Tolkien Gleanings #130.
* Kristine Larsen’s Oxonmoot 2023 keynote conference address has been released as an open-access paper. “Everything I Ever Needed to Know About the North Pole I Learned from Father Christmas (and Karhu the Polar Bear [and Ilbereth the Elf])”. This… “investigates the Father Christmas Letters through a world-building lens”. Also with a weather-eye on the North Pole, as understood by science in the 1909-1939 exploration period.
* “The Words. Or Holes. Or Both: Writing as an Integrative Methodology for Trauma, an August 2023 PhD thesis for the University of Denver. Has an early chapter discussing Tolkien’s use of fantasy in relation to trauma and loss. The record-page only offers a free PDF preview.
* The French Tolkiendil Association and the French Universite Paris-Creteil have a pleasing new poster for their joint conference ‘Journees de Recherche et Rencontres sur Tolkien’. The event is set for 6th – 7th October 2023, at the University of Paris. It will focus on “issues relating to translation” and also the new scholarly understandings emerging from the growing awareness of Tolkien’s life and surroundings. The latest programme listing is in Italian here.
* Ad Fontes magazine has a lengthy new multi-book review this week, freely available, “The Whole Lewis”. This reviews a three volume biography (2019-2022)…
“Harry Lee Poe is to be praised and thanked for this outstanding biographical achievement of over one thousand pages in three volumes on the life of C.S. Lewis. It is to date the most extensive study on the development of Lewis’s life, written with a synoptic eye toward the primary sources — the Lewis family papers, Warnie’s memoirs, Jack’s letters — many of which were unavailable to the earlier Lewis biographers, and largely remain unavailable to the general readership. In this trilogy, Poe unfolds Lewis’s life like an accordion…”
* Diary dates for the UK’s Tolkien Society’s AGM and SpringMoot 2024. 12th – 14th April 2024 at Jesus College, Cambridge University.
* Advance notice of a new book Theology and Tolkien: Constructive Theology, “coming early 2024”. The book appears set to be a shelf companion to the just published multi-author academic collection Theology and Tolkien: Practical Theology (September 2023). For which I see there’s now a £35 Kindle ebook edition listing on Amazon UK. This appears to be due to be sent on 2nd October 2023. At which time the table-of-contents will be viewable, as part of the 10% free sample.
* And finally, new to me, the Tolkien Music List website. With a discography of ‘Tolkien tribute’ popular music of all types. Though with lots of metal bands listed, as you’d expect.
The Spyders of Burslem 