Tolkien Gleanings #244

* From Anna Smol, two new articles on Tolkien’s ‘The Homecoming’.

* A new Italian dissertation from Padua, Lo Hobbit: le origini del drago Smaug tra modello indoeuropeo e germanico (‘The origins of the dragon Smaug among the Indo-European and Germanic models’). “The study shows that Tolkien was clearly inspired by Indo-European and Germanic models to create Smaug.” No PDF download as yet, just a short abstract.

* New to me, an L.P. vinyl record of The Silmarillion Of Beren And Luthien (1977), read by Christopher Tolkien.

* At Signum University, a course on The Music of Middle-earth. Running into 2025, with a focus on the magnificent movie music of Howard Shore.

* In a May 2024 issue of the Glasgow student journal Mapping the Impossible: Journal for Fantasy Research, “Tolkien and Voice: Sound Descriptions in The Lord of the Rings“. Freely available online.

* A YouTube video from 2023, “The Promises to the Overcomer”. I probably missed it before because both the cryptic title and the blurb omitted any mention of what it was about. Turns out that the subtitle of the talk was actually “The Gifts and Rewards Given to the Fellowship in The Lord of the Rings“.

* A new and sumptuous Daniel Crouch Rare Books Catalogue XXXIX: “I wisely started with a map…” – a celebration of fictional cartography (2024). Illustrated. £50 in paper, or download the PDF for free.

* Jordan M. Poss blogs on Tolkien and Buchan.

* In Oxford, a planning application has been submitted for the initial repair of the exterior of The Eagle & Child pub, one of the key Oxford pubs frequented by Tolkien and Lewis, ahead of a re-opening by the new owners.

* And finally, The Internet Archive is back online, partly. No new items after 9th October. No user log-ons or uploads. No ‘search inside’, just search of metadata. Still, it’s significantly faster than it used to be. Donations are welcomed, to help it stay online in the future.

Tolkien Gleanings #243

* New on YouTube, leading Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger on “70 Years of Reading Tolkien”. Freely available online.

* The Bodleian now has a Web page for the event Christopher Tolkien at 100: a celebration. Free and booking now.

* The latest issue of Journal of Tolkien Research is not a rolling one, but rather a fully-filled issue on “J.R.R. Tolkien and Medieval Poets” in honor of Richard C. West. As well as the articles there is also a two-page biography and an appreciation of West, plus a “Selected Bibliography of Publications by Richard C. West about J.R.R. Tolkien”. Freely available online.

* In case you missed it, the last article to be added to the previous rolling Journal of Tolkien Research was “Rimmo nin Bruinen dan in Ulaer!: Waters of Wisdom and Wonder in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring”…

“Although environmental themes in Tolkien’s works have been widely researched, the specific role of water in Elven realms — and its possible Celtic cultural connotations — remains largely overlooked.”

* More previously-paywalled lectures on Tolkien by Rachel Fulton-Brown are now freely on YouTube or will be there shortly. Among these are A Taste for Tongues; Ichor and Potatoes; The Ent in the Moon; Through a Glass Darkly; and Magic Words.

* The 2025 C.S. Lewis Summer Institute now has speaker and artist details. The July conference in Northern Ireland is themed ‘Returning Home: C.S. Lewis, Roots, & Transformation’.

* The Case for Reading Tolkien at All Levels of Catholic Education is an event set for 4th January 2025, among sumptuous-looking surroundings in Pasadena, California. Speakers include Holly Ordway.

* And finally, Pipe Smokers Den snaps some relics of Lewis and Tolkien at Wheaton College, including Lewis’s tobacco pipe.

Tolkien Gleanings #242

* The long-awaited Tolkien on Chaucer, 1913-1959 book should have been released today, in hardcover and Kindle ebook.

* Now recorded and freely available on YouTube, Tolkien’s Collected Poems – Livestream chat with editors Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond.

* The European Conservative on “Worlds of Delight: The Poetry of J.R.R. Tolkien”. Being an appreciation of the wealth of Tolkien’s poetry, now newly available in the Collected Poems.

* The £25 paperback of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Utopianism and the Classics is due at the end of October 2024.

* The new German collection Marchen und Gesellschaft (‘Folk and fairy tale and society’) has an essay on “J.R.R. Tolkien’s “On Fairy-Stories”: what is a fairy tale good for anyway?”. A 16 page summary and commentary, in German.

* A new Journal of Inklings Studies: Vol. 14, No. 2 (October 2024) ($ paywall, free reviews). Reviews, among others, of Germanic Heroes, Courage, and Fate: Northern Narratives of Tolkien’s Legendarium; and Pity, Power, and Tolkien’s Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many.

* New in English in the Serbian journal Interlitteraria “Fictionality in ‘Fog on the Barrow-downs’: Myth and Reference”. Despite the enticing title it turns out to be almost all academic-literary theory, rather than steeped in a deep understanding of British folklore, tales, landscape and weather. Freely available online.

* New and free on Fanac.org, scans of three 1970s issues of Mythprint.

* The Malvern Gazette local newspaper reports that “Tolkien expert’s talk cancelled after hurricanes destroys his home”…

“John Garth, who was due to speak at the Coach House Theatre on Sunday (13th October), is unable to attend after his family home in the southern USA was damaged by hurricanes Helene and Milton.”

I had no idea he had moved to the USA. Very sorry to hear of the calamity, and I hope that everyone is safe along with the copies of his scholarly work. I imagine this event may also affect his forthcoming Oxford University talk (24th October), “Quisling and Prisoner: How the Second World War shaped the treason of Isengard”?

* Joseph Loconte’s book The War for Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933–1945 is now set for a June 2025 release.

* The Sentient Tree in Speculative Fiction is due to be published by Palgrave Macmillan just before Christmas 2024, as a £100 academic book. It’s a relatively short single-author book, and I’d guess it will have at least half a chapter on Tolkien.

* Difficult to find anything to link these days, among all the quickie cash-for-clicks clickbait that floods YouTube every day. But I guess I should mention this admittedly very-popular form occasionally (15,000-50,000 hits, compared to 5 or 6 hits for a Gleanings issue), and this week these two items look promising. The Lotus Eaters podcast discusses Tolkien the traditionalist in “Tolkien Hated Motorbikes and Loved Housewives”. While the Jess of the Shire podcast asks “Did Tolkien Hate…Everything?”…

“The Internet really loves to push the idea that J.R.R. Tolkien hated… well, everything. So, did he?”.

* And finally, Archive.org is still offline, after a serious hack. Once back, it will probably be a good idea to get the magnet links for your uploads, and host them on a blog page somewhere. If you’re still seeding the torrent, the file(s) should then remain available even if the Archive goes down again. Someone may also wish to do the same with all the vital free-access Tolkien research books and materials. It won’t be me.

Tolkien Gleanings #241

It’s the two-year anniversary edition of Tolkien Gleanings. New Patreon supporters are always welcome.

* New on YouTube, “1967 footage of Donald Swann performing Tolkien’s songs”. Apparently the only such footage.

* MIT’s Ancient & Medieval Studies Colloquium presents Wayne G. Hammond & Christina Scull on editing Tolkien. 12th November 2024 at MIT. Looks like it’s MIT students-only, though I guess we may see a recording posted in due course?

* The Christopher Tolkien Centenary Conference page now has a speaker-list, though no titles of their papers or talks.

* A new edition of Amon Hen (#309, October 2024) ($ paywall), now available for download by Tolkien Society members.

    – Editorial [the magazine is “no longer accepting any fan-fiction”].
    – Tolkien’s Greater Project [is there an arc that crosses all the Middle-earth works?].
    – The Role of Inns in The Lord of the Rings.
    – Tolkien and Old Norse.
    – Art in Tolkien Books [brief considerations of some ‘illustrated Tolkien’ books]
    – Review: Reading Tolkien in Chinese.
    – They Also Serve [on the figure of Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs].

* Signum University’s list of online short-courses for December 2024 include ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’s Letters from Father Christmas‘ and ‘The Poetic Corpus of J.R.R. Tolkien: The Early Poems 2 (Volume 1: The Years 1910-1919)’.

* New at the Journal of Tolkien Research, “Wizard, Demon, Cat; Reformer, Satanist, Bureaucrat: a diachronic analysis of three modes of Sauron in the Legendarium in light of The Book of Lost Tales“.

* Anna Smol has posted her First Impressions of The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien.

* A ComicCon Interview With John Hendrix, maker of the new illustrated children’s book and part graphic-novel The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien (2024).

* From the Ukraine, a long abstract in Ukranian for a 2024 article that… “analyses the colours in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which play an important role as key elements of creating images and atmosphere” in Middle-earth.

* New at Archive.org, Rambles in Cornwall (1928). Though not an entire scan of this chunky book. Just the two chapters on The Lizard and the Mount. These are relevant to what Tolkien might have seen on his extended walking holiday on the Lizard in 1914, a decade or so before the book’s author made several walks in the district from a base at Helston (Tolkien, by contrast, was based in Lizard Town). The author observes the landscape and coast with a critical eye, and dutifully notes any interesting features of the older local churches. He occasionally notes standing stones, prehistoric rock chambers and ancient wells.

* And finally, ‘Little Sword’: Denmark’s oldest runes found on knife blade.

Tolkien Gleanings #240

* Holly Ordway takes “A First Look at The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien”, in Word on Fire. Freely available online.

* Lingwe blogs the question “Can generative AI help us analyze The Lord of the Rings?”. The answer is currently ‘no’, at least judging by the conclusion of his test with Google’s general AI. Which is a poor AI to choose, for several reasons that have been well publicised. But that aside, problems were found by the test. For instance the AI offered up the false notion that there is the word… “Windlestraw: a type of grass mentioned in the Shire”. There is, but not in the Shire. The word was old Scots, used by Robert Louis Stevenson in his short fable “The Song of the Morrow”. Stevenson has a mysterious hooded piper appear on a dismal Scottish beach, and the sound of his mournful and depressive playing of the wailing pipes is described as… “like the wind that sings in windlestraw”. My guess would be that someone once mentioned this word in a scholarly Tolkien paper on ‘Withywindle’, and thus the AI’s confusion arose?

* Another paper newly added to the latest rolling issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research, “Fallen Kingdoms and Ancient Monoliths: The Influence of Atlantis and Egypt in Tolkien’s Numenor”.

* A new book-chapter, “From Old English orcneas to George MacDonald’s Goblins with Soft Feet: Sources of Inspiration and Models for Tolkien’s Orcs from English Literature” ($ paywall, free footnotes). In English, to be found in a new predominantly German-language book on various ‘orcs’ in history and popular culture.

* New to me, Insolita: Revista Brasileira de Estudos Interdisciplinares do Insolito, da Fantasia e do Imaginario (‘Insolita: Brazilian Journal of Studies of the Unusual, Fantastic and Imaginary’). Freely available in open-access, currently with seven issues all in Portuguese. Appears to have a strong tilt toward screen culture, but it may interest some.

* A new small book, titled Recovering Consolation: Sam’s Enchanted Path in The Lord of the Rings, discussing what makes Sam the most beloved character for many readers. Just over 150 pages in paperback, and also available as a Kindle ebook.

* And finally, new on DeviantArt, a handy print-and-fold Silmarillion Guide made by a fan. At-a-glance help, for when your head is spinning due to all the names, peoples and places. Free as a 14Mb .PNG file.

Tolkien Gleanings #239

* New in open-access from Italy, “The Tengwar and the Angerthas: an analysis of Tolkien’s Runes” (2023). PDF freely available, but the website is currently unresponsive when trying to download.

* A new Parma Eldalamberon 23: The Feanorian Alphabet, Part 2 & Eldarin Pronouns. “Released: 19th September 2024”, as a print-on-demand book.

* Available on 30th September 2024, the new book Celebrating Tolkien’s Legacy from Walking Tree, and now listed on Amazon UK. A misleading title, but the contents took rather interesting…

    1. “Tea in Hay” [speculation on a possible day-trip from Birmingham to Kinver, as a boy].

    2. The 1897 Diamond Jubilee and the Long Awaited Party.

    3. May Incledon, the Other Suffield Aunt.

    4. J.R.R. Tolkien: Ambidexter. [Tolkien was ambidextrous].

    5. For Want of a Biography, the Story Was Lost [on the roadblocks which prevented a full biography].

    6. 1904: Mabel Tolkien, Living and Dying.

    7. The Interlace of Autobiography and Faerian Imagery in “Smith of Wootton Major”.

    8. Tolkien as Forgotten Utopian.

    9. Christopher Tolkien as Editor: The Perils of Kinship.

* In the latest The Quietus an article in which… “Skye Butchtard remembers their dad’s collection of cassettes on which he recorded the 1981 radio adaptation” of The Lord of The Rings. ($ paywall) (And they also throw ad-blocker users off the site — thus the link is to Archive.is).

* “Exploring Tolkien” with Dr. Patrick Curry, a £95 four-week course in October 2024. With a slant toward myth and faerie. Booking now.

* And finally, two illustration exhibitions on the western outskirts of London. At the Heath Robinson Museum near London, the large exhibition “The Art of Sidney H. Sime, Master of Fantasy” from 28th September to 5th January 2025. Might be combined with the relatively nearby exhibition “Flower Fairies: The Magical World of Cicely Mary Barker”, which runs 22nd October 2024 to 27th April 2025.

Tolkien Gleanings #238

* Mythcon 53 (August 2024), with abstracts and now also videos and PDFs. A wealth of items, but a few I noted included…

    – The Niggling Bandersnatch: Tolkien’s Revisionist Tendencies and the Canon of Middle-earth (video and panel transcript).

    – Seeking, hesitating and doubting in Tolkien’s ‘Smith of Wootton Major’ (PDF ‘coming soon’)

    – The Eschatology of Tolkien’s Middle-earth (video and transcript).

* A new German Tolkien documentary, due for TV broadcast on 5th December 2024, Tolkien: Die wahre Geschichte Ringe (‘The True Story of the Rings’). 90 minutes, by Jean-Christoph Caron (ZDF/ARTE, head of documentaries) and Matthias Schmidt. There was an in-cinema preview presentation for those involved, on 13th September.

* Due for publication in a few days, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Very Short Introduction, a pocket-book in the Very Short Introductions series.

* The new rolling issue of Journal of Tolkien Research has its first article, on “The Wayland-legend and the First Age of Middle-earth”.

* More previously-paywalled lectures on Tolkien by Rachel Fulton-Brown, now free on YouTube. Further to the earlier video releases I mentioned in Gleanings #229, the ongoing release of her series now continues with “A Notion of Time” (live). Then: “A Deeper Delve”; “Falling Wide Asleep”; “Norman Castles”; and “A Taste for Tongues” (all scheduled for airing soon).

* A new podcast, Tolkien’s Philosophy of Fairy Stories with Dr. Philip Chase, Chase being a medieval literature specialist and now also a fantasy author.

* Wormwoodania unearths “A Secret Sussex Fantasy”…

“The Man Who Was Sussex, A Hand-Book for Hikers (1933). This begins when two hikers get lost in a mist near Chanctonbury Ring, the great earthwork and landmark [and are then] rescued by a local who seems to be both fully human and yet with an ancestral and elemental quality, and he then guides them around other historic and scenic sites in the county. As the title suggests, he is in fact the personification of Sussex and its storied landscape.”

The likeness is not mentioned but it sounds somewhat LoTR-like to me, in terms of the scene with the hobbits on the Barrow-downs and Bombadil. Published by the major publisher Duckworth I see, so I assume it had some publicity at the time — and might have come to the attention of Tolkien. There are also four copies currently on eBay, suggesting it had a reasonable sale at the time of publication. The book is not yet scanned and online. Tolkien’s Bombadil in poetry was of course earlier than the book’s date of 1933, but the more expansive Bombadil of the LoTR chapters was written in autumn 1938.

* Now online, titles of the papers to be presented at the Tolkien and His Editors seminar.

* And finally, Princeton University’s online Index of Medieval Art should by now be free for all to use. It looks like it is, on a flying visit. The plan was that it would be perpetually ‘free to use’ from 1st July 2023 onward, for “researchers at all levels”.