{"id":18944,"date":"2026-03-26T21:23:59","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T21:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/?p=18944"},"modified":"2026-03-28T12:32:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T12:32:06","slug":"tolkien-gleanings-393","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2026\/03\/26\/tolkien-gleanings-393\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolkien Gleanings #393"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings<\/a> #393<\/p>\n

* The Western Front Association has an excellent and well-illustrated new article on “J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s Brother Officers in the 11th (Service) Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers, June-October 1916”<\/a>. Along with interesting information about the state of Army signalling, the long article finds that…<\/p>\n

“Carpenter\u2019s characterisation of the \u2018older company commanders and adjutants\u2019[sic] was hopelessly wide of the mark. [and] The battalion\u2019s officers were very different from the \u2018military types\u2019 identified by Carpenter.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* The Tolkien Society has posted recordings of their 2025 online seminar, held on 18th October 2025. Now on YouTube are eleven presentations + Q&As. Titles include, among the others, “The Lost Spirits of Arda: Eco-daemonology and New Animism in Tolkien\u2019s Legendarium”<\/a>. The presenter suggests that Tolkien’s early animist conceptions of nature spirits — to be traced today in Lost Tales<\/em>, “The Creatures of the Earth”, and found in his work on the Kalevala<\/em> — would later inform an important third strand that was woven alongside the pagan and Christian elements in The Lord of the Rings<\/em>. <\/p>\n

I’d suggest that the presenter might usefully have touched on the author’s biography, which would have offered him a grounded starting point for understanding pre-1930s British anthropology. Tolkien’s personal tutor at Exeter, Marett, was the world’s leading expert on the animist phases of pre-religion. Specifically his tutor had deeply considered animatism as an aspect of animism. Animatism being related to the specific veneration by early peoples of the animating life-force in all its natural varieties, and its potential ability to be harnessed or manipulated. I’d suggest that one might see, for instance, Tolkien’s elves and their attentive stewardship and nature-shaping creativity as a partial embodiment of this.<\/p>\n

* The above talk referenced “The Creatures of the Earth”, a Tolkien item found in an early personal notebook and likely penned after 1917. It was made available in Parma Eldalamberon<\/em> No. 14<\/a> (2003), which is out-of-print but freely available online at the Internet Archive.<\/p>\n

* The Vatican translates the article “Tolkien’s hymn to humility and mercy”<\/a>, originally published in Italian in yesterday’s edition of the newspaper L’Osservatore Romano<\/em>.<\/p>\n

* Elfenomeno<\/em> has a new article considering “The multiple biographies of Galadriel”<\/a>. Freely available online, in English. <\/p>\n

* The Entmoot Podcast<\/em> spends an hour “Exploring The Online Fandoms”<\/a>. Specifically… “the main three Tolkien subreddits [on Reddit] and some (still kicking!) online forum sites.” Sadly, Reddit is reportedly set to introduce biometric age\/identity verification for posting, which suggests its contributors will soon be migrating to alternative services. <\/p>\n

* And finally, a report from a Florida convention on a talk by a WETA designer for the Lord of the Rings<\/em> movies<\/a>. Whatever one may think about screen adaptations, the ideas of the back-room artists, designers and costumiers involved are always interesting. Although sometimes they do go a bit far…<\/p>\n

“Elrond has a telescope because his father is a star,” Falconer said. The telescope was a gorgeous and graceful fall of art nouveau lines, decorated with a small paean to Varda, or Elbereth, the Valar who created the stars.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings #393 * The Western Front Association has an excellent and well-illustrated new article on “J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s Brother Officers in the 11th (Service) Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers, June-October 1916”. Along with interesting information about the state of Army signalling, the long article finds that… “Carpenter\u2019s characterisation of the \u2018older company commanders and adjutants\u2019[sic] was hopelessly […]<\/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-18944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tolkien-gleanings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18944","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=18944"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18950,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18944\/revisions\/18950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}