{"id":18298,"date":"2025-09-29T22:29:58","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T21:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/?p=18298"},"modified":"2025-10-08T05:19:38","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T04:19:38","slug":"tolkien-gleanings-338","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2025\/09\/29\/tolkien-gleanings-338\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolkien Gleanings #338"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings<\/a> #338<\/p>\n

* First Things<\/em> magazine has a new long audio interview with Douglas Estes on his recent books<\/a>, these being Theology and Tolkien: Practical Theology<\/em> and Theology and Tolkien: Constructive Theology<\/em>.<\/p>\n

* From Germany, a call for papers for a conference on “Enmonsterisations in the Fantastic”<\/a>. The text of the call refers to Tolkien a lot. Not surprising, since on reading further it turns out the event will be the 2026 conference of the German Inklings Society. Deadline for proposals: 10th January 2026.<\/p>\n

* A short documentary film on YouTube, about a Marquette University project “Preserving 6,000 Fan Voices”<\/a> (2025). A project in which… “each person has an open mic for three minutes, to share their thoughts on Tolkien”.<\/p>\n

* Talking of Marquette, I see their repository has “The Inherent Goodness of Gardens and their Stewards”<\/a> as depicted in Tolkien’s work. Freely available online.<\/p>\n

* Free in open-access, the latest January 2024 edition of the venerable journal The Lion and the Unicorn<\/em><\/a>. This is usually a paywalled journal, dedicated to scholarly discussion of literature for children. I’m unable to discover if this means all issues going forward will be open-access. However, the journal is supposed to have three issues a year, and yet there are none at all in the rest of 2024 or 2025. Which perhaps suggests it has ceased, and that only the final issue was made open-access? It doesn’t seem as if the editors have moved it away from the publisher and made it open-access there. Anyway, the latest (last?) issue is free.<\/p>\n

* A local weekly public lecture series in North Carolina, “The Power of Story to Mend Division: Insights from J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s Letters”<\/a>. Interesting theme, and also a pleasing poster. Every week through 23rd October 2025.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

* And finally, John Garth on “The day Tolkien became an air raid warden”<\/a> during the Second World War ($ paywall). He has pinned down the date…<\/p>\n

“The day Tolkien enrolled as a Second World War air raid warden has been revealed in a previously unseen image from Oxford\u2019s city archives. It was on Friday 19th September 1941 — much later than has been suggested.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I recall Tolkien was also a volunteer as a member of the Fire-watching Service? Which in the darkness of ‘the blackout’ must have been a fine opportunity for star-watching on clear nights. The paywall means I don’t know if Garth has spotted the connection, but I might add that Tolkien was on ‘the blackout’ streets of Oxford just as Sauron’s Great Darkness was gathering in Middle-earth…<\/p>\n

\u201cI sat up \u2018on duty\u2019 till 1.30 this morn…. At this point [in the tale] I require to know how much later the moon gets up each night when nearing full, and how to stew a rabbit!\u201d (Tolkien, ‘Letters’ 74, April 1944).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This must mean he was writing Sam stewing the brace of coneys, which in ‘Middle-earth time’ was three days before Sauron’s Great Darkness covered the lands.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Picture: Royal Mail postage stamp celebrating the role of the Air Raid Wardens on the Home Front during the Second World War. We see the “W” hat of a warden, and his sling-case which would have had a gas-mask, gas\/fire rattle, whistle, binoculars, street-maps, notepads and more. It seems that volunteers wore civilian clothes and hat\/badge\/armband, while the leaders of each very-local warden’s hut\/shelter wore Army uniform. Apparently pipe-smoking was allowed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings #338 * First Things magazine has a new long audio interview with Douglas Estes on his recent books, these being Theology and Tolkien: Practical Theology and Theology and Tolkien: Constructive Theology. * From Germany, a call for papers for a conference on “Enmonsterisations in the Fantastic”. The text of the call refers to […]<\/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-18298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tolkien-gleanings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18298","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=18298"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18382,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18298\/revisions\/18382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}