{"id":19545,"date":"2026-07-03T15:52:04","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T14:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/?p=19545"},"modified":"2026-07-03T21:59:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T20:59:26","slug":"tolkien-gleanings-435","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2026\/07\/03\/tolkien-gleanings-435\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolkien Gleanings #435"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings<\/a> #435<\/p>\n

* The latest edition of the French open-access journal Babel: Litteratures Plurielles<\/em> has a review of the book Tolkien et la religion. Comme une lampe invisible<\/em><\/a> (2024, Sorbonne University Press). A second edition, updated and expanded, of the 2016 first edition. The long review is in French, but sadly not easily auto-translated because the site blocks access with captchas. Thankfully Archive.org has no time for such blocking and happily archives it<\/a>, from which one can then get an English translation done via Microsoft…<\/p>\n

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

The review mistakenly places Birmingham in the “North” of England, but it has always been in the Midlands.<\/p>\n

* New on YouTube from the University of Oxford, “A New-found Tolkien Translation”<\/a>. Being their short official video on the newly-found and now published “Soul’s Ward”.<\/p>\n

* The Spanish Tolkien Society has a new blog post<\/a> which assembles an annotated links playlist, for the free YouTube podcast that reads and analyzes the letters of Tolkien in Spanish. This podcast has currently reached letter 181.<\/p>\n

* The latest edition of the paywall book-journal Studies in Medievalism<\/em> XXXV<\/a> (2026) is a special issue with… “essays exploring the intersections of politics and theory through medievalism in film, literature, gaming, and political movements.” No Tolkien, but it may interest some. <\/p>\n

* Fandom Pulse<\/em> looks like it’s wrapping up its lengthy historical survey-series offering a “retrospective on Tolkien\u2019s rise to superstardom”<\/a>, seemingly with added attention to the various political lenses through which people have viewed his works over time. They now have a links-set for all 12 parts. (Substack and $ paywalled).<\/p>\n

* Talking of the history of Tolkien fandom, Kalimac’s Corner<\/em> was there, back in the day. This week he has a blog post recalling an aspect of “Tolkien in the old days”<\/a>…<\/p>\n

One feature of the early Tolkien fandom days of the 1960s whose import is hard to recapture today is the little cries of bliss that Tolkien fans would emit whenever a major publication dared to acknowledge that Tolkien existed, and maybe was important, by publishing an article about him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And yet, as his example shows, the journalists and editors concerned were almost always utterly cynical about such things.<\/p>\n

* The new book Fairies: A History<\/a><\/em> has been published, to good reviews. It’s billed as a more wide-ranging survey than the author’s previous British Isles-focused book on the topic, Twilight of the Godlings: The Shadowy Beginnings of Britain’s Supernatural Beings<\/em> (2023). The author, an expert on both British and Baltic folklore, describes his new book as…<\/p>\n

the most wide-ranging history of fairy belief attempted in modern times […] it is a history of fairies, written by a historian and seeking to apply historical methods to humanity\u2019s centuries-long relationship with the fairy realm. [… It was written] in a post-religious, postmodern Europe [in which] the old prejudice against fairies as a serious object of study is breaking down. For the first time, it is possible to give fairies a proper history — and to share that history with a genuinely curious and open-minded reading public. [… as well as the British Isles, the new book] makes frequent excursions to Iceland, Scandinavia, and Central and Eastern Europe, in addition to the Americas and Australasia”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interviews about the new book can be found on the podcasts What Magic Is This?<\/a><\/em> and I Might Believe in Faeries<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

* And finally, talking of delightful and unexpected apparitions… a charity shop (U.S.: ‘thrift shop’) in Tolkien’s home city of Birmingham was given a “fairly ordinary” box of donated second-hand books. From which emerged… a \u00a338k first edition of The Hobbit<\/em><\/a>. Nice!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings #435 * The latest edition of the French open-access journal Babel: Litteratures Plurielles has a review of the book Tolkien et la religion. Comme une lampe invisible (2024, Sorbonne University Press). A second edition, updated and expanded, of the 2016 first edition. The long review is in French, but sadly not easily auto-translated […]<\/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-19545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tolkien-gleanings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19545","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=19545"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19557,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19545\/revisions\/19557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}