* New in the journal Critereon, “Genre in Translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight“. Identifies differences between the Tolkien and Simon Armitage translations of Gawain.
* The second edition of the book Journey Back Again: Reasons to Revisit Middle-earth (2022). Each chapter explores a reason why people re-read The Lord of the Rings. According to the editor’s home-page the book was launched with an event in the late summer of 2022. This second edition (seemingly not expanded or revised) was announced for “November 2022”, and is now on Amazon UK as a £9 Kindle ebook. Which means Kindle owners can yet the first 10% free as a sample.
Judging by the one review, the book doesn’t appear to have a chapter on the pleasure of discovering small interconnections, un-noticed in many previous readings. For me the LoTR deepens like a coastal shelf, when partly read with an eye to such things. For instance in the Fellowship Aragorn left “the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as living man.” Why the emphasis on “living”? Does this imply his body was later transferred to Lorien from Gondor, after death? No, it seems not. But in the Fourth Age his beloved Arwen was buried on Cerin Amroth. One can then glimpse a later tradition, between these small cracks in the text. A tradition among the increasingly “rustic” remnant of the elves who remained in Lorien, that Aragorn’s spirit was sometimes to be seen (or felt) at the grave of Arwen.
* A new essay at the online Catholic magazine Fellowship & Fairydust gives an overview of “Tolkien the Religious Man”. Appears to be a useful introduction on the topic, and probably helpful — along with other materials — for non-religious people seeking to correctly grasp the outlines of Tolkien’s belief. The author also introduces a few new possibilities for influence, including pre-1914 influence of Cardinal Newman’s lectures on “Tolkien’s opinion on the matter of pagans’ knowledge of God”.
There are a couple of question marks on the above essay. It’s stated “the Oratory priests were all learned men”, yet Father Francis was definitely not a learned intellectual nor remembered as such. “Educated” might have been the better choice of word here. In Birmingham Father Francis is said to have been “paying a portion of his tuition fees with his own money when he was under no obligation to do so”, but so far as I am aware a kind uncle was initially paying the full school fees. The reference given in the essay is to Letters — and is thus almost certainly to the letter stating “Fr. Francis obtained permission for me to retain my scholarship at K[ing] E[dward’s] S[chool] and continue there”, which is not the same thing as paying fees. This statement by Tolkien may refer to his winning a foundation scholarship in 1902 (during which year he briefly attended the nearby St. Philip’s School). His foundation scholarship meant that “no fees will have to be paid for his education” to continue at King Edward’s (Chronology). The alternative explanation would be that Tolkien was referring to an extension granted for the extra year he spent at King Edward’s, at the end of his time there, while was trying for a place at Oxford. The matter is important in relation to the pressure Father Francis could have placed on the young Tolkien not to see Edith. Obviously, if he was even partly paying the boy’s school fees, then his leverage would have been much greater than otherwise. But the date of the forbidding was in the late Autumn of 1909, so the fees would not have been a factor either way.
* A new Journal of Tolkien Research review of the new Tolkien fix-up book The Fall of Numenor (2022). As well as problems of narrative arrangement, apparently it lacks something in terms of the expected scholarly apparatus.
* And finally, a special website at blackberry.signumuniversity.org lists a wealth of Short Courses at Signum University for January and also February 2023. Eight hours each, complete them in a month. Several on Tolkien or thereabouts. Who knew?
The Spyders of Burslem 