{"id":18666,"date":"2025-12-15T19:40:39","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T19:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/?p=18666"},"modified":"2025-12-16T12:02:50","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T12:02:50","slug":"tolkien-gleanings-366","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2025\/12\/15\/tolkien-gleanings-366\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolkien Gleanings #366"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/category\/tolkien-gleanings\/\">Tolkien Gleanings<\/a> #366<\/p>\n<p>* Now available, the table-of-contents for the new book <em>Tolkien&#8217;s Glee: A Reading of the Songs in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings<\/em> (2025).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-content\/uploads\/tolk-songs-contents.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-content\/uploads\/tolk-songs-contents.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"266\" height=\"1024\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-18667\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-content\/uploads\/tolk-songs-contents-78x300.jpg 78w, https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-content\/uploads\/tolk-songs-contents-266x1024.jpg 266w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 266px) 100vw, 266px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>* <em>The Wall Street Journal<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/arts-culture\/books\/the-tower-and-the-ruin-review-seeking-tolkiens-past-a1d30b18\">reviews <em>The Tower and the Ruin<\/em> by Michael Drout<\/a> ($ paywall).<\/p>\n<p>* <a href=\"https:\/\/signumuniversity.org\/event\/mythmoot-xiii-june-25-28-2026\/\">Mythmoot XIII<\/a>, set for 25th-28th June 2026 in Virginia, USA. The theme is to be &#8216;unexpected company&#8217; in fantasy and science-fiction, and the main guest of honour is Michael D.C. Drout. The call for papers closes on 28th February 2026.<\/p>\n<p>* <a href=\"https:\/\/blackberry.signumuniversity.org\/space\/modules\/month\/2026-02\/student\/all\/\">Signum University online short-courses<\/a> for February 2026. Including among others &#8220;Adaptations of Middle-earth: From Deitch and Bakshi to Jackson&#8221; and &#8220;Exploring Tolkien&#8217;s Letter to Milton Waldman&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>* In the new <em>Anthology of Computers and the Humanities<\/em>, Volume 3 (2025), <a href=\"https:\/\/anthology.ach.org\/volumes\/vol0003\/happily-ever-after-comparing-sentiment-arcs-in\/\">&#8220;Happily Ever After: Comparing Sentiment Arcs in Emotionally-Inflected Fanfiction Genres Across Fandoms&#8221;<\/a>. Freely available online. The authors find that&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;each fandom has its own emotional &#8216;bandwidth&#8217;, with stories in The Lord of the Rings fandom consistently displaying the most positive sentiments&#8221; <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>* From the same field is a new paper from Italy, <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/html\/2512.10865v1\">&#8220;Quantifying Emotional Tone in Tolkien\u2019s <em>The Hobbit<\/em>: Dialogue Sentiment Analysis with RegEx, NRC-VAD, and Python&#8221;<\/a> (2025). Freely available online. The study finds that&#8230; <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;&#8230; the results show that the dialogue maintains a generally positive (high valence) and calm (low arousal) tone, with a gradually increasing sense of agency (dominance) as the story progresses. These patterns reflect the novel\u2019s emotional rhythm: moments of danger and excitement are regularly balanced by humor, camaraderie, and relief. Visualizations &mdash; including emotional trajectory graphs and word clouds &mdash; highlight how Tolkien\u2019s language cycles between tension and comfort.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>* The <em>I Might Believe in Faeries<\/em> podcast has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.listennotes.com\/podcasts\/i-might-believe-in\/the-medieval-mind-of-c-s-eHImwb24Puh\/\">&#8220;The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis&#8221;<\/a>, talking with&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;medieval scholar and author, Jason Baxter. Dr. Baxter is the Director of the Center for Beauty and Culture at Benedictine College and the author of many books, including a new translation of Dante and &#8216;The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis&#8217;.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>* Talking of the medieval, the &#8216;chained library&#8217; of Google Books is set to discard its trusty interface. Your curated &#8220;Bookshelves&#8221; will go into the skip with it, if you&#8217;re not quick.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-content\/uploads\/tolk-google-books.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-content\/uploads\/tolk-google-books.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"254\" height=\"759\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-18668\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-content\/uploads\/tolk-google-books.jpg 254w, https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-content\/uploads\/tolk-google-books-100x300.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 254px) 100vw, 254px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>* And finally, Tolkien&#8217;s desk (the &#8216;Merton desk&#8217;) has sold at auction for \u00a3330,200.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-content\/uploads\/tolk-desk-detail.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-content\/uploads\/tolk-desk-detail.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"299\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-18669\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-content\/uploads\/tolk-desk-detail.jpg 620w, https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-content\/uploads\/tolk-desk-detail-300x145.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tolkien Gleanings #366 * Now available, the table-of-contents for the new book Tolkien&#8217;s Glee: A Reading of the Songs in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (2025). * The Wall Street Journal reviews The Tower and the Ruin by Michael Drout ($ paywall). * Mythmoot XIII, set for 25th-28th June 2026 in Virginia, [&hellip;]<\/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-18666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tolkien-gleanings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18666","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=18666"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18673,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18666\/revisions\/18673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}