{"id":19060,"date":"2026-04-20T05:33:43","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T04:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/?p=19060"},"modified":"2026-04-20T05:38:59","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T04:38:59","slug":"tolkien-gleanings-400","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2026\/04\/20\/tolkien-gleanings-400\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolkien Gleanings #400"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings<\/a> #400<\/p>\n

The 400th edition of Tolkien Gleanings<\/em>! If you find my regular Gleanings<\/em> useful, please consider a small monthly donation via Patreon<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

* A new PhD thesis from New Zealand, “Echoes of music dim: Hard hope in J.R.R. Tolkien’s early heroic legends”<\/a> (2026). Freely available online, the thesis…<\/p>\n

“examines the presence and quality of difficult Hope in J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s early mythology, chiefly across the years c. 1913 to c. 1938. Approaching his work through the combined lenses of biography, mythological vision, linguistic pursuit, and religious conviction, it treats the \u2018tower\u2019 of Tolkien\u2019s legendarium not as a structure to be dismantled, but as a work of remarkable craft still able to grant a meaningful view. At its centre lies Hope as a vital, often hidden bond-stone in Tolkien\u2019s so-called Great Tales: not optimism, but a hard and costly longing for things to come right, somehow, grounded in an ultimately eschatological horizon. Because Tolkien was not a theologian working in systematic terms, this study follows Hope as he himself explored it”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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* The new book Vikings, Knights, Elves, and Ogres: Essays in Honor of Shaun F.D. Hughes<\/a><\/em> (2026) has the chapter “Thoughts on J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s and E.V. Gordon\u2019s ‘Viking Club’ Songbook at Leeds, and Related Nordic Songbooks”.<\/p>\n

* Tolkien: Medieval and Modern<\/em> has the new long essay “On Darkness and Tongues”<\/a>, musing on the ‘darkness’ of the… “words of the secret dwarf-tongue that they teach to none”. Freely available online.<\/p>\n

* Thoughts on Tolkien<\/em> plausibly considers “The Long Shadow of Bilbo”<\/a>, re: his likely influence on the breaking of the Fellowship. Freely available online.<\/p>\n

* At Reddit, a seemingly new “List of all aphorisms from The Hobbit<\/em> and The Lord of the Rings”<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

* Mythprint<\/em> Vol 60, No. 4 (2023) is now released from its membership embargo<\/a> and freely available for download. This issue has a review of the book Middle-earth, or There and Back Again<\/em> (2020), this being Cormare Series No. 44 published by Walking Tree.<\/p>\n

“In the tradition of source studies and those reception studies which undertake close readings, [the book’s authors] engage with material with which Tolkien was certainly familiar, and yet they are not afraid to move beyond an illustrative mode of correspondence, that is, treading the lines between \u2018source\u2019 and \u2018target\u2019”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* And finally, a Tolkien weekend is planned for Great Haywood in mid Staffordshire, in July 2026. Free admission. With the event poster suggesting there will also be a showing of artworks relating to Tolkien and Edith in the locality during wartime. Some of these are glimpsed on the poster.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings #400 The 400th edition of Tolkien Gleanings! If you find my regular Gleanings useful, please consider a small monthly donation via Patreon. * A new PhD thesis from New Zealand, “Echoes of music dim: Hard hope in J.R.R. Tolkien’s early heroic legends” (2026). Freely available online, the thesis… “examines the presence and quality […]<\/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-19060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tolkien-gleanings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19060","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=19060"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19068,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19060\/revisions\/19068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}