Tolkien Gleanings #307
* A Pilgrim in Narnia’s blog offers a summary of his soon-to-be-defenced thesis “Unveiling Hope: Do the Inhabitants of Arda Know How Their Own Story Ends?”…
“[…] the entire legendarium has been recorded and passed down from the Valar to the Elves and subsequently through the Hobbits. Therefore, all of Arda is revealed to be undergirded by the Music of the Ainur, which is more than a creation hymn – it is a sustaining breath, echoing through waters, songs, and the hearts of every individual. This Music is heard beside hearths, in dreams before perilous roads, and wherever water is found. Drawing from the legendarium, with modern scholarship simply providing context, this study argues that Arda is alive and looking forward to a final eucatastrophe where all sad things come untrue.”
* Anna Smol’s blog has a new post which offers “Some glimpses into Westmoot 2025”, including outlining the focus of her paper “Tolkien’s Myth-making and Dreams of Earendil” (on his early poetic uses of the character). There are also links to posted presentations from others at Westmoot.
* The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts has announced their 4th Virtual International Conference. This is to be themed ‘Embodied Spirits’ and is set for 17th-21st September 2025. The deadline for paper submission is 30th June 2025. Regrettably, their website is currently dead even to archive.is, but a search-snippet reveals that this year’s theme…
“invites engagement with how embodied spirits persist, haunt, and empower across both cultural and technological landscapes”.
* At The Imaginative Conservative, a new review of the book The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination (2025).
* One I missed in January 2025, an episode of Princeton University’s Madison Notes podcast, “Tolkien, Philosopher of War: A Conversation with Graham McAleer”.
* The Oxford Mail local newspaper has a few more details about the forthcoming Tolkien book. A central figure is apparently…
“William Morris [who led the way in] mass-producing small cars at affordable prices and donated millions to worthy causes. [The Oxford] businessman is thought to be the inspiration for a character known as the ‘Daemon of Vaccipratum’ in the never-before published story, The Bovadium Fragments. [The work may reflect] a bid to alleviate traffic by building a dual carriageway across Christ Church Meadow, an ancient open space in the heart of Oxford, [which] sparked a lengthy public debate well into the 1960s, when the plan was eventually abandoned.”
* John Garth will be giving a talk on “Tolkien’s Elves: A journey through the realms of Middle-earth” in London on 15th July 2025. Booking now.
* The Australian Book Review has a scathing theatre review of the recent Australian attempt at a musical of The Lord of the Rings. Freely available online.
* On DeviantArt, a pleasing and easy-to-follow comic-book style map of a part of The Shire by AP-Cartography. Possibly of special interest to those reading the early parts of LoTR to children, after completing The Hobbit. Especially since there’s a 5.1Mb free download of the high-res 300dpi version, which makes it suitable for printing and colouring-in. Or perhaps table-top tracing of a large print, to create one’s own version.
* Also of note, in terms of walks in the Shire, is the French book Promenades au Pays Ses Hobbits: Itineraires a travers La Comte de J.R.R. Tolkien (2012) (‘Walks with Hobbits: some routes through the Shire of J.R.R. Tolkien’). New to me, discovered via an auto-translation of the 2018 French Web page which describes all the attempts at Middle-earth mapping. It turns out to be a short and well-reviewed 120-page book which describes seven Shire walks as if they were primary-world walks, reported in guidebook style. Has small maps, copious footnotes to all the sources drawn on, and old spot-engravings taken from public-domain clipart which serve as illustrations. Not yet translated, but one might still buy the £6.50 Kindle ebook. Which would then justify the obtaining of a digital copy from elsewhere… which you’d then make into a .PDF file and run through Google Translate’s free AI translation of long documents.
* And finally… new on YouTube is Malcolm Guite on Tolkien’s Dragon Poetry. Readings of three versions of the newly published poem on the dragon Scatha (you’ll recall his hoard was the source of Merry’s ‘raise the Shire’ horn).