{"id":19643,"date":"2026-07-16T20:33:56","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T19:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/?p=19643"},"modified":"2026-07-16T20:47:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T19:47:41","slug":"tolkien-gleanings-441","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2026\/07\/16\/tolkien-gleanings-441\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolkien Gleanings #441"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings<\/a> #441<\/p>\n

* Newly added to the latest rolling issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research<\/em>, Kristine Larsen’s “Echoes of Medieval Timekeeping in Middle-earth and Valinor”<\/a>. Freely available online. <\/p>\n

“… investigates medieval resonances and echoes in a sample of his various schemes, demonstrating how Tolkien\u2019s use of medievalist timekeeping is consistent with, and greatly adds to, his creation of a self-consistent invented world.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* Details of the forthcoming programme for Omentielva Minquea 2026<\/a>. Conference papers to be presented include, among others…<\/p>\n

   – Surveying Christopher Tolkien\u2019s Pronunciations.
\n   – Epigraphy, Philology, and the ‘Found Manuscript’ Topos in The Lord of the Rings<\/em>.
\n   – “On Aelfwine’s Spelling”: An Analysis of Elvish Spelling in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Old English Manuscripts.<\/p>\n

* The 3rd Swiss Tolkien Conference<\/a> will take place in March 2027, on the theme of “Maps and Landscapes in Tolkien’s Middle-earth”, with Thomas Honegger. A Walking Tree book of the conference proceedings will follow.<\/p>\n

* Newly published, The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis<\/a><\/em> (2026), from Oxford University Press. The ebook is available now, the print editions are delayed until August.<\/p>\n

With the \u201cupsidedownedness\u201d of childlike wonder, Lewis reveals what Dickieson calls a \u201cTheology of the Small,\u201d filled with \u201csacred paradoxes\u201d and offering a hopeful, transformative invitation to spiritual life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* Just published, the book The Heaviest Ideas in the Universe: A Philosophy of Heavy Metal<\/a><\/em> (2026). Includes the chapter “We Write Songs About Swords and Wizards from Space: Fantasy Metal and the Aspiration of Re\u2010enchantment”. The ebook is available now, the paperback is delayed until later in July.<\/p>\n

* A call for papers<\/a> for a one-day online conference from the Ukraine’s Centre for Fantasy Literature Studies, themed around the “Mysteries of Night in Fantasy Worlds”. Deadline: 31st October 2026.<\/p>\n

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

* A new website from Middle-earth Enterprises, in the form of the newly-purchased lotr.com<\/a>. It’s possible to join the waitlist there. After I joined I read… “the official club is taking shape in public beta”, and was told to wait for an email invite. It sounds like an ‘official’ fan-club, then, presumably to follow the various ventures planned by Enterprises?<\/p>\n

* Talking of official LoTR<\/em> franchises, some readers may recall that Gleanings<\/em> recently stumbled on<\/a> the abundant old-school Tolkien RPG output of Iron Crown Enterprises, issued under official licence in the 1980s. But there was more. I now find they also produced a series of solo-play paperbacks, starting in 1985. These were a cross between the simpler ‘choose your own adventure’ books of the time, and a more fully-fledged ‘rules and map’ boxed RPG. All packaged in a single self-contained paperback book at a pocket-money price.<\/p>\n

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

* And finally, a new long “Introduction to Alliterative Verse for Readers and Writers of Speculative Fiction”<\/a>. Freely available online. Tolkien had at least three notable contemporaries doing the same thing, the article notes, who beat him to publication…<\/p>\n

“… by the mid-1950s, with the publication of The Lord of the Rings, we can already identify three examples of something that has since become almost commonplace: a piece of speculative fiction, featuring not only embedded poetry, but poetry in what general readers would surely consider a decidedly archaic mode.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings #441 * Newly added to the latest rolling issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research, Kristine Larsen’s “Echoes of Medieval Timekeeping in Middle-earth and Valinor”. Freely available online. “… investigates medieval resonances and echoes in a sample of his various schemes, demonstrating how Tolkien\u2019s use of medievalist timekeeping is consistent with, and greatly […]<\/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-19643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tolkien-gleanings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19643","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=19643"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19650,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19643\/revisions\/19650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}