{"id":19568,"date":"2026-07-08T16:16:02","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T15:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/?p=19568"},"modified":"2026-07-09T05:22:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T04:22:51","slug":"tolkien-gleanings-437","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2026\/07\/08\/tolkien-gleanings-437\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolkien Gleanings #437"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings<\/a> #437<\/p>\n

* The latest Entmoot Podcast<\/em> is a long interview with the editors of the recent ‘Asexuality’ special issue<\/a> of the open-access Journal of Tolkien Research<\/em>.<\/p>\n

* A Tolkien-focused report from the Oxford English Graduate Conference 2026<\/a>. Substack, but free.<\/p>\n

* Personal Canon Formation<\/em> on “Tolkien and the Myth of Decline”<\/a>. Substack, but free.<\/p>\n

* The Middle Ages in the Modern World conference calls for papers<\/a>, for 22nd-24th June 2027 in Oxford. Note especially the suggestion for “Oxford and medievalism” as a possible theme. Deadline: 30th September 2026. <\/p>\n

* Law & Liberty<\/em> magazine considers “The Seeing Stones of Modern Warfare”<\/a> in relation to Tolkien. Freely available online.<\/p>\n

* The cover is now available for the forthcoming Tolkien comic biography I mentioned previously on Gleanings<\/em>. The format is a ‘BD’ — a eurocomics format that usually takes the form of a relatively short high-quality graphic novel, printed oversized on good paper and in hardback, and usually with a self-contained story. The book is due in mid August 2026, in French from Futuropolis. There are also now a few more details about the approach taken…<\/p>\n

“Alternating intimate biographical moments from his life and scenes from his novels, the authors show us how these personal events are at the source of the mythology that Tolkien created.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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* An Interactive Timeline of Middle-earth<\/a>, newly online and free at Elfenomeno.<\/p>\n

* I’m pleased to learn of Pavane: a Critical Companion<\/em> (2024), via an excellent long review on the BSFA website<\/a>. Freely available online.<\/p>\n

“Pavane is a particularly British work, a book made up of a cycle of stories, and one imbued by religion, sense of place, and the mythical past of the English countryside. [In an alternative history where Catholic Spain triumphed over England, there is still] faery magic, a component of a specific form of British myth and fiction dating back to before Shakespeare, [which] features in [the sections] \u201cThe Signaller\u201d and \u201cLady Margaret\u201d. Roberts mines the English countryside, and often specifically Dorset, to explore a hidden faery world, creating an emotional resonance for the reader with the landscape itself.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This classic fix-up novel of 1968 has had some terrible covers over the years, but the U.S. Doubleday first-edition hardback was quite pleasing. The edition’s blurb cannily managed to intrigue readers of both Lovecraft and Tolkien, while the art gave a very subtle nod towards the Sphinx and the Machine of The Time Machine<\/em>…<\/p>\n

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* And finally, this week the Throwback Review<\/em> reviews the book Middle-earth Role Playing<\/em><\/a> (1984), and notes the large hinterland of expansion books it spawned in the 1980s. There was a second edition of the main gamebook, and…<\/p>\n

“[the publisher ICE also] produced a huge body of regional sourcebooks, adventures, and campaign material, and that may be what many people remember most fondly. Even players who did not love every corner of the [main book of] rules often loved the books. MERP invited you to roam far beyond the most familiar corners of Tolkien\u2019s fiction, turning Middle-earth into a place you could explore in layers. That sense of scope was one of the game\u2019s great accomplishments. It helped teach a lot of players that a roleplaying setting could feel like a scholarly hobby in itself, something to read, collect, and immerse yourself in even when you were not actively playing.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On Archive.org, one can find the Iron Crown Enterprises Consumer Catalog Spring ’87<\/a><\/em>. This notes a Lords of Middle-earth<\/em> Vol 1., the first in three part series, with the first profiling all “the great ones” of Middle-earth and beyond. The second book in this series focused on the Men and Mannish races, and the Third on Dwarves, Orcs, Trolls, Elves and Hobbits. <\/p>\n

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Also of interest as reference\/inspiration for fan-fiction writers, though it seems that getting hold of a set in paper would cost a small fortune today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings #437 * The latest Entmoot Podcast is a long interview with the editors of the recent ‘Asexuality’ special issue of the open-access Journal of Tolkien Research. * A Tolkien-focused report from the Oxford English Graduate Conference 2026. Substack, but free. * Personal Canon Formation on “Tolkien and the Myth of Decline”. Substack, but […]<\/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-19568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tolkien-gleanings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19568","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=19568"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19579,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19568\/revisions\/19579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}