villagers of Shugborough. Probably built c. 1800-1806. Therefore the ‘Ring’ was there in Tolkien’s time.