{"id":18554,"date":"2025-11-14T20:30:26","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T20:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/?p=18554"},"modified":"2025-11-14T20:50:57","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T20:50:57","slug":"tolkien-gleanings-358","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2025\/11\/14\/tolkien-gleanings-358\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolkien Gleanings #358"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings<\/a> #358<\/p>\n

* The contents-list is now available for the academic book Queer Approaches to Tolkien<\/a><\/em> (2025). This offers 12 essays plus a bibliography. Amazon UK is saying ‘U.S. import only’ and Amazon USA is saying 25th November 2025, but publisher McFarland now flags it as “in stock” and I assume it’s shipping.<\/p>\n

   – The Problematic Perimeters of Elrond \u00adHalf-elven and Ronald \u00adEnglish-Catholic.
\n   – I Dream of Gandalf: or, How I Was Raised by Wizards.
\n   – The End Is Queer: Cleanness<\/em> and \u00adTolkien\u2019s Apocalyptic Landscape.
\n   – Mother or Other: \u00adTolkien\u2019s Shelob and the \u201c\u00adMonstrous-Feminine\u201d.
\n   – Eowyn and\/or Dernhelm: Reading Eowyn’s (Trans)Masculine Disguise.
\n   – “Something Mighty Queer”: Destabilizing Gender, Intimacy and Family in \u00adTolkien’s Legendarium.
\n   – “For he would take no wife”: Surface Reading, Earnur and the Queering of the Unmarried Male in The Lord of the Rings<\/em>.
\n   – “Bending over with naked blade”: The Erotics of Suffering and \u00adMale-Male Penetration in \u00adTolkien\u2019s Legendarium.
\n   – Frodo, Sam and the Ring of Power: A Queer Erotic Triangle.
\n   – “Saruman [?Pardoned]”: The Queerness of Sex in \u00adTolkien’s The Lord of the Rings<\/em>.
\n   – “and stooping he raised Beleg and kissed his mouth”: Queering Canon with \u00adTolkien Fanfiction.
\n   – “What care I for the hands of a king?”: \u00adTolkien Fanfiction and Narratives of the Transgender Self.
\n\u00ad   – Tolkien and Alterity: A Bibliography.<\/p>\n

* A review in English of the new German-language academic book “In Texten wildern: Slash oder die Erotisierung fiktiver Stoffe durch Fangemeinden”<\/a><\/em> (2025) (‘Poaching texts: slash or the eroticization of fictional material by fan communities’). The review is freely available online. One of the book’s chapters focuses on an apparently very popular three-year pornographic fan-fiction which… “portrays a sexual power struggle between Aragorn and Boromir. Despite apparent non-consensual elements, the narrative emphasizes that both characters are equally strong and willingly engage in the power play” which is depicted in “explicit sex scenes”.<\/p>\n

* New from Germany, in English, the article “Reimagining The Lord of the Rings<\/em> Slash Fiction, Queer Interventions, and Their Limits”<\/a> (2025). Freely available online. Centers around discussion of the comic-book Lord of the Cock Rings<\/em> which depicts Sam and Frodo as gay lovers… <\/p>\n

“Rejecting any impulse toward subtlety or restraint, the visual narrative refuses to sanitize queer desire, instead embracing graphic portrayals of erotic encounters, including self-pleasure, rimming, penetrative intercourse, and foot-based masturbation.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* I read that the recent academic book Cosplay and the Dressing of Identity<\/em> (2024) opens with an extended consideration of Tolkien cosplay (i.e. ‘fans dressing up as fictional characters’). A review notes… “Ethnic and gender identities are also discussed at length, as are psychological problems” among cos-players.<\/p>\n

* Vivid Seats has details of the stage-show “Tolkien It Off – A Burlesque & Drag Tribute to Lord of the Rings”<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

* I just now noticed a U.S. ‘celebrity news’ item, from last month. George R.R. Martin (Game of Thrones<\/em> author), reportedly bemoaned the “lack of explicit sexual scenes” in The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, while being interviewed at The Kimo Theatre in Albuquerque. I would have responded that — even if a hypothetical ‘alternative-timeline Tolkien’ had felt the need for such scenes — Martin overlooks the historical and national context. Britain has no U.S. First Amendment to guarantee its citizens free speech, and effective de-censorship of the printed word only happened here some two decades after the publication of The Lord of the Rings<\/em>. <\/p>\n

* And finally, an unusual new academic journal. Epic Threads<\/a><\/em> aims to… “weave together fact and fiction to breathe new life into the ancient world”. The journal is open-access and the first issue is now available. An interesting idea, which might be characterised as a sort of ‘fan fiction for historians’. It makes me wonder if Northern ancient history could benefit from a similar imaginative-scholarly journal, assuming appropriate editorial rigour?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings #358 * The contents-list is now available for the academic book Queer Approaches to Tolkien (2025). This offers 12 essays plus a bibliography. Amazon UK is saying ‘U.S. import only’ and Amazon USA is saying 25th November 2025, but publisher McFarland now flags it as “in stock” and I assume it’s shipping.    […]<\/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-18554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tolkien-gleanings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18554","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=18554"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18558,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18554\/revisions\/18558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}