Author Archives: futurilla

Tolkien Gleanings #7

by futurilla

Tolkien Gleanings #7

* The new book From Imagination to Faerie: Tolkien’s Thomist Fantasy now has a partial Google Books preview and TOCs…

* “The Vyne Ring in context: powerful people and powerful rings during the end of Roman Britain”, an open-access English chapter from the sumptuous and scholarly Rings of Power print book (2019, 2 volumes) on the cultural archaeology and thinking on ancient finger-rings. Readers will recall Tolkien’s connections with this and Nodens.

This open-access chapter also gives the TOCs, and there one finds the essay paired in the book with Thomas Honegger’s German-language “Tolkien und die Tradition der Ringe der Macht”. I find an English version of Honegger’s article is freely available. The book’s TOCs also show that most of the other chapters are in German. There appears to be no open-access version, other than these chapters.

* The new book Beowulf as Children’s Literature (December 2021, $ paywalled on JSTOR) considers the 100 or so children’s adaptations of Beowulf which appeared during the 19th and 20th century, and at the end has a chapter on “Children’s Beowulf for the New Tolkien Generation”.

* The open-access “To Bring Back some Eagleness to Eagles: On Bird Worldings in the Bronze Age” (2020). Relevant to Tolkien’s understanding of eagles in ancient Northern history and tales. The…

“research community has paid very little attention to avian creatures [and] birds seem to vanish from the air [in recent cultural studies of farming and landscape, since] Marxism still seem to rule contemporaneous Bronze Age research”.

Goes on to provide an interesting non-communist cultural/archaeological study (“According to north European birdlore, eagles were thought to be immortal”), and then the last third rapidly leaves the Bronze Age and comes up to date.

New book: As Best We Can

by futurilla

I’m pleased to learn of another writer on the topography and people of the Potteries, via stumbling on a new book with poems about Stoke-on-Trent. The poet Jeffrey Wainwright had a 2020 collection from noted poetry publisher Carcanet, As Best We Can. Wainwright was born and schooled in Stoke (specifically Sandford Hill, Longton) in the 1950s. Then went to university in Leeds and took his first job on the Welsh coast. Local poems, of Etruria and Longton, in his new book include…

* “”Crockery”, a sequence of six poems […] on the products of Josiah Wedgwood’s factories draws in history, politics, class, art and aspiration.” The lustrous products of the factory are contrasted with the imagined lives of Etruria’s workers.

* “”Who Was St. Chad?” evokes the Anglican church my mother attended as a girl. She was part of a strong religious culture, mainly Anglican and Methodist, that existed in Stoke-on-Trent in the first half of the 20th century and has all but disappeared in the course of my generation and since.”

* “”Dreams of Lennox Road” [memories of] the street where I spent the first 18 years of my life.” The top end of Longton, shading into Florence / Normacot.

* ““The Prims” [on] the austere and charitable Primitive Methodists, who emerged in the early 19th century, often drawn from the poorest workers.” This originated on Mow Cop and… “had strong popular appeal in the Potteries up to the mid-twentieth century when Wainwright was a boy”.

The last quote is from the Times Literary Supplement review, which wrongly guesses “The Prims” is set the “Victorian Black Country”. The poem’s use of the word “potbanks” in describing the topography places it rather in North Staffordshire. There are big bottle-ovens (for glass, rather the clay) in Wordsley, in south Staffordshire at the far semi-rural south of the Black Country. But they are not there called “potbanks”.

Possibly there are other Stoke poems in his earlier collections. Would there be enough for a dedicated book of the Stoke poems, one wonders? Perhaps illustrated with new pen drawings?

Gummage restored

by futurilla

Worzel Gummidge: The Complete Restored Edition on Blu-ray in the New Year. This is the original 1979-81 children’s series, seventeen hours in total over five discs. Reworked by the British Film Institute from the original film negatives, which had been found mouldering away in barn. Pre-release reviews report a sparkling HD picture and excellent sound, for this classic series. Previous releases, even the box-set, had an abysmal sub-VHS picture quality. This was made even worse in YouTube clips.

Great to see such a fine evocation of the countryside given this treatment at last, and we can now see some of the all-time perfect gems of TV (such as “Choir Practice”) as they should be seen.

Tolkien Gleanings #6

by futurilla

Tolkien Gleanings #6

* A download of a lecture by Prof. Giuseppe Pezzini (University of Oxford), Tolkien on the Nature and Purpose of Christian Art. “This lecture was given on 21st April 2022 at The Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst as part of the ‘Catholicism and the Arts: An Intellectual Retreat’.” (Online August 2022). Be warned that the Centre’s disastrous podium microphone often goes haywire and this, combined with the very heavy Italian accent, makes for a difficult listen. See also his open-access journal article “The Lords of the West: Cloaking, Freedom and the Divine Narrative in Tolkien’s Poetics” (2019).

* A theological podcast from October 2022 interviews the French author of the new book From Imagination to Faerie: Tolkien’s Thomist Fantasy (July 2022). The interview and discussion are excellent. I can’t locate any reviews of this book, as yet, even on Amazon.

* Amazon is now listing Tolkien’s Library: An Annotated Checklist: Second Edition Revised and Expanded, due 31st January 2023. The book is currently listing as a Kindle ebook only, and the listing previews an appealing new cover…

* Further out in time, a major new Tolkien book has been announced for the end of March 2023 and this is pre-ordering now. To be titled The Battle of Maldon: together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, it will have Tolkien’s scholarly notes and “unpublished and never-before-seen texts and draft”. Plus related essays by Tolkien, and the text of his lecture “The Tradition of Versification in Old English”.

* Tolkien Studies, Volume 19, 2022 Supplement (July 2022, $ paywall). Has a single book-length article, “The Chronology of The Lord of the Rings”. This appears to be the first full publication of Tolkien’s own day-by-day working ‘grid chart’ for The Lord of the Rings, used by him to keep track of which characters were where on which day. I seem to recall that I saw a large section of this at the Bodleian exhibition in Oxford, a few years ago. This special Tolkien Studies supplement has extensive scholarly notes and an introduction. Amazon UK appears to know nothing about it.

* New in the questionable Brazilian Journal of Development (not in DOAJ or the Brazilian aggregators, and I won’t index it in JURN), a November 2022 article in English. “J.R.R. Tolkien: an analysis of the English conservative political culture” is said to be drawn from a Masters dissertation.

* In The Spectator magazine ($ paywall) this week, “In defence of fairy tales”…

“A recent opinion poll has revealed that they terrify people under the age of 30, who consider them horribly inappropriate for children [and] ‘sexist’ and old-fashioned and outdated.” [Yet] “Some of these fairy tales date back 6,000 years […] That they have lasted, often scarcely changed, over the intervening millennia seems to me evidence that they contain certain immutable truths, applicable to all, regardless of whether we were chasing the last handful of mammoths or attempting to split the atom. [But today they are too often seen as] simply conduits for grievance and resentment” [And when such] “stories are read with blinkers on … The real point of the story is entirely lost.”

* And finally, the new research study “The Influence of the Mother Tongue on the Perception of Constructed Fantasy Languages”. Researchers found that Tolkien’s Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin sounded the most mellifluous to German and Japanese speakers. While Orkish which the second most favoured language among Chinese speakers.

Tolkien Gleanings #5

by futurilla

Tolkien Gleanings #5

* The open-access paper GIS & Middle Earth (online 2021). GIS = computer-assisted mapping and map-making. Complete with free DEM height-map downloads, containing the entire terrain of Middle-earth.

* I see that An Unexpected Journal had a special issue on The Imaginative Harvest of Holly Ordway (Christmas 2021). This was inspired by her book which surveys the modern writers whose books Tolkien might have read.

* Calmgrove has a long August 2022 blog article in which he scrutinises some claims made for Tolkien’s Sidmouth (a small English seaside resort)…

“It seems to me that the most likely way that Sidmouth may have inspired Tolkien was that it provided periods of relaxation and escape in which to allow his imagination to run where it wanted, rather than any specific aspects of the Devon seaside and Jurassic Coast. Did Tolkien really “essentially” turn Sidmouth into the Shire and did the Jurassic Coast truly inspire the landscapes, flora, and fauna of the hobbits’ homeland? Or are the town’s advocates chasing a chimaera?”

At first glance there may be some disagreement with Garth. Calmgrove has… “While in Sidmouth he brought the hobbits far to the east of the Old Forest and the Barrow Downs to The Prancing Pony in Bree”, while Garth instead has him writing from Bree to Rivendell (Worlds, p. 74). Actually the Chronology supports both, since when he arrived in Sidmouth for a long holiday (“1st-15th September 1938”, Chronology) he already had the “In the House of Tom Bombadil” chapter done, if the reference to “Chapter VII” is the same as the book’s published chapter numbering. Tolkien then spent the holiday writing the tale from there up to Frodo meeting Gloin at Rivendell. What Calmgrove doesn’t snag is that Garth notes that Tolkien found the name Barnabas Butter on a old Sidmouth gravestone (Worlds, p. 21, side column).

* The December 2022 event “On Dragons and Dinosaurs” at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History…

“On the 1st January 1938, J.R.R. Tolkien gave his thoughts on dragonlore and dinosaurs in an illustrated lecture at the Museum not discussed anywhere else in his works. [Now we stage a live] once-in-a-lifetime re-run of Tolkien’s lecture featuring his original slides, supporting specimens, and documents.”

Completely sold-out in a bang and a flash, of course. Hopefully it will be recorded and placed online after the event. “Tolkien’s Deadly Dragons” has an account of the original lecture.

* Dr. Philip Irving Mitchell’s ongoing public archive of online classroom handouts on Tolkien and Medieval Tradition. With useful short summaries such as Emotional Monarchy in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (August 2022).

* And finally, The Times Diary: Tolkien’s flag flying again (October 2022, $ possible paywall)…

“A historic Oxford pub where Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used to drink [has reopened, post-lockdowns] after supporters each paid at least £1,000 for a share in a 15-year lease. As well as being de-modernised to create a suitably Inklings air, The Lamb and Flag will now host book launches and talks.”

And The Spectator magazine ($ paywall) has an October 2022 article by a leader of the group, describing… How we’re saving Tolkien’s pub.

Tolkien Gleanings #4

by futurilla

Tolkien Gleanings #4

* “Companions in Shipwreck: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Female Friendships” (2019 book chapter, and now newly open-access).

* A new scholarly blog post “Lost in Translation: Ettins in Old English”. It seems the author is pushing back strongly against a lumpy assumption held by a few confabulating pagans, who appear to want to believe that “all giants are ettins” so that they can freely start “equating ettins and ents”. The author notes that… “As far as I am aware, nowhere in the Old English corpus is there an ent who is also referred to as an ettin, or vice versa, so the two appear to be mutually exclusive.”

* Cover for the new second edition of Tolkien at Exeter College, now available direct from John Garth’s website. Apparently, according to a podcast interview, there is no expansion in terms of adding details of Tolkien’s tutors and teachers and their research interests.

* A new book in Greek, The Influence of Ancient Greek Mythology on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (2021).

* “J.R.R. Tolkien: The Art of the Manuscript” Catalog. 200 page catalog for the current Marquette University exhibition, which closes 23rd December 2022. The exhibition, and presumably also its catalog, apparently includes unspecified “never-before published works” by Tolkien.

* A thoughtful new blog post from the Deputy Head Girl at Wimbledon High School in London, “How does mapping help to create a fictional world?”, with a strong Tolkien focus.

* Full details of a 30 credit Theology and Religion module Tolkien: Scholar, Critic, Writer at the University of Exeter. With reading list. Tutor Nick Groom… “will also consider how far Tolkien’s experience of place, including his trips to Cornwall, affected his work”. Module devised/approved in 2019, possibly still running annually.

* The Spanish Tolkien Society has a large exhibition on now. Includes a public talk on “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Spanish Connections”.

* And finally, new on UnHerd is “Who cancelled English folklore? Britain is embarrassed by its heritage.”

Tolkien Gleanings #3

by futurilla

Tolkien Gleanings #3.

Newly noticed at the latest edition of Journal of Tolkien Research, the short conference paper “Tolkien’s Coleridgean Legacy” (i.e. Coleridge).

Also new there, a review of the book Law, Government, and Society in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Works (2022). Another review from 2021 is found here.

New website: Tolkien and Alliterative Verse – A resource for students, poets, researchers, and anyone interested in J.R.R. Tolkien’s poetry, from Anna Smol. Has a Descriptive Bibliography for Tolkien, a guide to finding a small handful of worthy writing to introduce Alliterative Metre, and (“coming soon”) a guide to Secondary Sources.

Old, but new to me: “The Horns of the North: Historical Sources of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Trilogy” (1976). A short conference paper, now online. Some interesting early suggestions for sources, in a major but little-known event in Turkish / central European history.

Updated archive: Tolkien Journal, The 1965 – 1972, said yesterday by the curator to be newly in searchable .PDF form at fanac.org.

Audio interview: Writing About Tolkien, with John Garth (2022). Reveals that Tolkien at Exeter College has gone to a second edition. Nicer format (the first was laser-printed and stapled), adds some of the materials and high-res pictures used for the Bodleian exhibition, and has a few updates, according to a podcast interview with the author. £14 from his website. Not on Amazon, and not likely to be.

The Incredible Nineteenth Century

by futurilla

The Incredible Nineteenth Century: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Fairy Tale. An open-access journal flagged as “Journal coming soon!” from Middle Tennessee State University. Will seek to focus on…

“the time period in which the modern genres of science fiction and fantasy began, and in which the academic study of fairy tale and folklore has its roots.”

Relevant to the 1906-1926 Tolkien, since his world was partly formed by the products of that earlier time in the late 19th century. Much as today someone would have been formed by the 1966-1986 period, though still living and working in the 2000s and onward.

New ‘Tolkien Gleanings’ tag for posts

by futurilla

This blog now has a new tag category for posts, Tolkien Gleanings. This has the more news-y posts on Tolkien items and exhibitions, not my essay-posts on Tolkien. I’ve gone back through the blog and retrospectively tagged relevant posts, back to about 2016. Movie stuff is not included, and the focus is on scholarship.

This new post tag (‘category’ in WordPress speak) means there is now also an RSS feed here just for posts tagged with Tolkien Gleanings. Though, as I said, my Tolkien essay-posts — such as the recent Foxy Tolkien? — won’t show up in this.

Tolkien Gleanings #2

by futurilla

Here’s another of my occasional round-ups of interesting new-ish items of Tolkien scholarship. No-one else appears to be publicly tracking such material (I looked hard, including on Twitter). So I guess I had better do it. And I guess I can’t go on calling these posts “mega-tolks”, so Tolkien Gleanings seem apt and also mellifluous. I had also better number them. Thus… welcome to Tolkien Gleanings #2.

* “Shakespeare’s Faerie Art of Enchantment through Tolkien’s Lens: A Historiographical Introduction”. A new Masters dissertation for the University of Toronto, freely online.

* “Reconstruction Of Medieval Consciousness In The Constructed Middle Ages Of J.R.R. Tolkien”. No download, despite offering a PDF link. But has a long abstract in English. Tolkien’s work as… “the continuation of traditions of European medieval humanitarian thought and the framework of texts that reveal the way of consciousness of people of that epoch”. Possibly the PDF download, should it be enabled, will reveal the full-text to be in Russian?

* The new paid-for journal Hither Shore 17: Brucken und Grenzen – Bridges and Borders (September 2022). Amazon UK calls it a German edition, and indeed it is published by the German Tolkien Society. But so far as I can tell there’s not also a twin English edition, and the TOCs suggest a substantial part of the issue is in English. Indeed, the issue opens with an editorial which muses on what happens when a German journal becomes substantially English. The same shift is apparently true of their conferences.

Among other items in Hither Shore 17, I noted essays in English on…

~ “Explorations into the linguistic character of Westron”. You’ll recall this is the “common tongue” of Middle-earth. Said to be very sparsely documented by either Tolkien or Tolkeinists. Concludes that Westron was a language with several inputs, one heavily Elvish in the early period, and that by the time of the events of LoTR it had diverged somewhat into regional dialects (e.g. the Shire and the Mark) — and it is thus akin to English in its history and divergences.

~ “Reconsidering Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings“.

~ “”One Must Tread the Path that Need Chooses”: The Choice of Need in Tolkien’s Moria Sequence.”

* The paywall journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences has two new Tolkien articles, “Middle-earth wasn’t built in a day: How do we explain the costs of creating a world?” and ““Never Land”: Where do imaginary worlds come from?”. Somewhat related to this theme is Kristine Larsen’s new personal essay in the free journal Messengers from the Stars #6 (2022).

* Also behind a paywall, I note that the Catholic journal Touchstone carries occasional Tolkien articles, such as “Tom Bombadil’s Dominion: A Good Reason for the Appearance of Tolkien’s Obvious Misfit” and “Why Tolkien’s Middle-earth Table Manners Matter Today”.

* New scholarly book: Tolkien ja Kalevala.

* My own “On Merry and Marmaduke” and “Foxy Tolkien?”. Both freely online.

* My new book is also available, Tree & Star: Tolkien and the quest for Earendel.