Tolkien Gleanings #256

* From the Bodleian and free on YouTube, “Christopher Tolkien at 100: A celebration”.

* A new issue of Amon Hen from the Tolkien Society ($ paywall). The new December 2024 issue has, among others…

    – An examination of… “why Galadriel arrayed Aragorn as an Elf-lord of the West and seemingly favoured his match with Arwen”.
    – A short review of the new History of Middle-earth four-box box-set, focusing on the physical quality… “the bindings are glued instead of stitched”.
    – Reviews of the books Tolkien’s Faith (2023), Leadership in Middle-earth (2021), and a brief personal review-note on the new Collected Poems.
    – Two pages on Goldberry as a supporting character.

Also an intriguing reprint of some artwork I’d not seen before. Presented small and tagged only as “Ent and Entwife by Arthur Rackham”. Reverse image-search shows it to be from Hawthorne’s Wonderbook (1922 edition), retelling selected Ancient Greek myths for children. The book is only to be found on Archive.org as A wonder book, where the artwork is found inserted just before page 167.

* The latest rolling edition of Journal of Tolkien Research is filling up, with new additions including a review of Cities and Strongholds of Middle-earth (2024). The review is freely available online.

* Slipping out of U.S. copyright in the New Year, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Modern Version of the XIV Century Alliterative Poem in the Original Metre (1929). The book was published as an attractive popular edition by Dent in early spring 1929 — thus it seems very likely that Tolkien would have at least looked through it, perhaps in the summer of 1929. Well-reviewed, and then reprinted in 1931. Not on Archive.org, but Hathi Trust has a 1929 scan due for release on the due date. Not in Tolkien’s Library (2nd Edition).

* Notice of a private Tolkien Lecture for the Old Edwardians KES Boys. March 2025, at the new Ruddock Performing Arts Centre, part of Tolkien’s old school (now relocated into south Birmingham). No topic given.

* Set for 9th August 2025 at the Museum in Tewkesbury in the West Midlands, a talk on “Tolkien and the Cotswolds – The shaping of Middle-earth”. No speaker named.

* And finally, at the Grolier in New York City, “Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works”. The exhibition runs until 15th February 2025, and there is also an online version.

Tolkien Gleanings #255

* A review of the recent Arte TV documentary on Tolkien’s places, in Italian. An auto-translation of the review makes the 90-minute film sound rather fair and thoughtful. The review also brings news that the film can be viewed free of charge until early March 2025. There are English subtitles, and I found no region-blocking in place.

* A new open-access article in Classical Receptions Journal, “The Meaning of Mr. Tumnus: classical epic and the making of modern fantasy”. Identifies the use of the faun as part of a masterly “layering of pasts” technique which was developed and used by both Tolkien and Lewis.

* Now online, the schedule for the conference A Flame Imperishable: The Christian Legacy of J.R.R. Tolkien.

* A bare listing for a talk in Oxford on 7th February 2025 at the Divinity School, on “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Forms of Detachment”.

* A new repository record for a forthcoming chapter in a festschrift book titled Florilegium Nordmannicum, on “La presence de la Volundarkviða dans l’oeuvre de J.R.R. Tolkien”. The record has the book as “2024”, but evidence elsewhere suggest it is delayed from 2023 and is now set to appear in 2025. The book’s Tolkien chapter is in French, and the English abstract reveals it examines the…

“omnipresence of the ancient and medieval Germanic world [in Tolkien, and specifically how he] “borrowed elements from the Völundr/Wéland smithy early on to feed his legendarium. Some traces have been erased after numerous rewrites, and others persist, reshaped, or concealed.”

* The European Conservative reviews the recent book Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century (2023). Not to be confused with the similarly-titled book Tolkien in the 21st Century (2022).

* And finally, in The Spectator Christmas special, Matthew Parris on “My mission to save the elm” (probable $ paywall). Elm being the elm trees, towering giants which the English landscape began to lose to the devastating Dutch Elm Disease in the last few years of Tolkien’s life.

Tolkien Gleanings #254

* The open-access Journal of Tolkien Research is seeking peer reviewers, able to review between nine and twelve articles per year.

* Newly listed on Amazon UK, Proceedings of the Tolkien 2019 Conference, for publication as a 610-page book and ebook at the end of February 2025. The event was a major five-day Tolkien conference in Birmingham. I filleted the PDF programme (now vanished) when it appeared and noted interesting items.

* A “free exhibition of tapestries from the world of Tolkien” at the College des Bernardins, Paris. Fifteen of the Aubusson tapestries will be on display in the College’s mediaeval vaults. Running 21st March to 18th May 2025.

* The Church Times has a profile interview with the creator of the new book The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien.

* I somehow missed the news of Visualizing Camelot, which was a 350-item university gallery exhibition surveying the uses of King Arthur in popular culture. The show was developed by subject-expert curators who were able to draw on specialist American and British collections of such material. The free exhibition venue appears to have been rather remote (on Lake Ontario, very near the US/Canada border) and is now over. The show was however co-organised with Bangor University in North Wales, so I guess there may be a possibility it might pop up in the UK in summer 2026? In the meanwhile, there’s a substantial website. Also a 134-page hardback catalogue with a detailed survey-essay of the topic, yet even I can’t discover where one might order this online. Possibly the book was only available to buy at the exhibition?

* Copyright Literacy brings a link to a useful new survey of the state-of-play in the UK for galleries, museums and public domain images. This is in the light of the recent UK legal ruling that there can be no copyright in digital images of 2D out-of-copyright visual works. The article’s table shows which museums are still open to legal action, and which are safely following the law. The matter is especially relevant to scholars who require pictures for use in presentations, articles and books.

* Here is another item useful for scholars. Especially those fed up with the grinding slowless of Google Maps, as it loads up all its junk. For simple “where the heck is Little Puddling?” queries, of the sort historians often make, try Google Maps Ultralite with Labels and enjoy blistering load speed and silky-smooth zooming. It does however lack a measurement tool for distances, for those needing to know how many miles might lie between Little Puddling and Greater Puddling.

* New on Archive.org, a scan of the 55-page Mirkwood Tales (1977) by Eric S. Roberts. Being what appears to be a ‘Middle-earth in Mirkwood’ fannish RPG adaptation, to be played with the mid 1970s edition of Dungeons and Dragons.

* Tolkien in Lettere is a new podcast which seems to be about reading aloud all the Tolkien letters in Italian translation.

* And finally, British Fairies has a new post on ‘Away with the fairies’ — faery terms in English speech.

Tolkien Gleanings #253

* A new podcast interview with the leading Tolkien collector ‘Trotter’…

“Stef and Jude are joined by Tolkien collecting expert and moderator of the Tolkien Collector’s Guide, Andrew ‘Trotter’ Ferguson. Andrew tells us about his experience collecting and sharing the Professor’s material culture.”

* Bombadil as seen through Indian Hindu eyes, in the new scholarly paper from India “Tom Bombadil: A Challenge to Dualism in Tolkien’s Legendarium through the Indian Metaphysical Lens”. Freely available online.

* “Old English Goddesses, Lost and Found” an introductory online study-day on Friday 7th February 2025. There’s a full outline, and it’s obviously not going to be neo-pagan mumbo-jumbo. Booking now.

* Green Book blog has a new blog post on details of Christopher Tolkien’s wartime service, followed by a short list of the author’s current projects. His list includes “Animals during wartime in J.R.R. Tolkien’s work and life”. Springing to mind there are: i) carrier pigeons as battle-front messengers (birds as messengers in The Hobbit and as Saruman’s spies in LoTR); ii) labouring pack-horses (Bill the pony); and iii) likely encounters had by soldiers with ferocious dogs in a battle-torn French countryside (Farmer Maggot’s dogs).

* The Oddest Inkling offers a detailed outline of the Inklings lectures for his forthcoming online course for The Great Courses / The Teaching Company.

* Names and World-building in Fantasy & Science Fictional Universes, a panel to be hosted at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in January 2025. To include the paper “Tolkien’s vs. Rowling’s Names: Historical vs. Modern Reality; Elvish vs. Humorous Inventions”.

* The latest edition of Midland History journal has “Mercian Charms: From The Lair of the White Worm to Penda’s Fen”. This looks “at the mythopoeic reinvention of Anglo-Saxon Mercia” via Bram Stoker’s imaginative but unsuccessful final novel The Lair of the White Worm (1911) and the ‘earth mysteries’ TV-film Penda’s Fen (1974). Tolkien was of course also fascinated by ancient Mercia, although here the article strains in the opposite political direction to Tolkien. The article is part of a special issue of the journal on ‘The Haunted Midlands’ and publisher Taylor & Francis has it as free-to-access, at least for now.

So far as I can tell, Tolkien did not read The Lair of the White Worm (1911). It was published in early November 1911, and by that time he was busy with his first year at Oxford. He might have been disappointed if he had encountered it later (“utterly ruins a magnificent idea” — Lovecraft). Though, in trying to discover if he read it or not, I found mention that… “some of the fairy tales collected in [Stoker’s] Under the Sunset (1882) also have a sinister edge”. I imagine that a book of original fairy tales by the author of Dracula might have interested the Inklings, had they known of it.

* The Silver Key blog discusses the creative uses of King Arthur, specifically comparing Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur with a similar use by the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden.

* And finally, the Foreshadowed and Foresung blog has a long and pleasingly-illustrated appreciation of the pioneering Tolkien artists The Brothers Hildebrandt.

Tolkien Gleanings #252

* A review of the recent Christopher Tolkien conference…

“Two papers, by Sara Brown and Kristine Larsen, discussed the Athrabeth, a key text in the legendarium [1959, in HoME 10: Morgoth’s Ring, pages 301-366], analyzing all of the layers of writing and the choices involved in editing it, and they and Verlyn Flieger emphasized even [Christopher’s] courage in publishing this thing, which cut down to the bedrock of the fictional universe and touched the author’s own deepest religious beliefs. I got the impression, listening to Sara and Kris speak and reading the chat function, that the mere existence of the Athrabeth was news to a lot of the attendees.”

* There’s a Tolkien chapter in the new McFarland book From Soldier to Storyteller: Essays on World War Veterans Who Became Famous Children’s Authors (2024), titled “J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973): War, Fatherhood and Writing for Children”.

* A probable Tolkien article in the latest edition of the Biblical scholarship journal The Expository Times, “Reign of Christ” ($ paywall). There is no abstract, but judging by the title and introduction, it seems likely to relate events in LoTR to six Biblical passages.

* A well-reviewed new book from Oxford University Press, The Victorians and English Dialect: Philology, Fiction, and Folklore (2024). A review in The Critic says the book is accessible to the general reader of British history, and as such it may appeal to readers of Gleanings. Especially since it tells the story of a significant aspect of Tolkien’s scholarly field, as it developed prior to 1905. The “fiction” of the title is of the earthy Thomas Hardy sort, not fantasy.

* On YouTube, a coming-shortly fan reading of “The Death of Saint Brendan” by J.R.R. Tolkien. Though I’m not sure which version, as there are evidently several…

“[1945-46, Tolkien] writes the poem The Death of Saint Brendan (*Imram), producing much initial working, four finished manuscripts, and a typescript. He includes the alliterative verse retelling of the legend of King Sheave, previously associated with The Lost Road, but writes it out as if it were prose. At some later time, he will develop the poem (as Imram) in three further type-scripts.” — from the ‘Companion & Guide: Chronology’.

* This week The European Conservative has a long and timely essay on “Mordor in England”, responding to a first-time reading of LoTR and especially to ‘The Scouring of the Shire’.

* And finally, news that The Hungry Hobbit cafe in Moseley has finally closed. Moseley being a small district that long served as the city of Birmingham’s redoubt for the ‘muesli and Marx’ brigade. But I imagine that some Tolkien tourists may also have sought out the cafe over the years. The local newspaper reports that The Hungry Hobbit, forced to become ‘The Hungry Hob’ after legal threats, has now been replaced by an American-style fried chicken shop. Hopefully this is not named The Lord of the Wings.

Tolkien Gleanings #251

* The latest issue of the rolling Journal of Tolkien Research is beginning to fill up, and now comes the first peer-reviewed article, “The Land of Fairies of J.R.R. Tolkien”. Freely available online.

* The major new book The Island: W.H. Auden and the Last of Englishness focuses on the poet’s biography prior to his departure for America. With special and newly-illuminating focus on his roots in south Birmingham and his time as a teacher at nearby Malvern, as the young Auden yearned for a “lyrical nationalism” and for recognition as a national poet. Given his similar roots, interests and trajectory — and also his later direct connection with Tolkien at a critical time in the birth of LoTR — this acclaimed new book may interest Gleanings readers.

* The blog jwwrightauthor has some new “Thoughts on Moorcock’s Criticism of Tolkien and Other Fantasists”. In another blog, SteadyHQ, we’re offered another reason why Moorcock got it so wrong. Like many other pungent leftist ‘critics’ of LoTR in the first 40 or so years after publication, it now appears that “Moorcock never really read LoTR”.

* Tolkien Notes 21 (end of October 2024) from the Tolkien scholars Hammond & Scull.

* The World Fantasy Convention 2025, to be held in Brighton on the south coast of the UK, has announced its two themes. ‘Lyrical Fantasy’ and ’50 Years of British Fantasy and Horror’. The latter presumably being 1975-2025.

* Shortly to be released to online streaming on Arte.tv, the feature-length TV documentary Tolkien: The True Story of the Rings (2024)… “This documentary explores the real places in England and elsewhere that provided inspiration for Tolkien”.

* For the real thing including muddy boots, Imagining Middle-earth: A Journey Through Tolkien’s England with Michael Drout, during October 2025. Start at Robin Hood’s Bay in Yorkshire, and end in Oxford.

* The Walking Tree Publishers website has ejected its recent cyber-gremlins. The ‘Latest News’ page now has new links to three free PDF reviews of Germanic Heroes, Courage, and one for Fate: Northern Narratives of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium and Binding them all: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on J.R.R. Tolkien and His Works.

* Tolkien’s old university college is celebrating 30 years of Exeter’s musical organ, with ‘An evening of organ music inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’. Set for 27th February 2025.

* Tolkien & Lewis’s “Eagle and Child pub in Oxford set to host public consultation”, reports This Is Oxfordshire. The consultation event has been and gone (21st November), but the article has interior and side-alley pictures, plus developer pictures of what the famous pub might look like after the roof-fixing and renovation.

* And finally, an illustration of the perils of not being on Twitter. I’ve published an interview with him, and read his biography, but until today I had no idea about Elon Musk and Tolkien.

Tolkien Gleanings #250

* Now online, four presentations from Doxamoot 2024. Freely downloadable in .MP3 format are…

   – “‘Like Rain on the Mountain’: Theodoric, Beowulf, Theoden, and Tolkien’s Elegy for Northern Courage”.

   – “Pentecost at the Stone of Erech: Oathbreakers and Covenant Keepers in the Legendarium”.

   – “‘We heard of the horns in the hills ringing’: Musical memory of the Rohirrim in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings“.

   – “Love’s Obligation: Deceit and Truth: The Divide Between Virtue and Vice in Tolkien”.

* A new podcast interview with Graham McAleer, author of Tolkien, Philosopher of War.

* Gleanings previously noted the latest issue of the open-access Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, with its lead article “Hautaamistavat J.R.R. Tolkienin fantasiafiktiossa” (‘Burial customs in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy fiction’). Yet I overlooked the same issue’s review of Nole Hyarmenillo: An Anthology of Iberian Scholarship on Tolkien. Also note that Fafnir editors have a new call-for-papers for the June 2025 issue, published a month or so ago with a submission deadline of 31st December 2024.

* A call-for papers for the two-day conference “C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien: The Promise of Christian Fairytales”, set for California in August 2025. Deadline is 15th March 2025.

* A new 2024 issue of the open-access Journal of Gods and Monsters. No Tolkien, but it may interest some.

* The BARS Review has a call for contributors and can supply review copies of The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and Romanticism and Speculative Realism, among others.

* A call for book chapters, for From Desolation to Idyllic Habitations: Exploring the Landscapes of Dragons in Literature, Film, and Pop Culture. A deadline of 20th December 2024, for what looks like a 2026 book.

* A new review in Spanish of the book Tolkien revisitado: 50 anos despues de su viaje a Valinor (2024) (‘Tolkien Revisited: 50 years after his journey to Valinor’), in the latest edition of the open-access journal Doxa Comunicacion.

* And finally, The People Under the Hill is a series of alternative history novels. This month has seen the release of the second book, Tolkien and The Dangerous Truth. The covers have abysmal typography but the blurb makes it sound like a lot of erudite and contrarian fun, beginning with… “What if Tolkien’s Oxford Dictionary work during the summer of 1919 were only a cover story?” Anyway, it’s a substantial new ‘Tolkien as character’ novel and there’s a 10% free preview for Kindle ebooks. So have a look for yourself. [Update: I’ve now read and enjoyed the first novel in the series, and have high hopes for this second novel].

Tolkien Gleanings #249

* I see that a new issue of the rolling Journal of Tolkien Research is underway, with the first posted essay being “Some notes on Seth Kreeger’s “Metaphysical Considerations in Ea””. Freely available online.

* Alas, not me examines “The Repentance of Angels: a Curious Departure in Tolkien”. Freely available online.

* We now have On Tolkien and Theology: Part II in which… “Douglas Estes joins the podcast once again to discuss the second volume of a collection of essays he edited on theology in the works and worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien.” Part one of this podcast interview was posted back in February 2024. Freely available online.

* Forthcoming from Kent State University Press, the academic book Finding the Numinous: An Ecocritical Look at Dune and the Lord of the Rings, due at the end of February 2025. In 176-pages the author suggests that…

“these imagined worlds’ environments are sacred spaces fundamental to understanding these texts and their authors’ purposes. [The author] applies Tolkien’s three functions of fantasy — recovery, escape, and consolation — to demonstrate how both authors’ works are intrinsically connected to their ecocritical messages and overarching moral philosophies.”

* A review of the “first publication of J.R.R. Tolkien’s collected poems”, with some additional advice on the book’s potential as a Christmas present…

“be forewarned: this book is not for the faint of heart. Its massive scope, and the academic presentation of the material, are better suited to the Tolkien scholar than the casual reader — certainly not the one who leapfrogs the songs in The Lord of the Rings.”

* Freely available on YouTube, “Lewis, Tolkien, and the Founding of the Inklings”… “In this charming conversation, host Eric Metaxas interviews philologist Simon Horobin on his new book C.S. Lewis’s Oxford.”

* Here in the UK the editors of our venerable Victoria County History series invite new original ghost stories, presumably related to the sort of precise British local history that the VCH volumes so ably supply. I can imagine a tale in which the shade of Tolkien appears, perhaps peeved by a mistake in explicating some tree-ish place-name.

* And finally, lucky University of Maryland students are able to take a two-week “Tolkien & Lewis in Oxford” study-and-visits course in England, in July 2025. Including visits to… “Birmingham, birthplace of the Industrial Revolution”… hmmm, well… I think Ironbridge and the Black Country might have something to say about that claim. Perhaps a short lecture for the students on “Gullible tourists, profitable places, and the invention of tradition in England” might be suitably enlightening, detailing the ways in which the invention of tradition has long been a popular English tradition.

Tolkien Gleanings #248

* Due in a few days from Cambridge University Press, the academic book Theology and the Mythic Sensibility: Human Myth-Making and Divine Creativity. The blurb is short and unhelpful, but a text found elsewhere reveals that Tolkien is discussed. The cover appears to use artwork by Ian Miller.

* New at The European Conservative magazine, the long essay “Swallowed by the Dragon: Monstrous Meanings in Tolkien’s Stories”.

* Another set of long online lectures in which Rachel Fulton-Brown sets about exploring Tolkien. Her ‘The Forge of Tolkien’ set was previously paywalled, but is now being slowly and freely posted to YouTube. This batch of releases includes ‘On Fairy Stories’, ‘Magic Words’, ‘The Olde Speech’, ‘The Voice of Saruman’, and several more.

* J.R.R. Jokien Essays Vol. I – 2023. A new ebook of essays from the “humorous, sometimes earnest” Jokien with Tolkien blog, previously paywalled at Substack/Patreon. Judging by the titles, I assume the essays are from the “earnest” side of the venture.

* In the USA, a travelling stage production I don’t think I’d noticed before. Christmas with C.S. Lewis is… “set during a 1962 visit to Lewis by holidaying Americans”. Judging by the blurb it also has flashbacks featuring Tolkien.

* The latest open-access Journal for Religion, Film and Media is themed around ‘Escaping the Moment: Time Travel as a Negotiation of Transcendence’ (November 2024). The issue also has a call-for-papers for a future issue on ‘Death, Loss and Mourning in Film and Media’.

* Seemingly newly ingested at The Free Library, a full-text run of the journal Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature (1997-2024). Has a couple of Tolkien and Lewis articles.

* And finally, a new and pleasing page of hobbit penmanship from MatejCadil, “Oliphaunt”.