{"id":16540,"date":"2024-12-04T19:43:21","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T19:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/potbanks.wordpress.com\/?p=16540"},"modified":"2024-12-04T19:43:21","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T19:43:21","slug":"tolkien-gleanings-253","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2024\/12\/04\/tolkien-gleanings-253\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolkien Gleanings #253"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings<\/a> #253<\/p>\n

* A new podcast interview<\/a> with the leading Tolkien collector ‘Trotter’…<\/p>\n

“Stef and Jude are joined by Tolkien collecting expert and moderator of the Tolkien Collector\u2019s Guide, Andrew ‘Trotter’ Ferguson. Andrew tells us about his experience collecting and sharing the Professor\u2019s material culture.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* 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”<\/a>. Freely available online.<\/p>\n

* “Old English Goddesses, Lost and Found”<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

* Green Book<\/em> blog has a new blog post on details of Christopher Tolkien’s wartime service<\/a>, followed by a short list of the author’s current projects. His list includes “Animals during wartime in J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s work and life”. Springing to mind there are: i) carrier pigeons as battle-front messengers (birds as messengers in The Hobbit<\/em> and as Saruman’s spies in LoTR<\/em>); 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).<\/p>\n

* The Oddest Inkling<\/em> offers a detailed outline<\/a> of the Inklings lectures for his forthcoming online course for The Great Courses \/ The Teaching Company.<\/p>\n

* Names and World-building in Fantasy & Science Fictional Universes<\/a>, a panel to be hosted at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in January 2025. To include the paper “Tolkien\u2019s vs. Rowling\u2019s Names: Historical vs. Modern Reality; Elvish vs. Humorous Inventions”.<\/p>\n

* The latest edition of Midland History<\/em> journal has “Mercian Charms: From The Lair of the White Worm<\/em> to Penda\u2019s Fen”<\/em><\/a>. 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<\/em> (1911) and the ‘earth mysteries’ TV-film Penda’s Fen<\/em> (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.<\/p>\n

So far as I can tell, Tolkien did not read The Lair of the White Worm<\/em> (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<\/a><\/em> (1882) also have a sinister edge”. I imagine that a book of original fairy tales by the author of Dracula<\/em> might have interested the Inklings, had they known of it.<\/p>\n

* The Silver Key<\/em> blog discusses the creative uses of King Arthur<\/a>, specifically comparing Tolkien\u2019s The Fall of Arthur<\/em> with a similar use by the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden.<\/p>\n

* And finally, the Foreshadowed and Foresung<\/em> blog has a long and pleasingly-illustrated appreciation<\/a> of the pioneering Tolkien artists The Brothers Hildebrandt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s Guide, Andrew ‘Trotter’ Ferguson. Andrew tells us about his experience collecting and sharing the Professor\u2019s material culture.” * Bombadil as seen through Indian Hindu eyes, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tolkien-gleanings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}