{"id":19046,"date":"2026-04-14T18:39:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T17:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/?p=19046"},"modified":"2026-04-14T18:48:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T17:48:26","slug":"tolkien-gleanings-399","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2026\/04\/14\/tolkien-gleanings-399\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolkien Gleanings #399"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings<\/a> #399<\/p>\n

* News of a forthcoming book, Joy Beyond All Worlds: Universal Salvation, George MacDonald, and J.R.R. Tolkien<\/a><\/em>. Judging by the table-of-contents it looks like a deep dive into MacDonald’s Christianity and its historical context, followed by a shorter four chapter section relating these ideas and themes to Tolkien’s Ainulindale<\/em>.<\/p>\n

* News of a new book from Italy, from the author of Dentro i panni di Gandalf: Tra letteratura e spiritualita nella Terra di Mezzo di J.R.R. Tolkien<\/em> (2024) (‘In Gandalf’s Shoes: Between Literature and Spirituality in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth’). He is giving a university talk on his new book due soon, which appears to be on the theme of ‘Tolkien today: between cinema and literature’<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* A short interview in Italian with the art historian who worked on<\/a> the new Tolkien in Italia<\/em> documentary film, which is now screening in Italy…<\/p>\n

“His letters clearly show how much Tolkien was struck by the beauty of the places he visited in our splendid country. He stopped briefly in the city of Verona, but his most significant memories are associated with Venice and Assisi, in Umbria. He was fascinated by the mosaics of San Marco and the paintings of Tintoretto, but the pilgrimage to the lands of Saint Francis aroused very strong emotions in him. As a Catholic, he felt even more the spirituality that always fills those places. Oddly enough, he never went to Rome, the capital.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* In German in the Swiss magazine HR Today<\/em>, Thomas Honegger interviewed on leadership lessons from The Lord of the Rings<\/em><\/a>. Freely available online. <\/p>\n

* On Etsy, pre-orders are now open for the book Tolkien’s Tragedy: Concerning Numenor, the Rings of Power, and the Second Age<\/a><\/em>. The third volume in his ‘The Mind of Tolkien’ series from a popular podcaster, the book seeks to unravel the “hidden narrative unity” of the Second Age. Hopefully, the title’s apparent reference to the TV series is just a marketing ploy. <\/p>\n

* A new YouTube channel has two short clips<\/a> in English, “Birmingham Oratory and J.R.R. Tolkien” and “Newman’s Library in Birmingham”. Filmed inside the Birmingham Oratory, but I’m uncertain where they’ve come from.<\/p>\n

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

I should also add that the presenter is a little ‘off’ on his facts. The Tolkien brothers did not find shelter in attic rooms in the Oratory itself, but rather attic rooms at the top of a house over in 25 Stirling Road. He also gives hesitant and passing credence to the hoary old claim about the ‘Two Towers of Edgbaston Waterworks’. I daresay the Oratory could instantly crowd-fund a few million to make a high-quality feature-length Ken Burns-style documentary film about the young Tolkien in Birmingham, with a focus on his religious upbringing in the city, but… these clips don’t feel like they’ve come from something like that.<\/p>\n

* And finally, Tolkien: Medieval and Modern<\/em> has another fine long essay on how “Everyone Knows a Sam”<\/a>…<\/p>\n

“Sam speaks ‘sermo humilis’ (a description he\u2019d not even know how to define). It\u2019s humble speech, the style of the Gospels: the books in the Bible that talk about fisherman and tax collectors, those on par with Sam the gardener.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings #399 * News of a forthcoming book, Joy Beyond All Worlds: Universal Salvation, George MacDonald, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Judging by the table-of-contents it looks like a deep dive into MacDonald’s Christianity and its historical context, followed by a shorter four chapter section relating these ideas and themes to Tolkien’s Ainulindale. * News of […]<\/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-19046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tolkien-gleanings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19046","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=19046"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19050,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19046\/revisions\/19050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}