cairistiona | Entries tagged with tolkien

Have you seen this?

Yes, I donated my bit, small though it was. May they achieve their very worthy goal!

Have you seen this?

Treasure trove' of unseen J.R.R. Tolkien essays on Middle-earth coming summer 2021

So exciting!

The Tolkien community has lost one of its artists. According to the Tolkien Society website, Jef Murray passed away suddenly yesterday. (read more here)

His use of light and brilliant colors always attracted me to his work. I always enjoyed getting my copy of Amon Hen and seeing his sketches and paintings. His "Strider" is my favorite of his works.

Condolences to his loved ones. He'll be missed.

Or, A Very Interesting Article On The Migration of Hobbits....

I don't know how many of you follow Michael Martinez' blog, Middle-earth and JRR Tolkien Blog, but he always writes very interesting articles. Back in December, he posted this one, Charting The Shire Lines.

I just discovered the post yesterday and haven't read the entire thing yet, in large part because the following paragraph sparked my imagination and has temporarily stopped me in my tracks:

"Let us suppose that the Harfoots, who were the largest group, first migrated west from the Vales of Anduin because of war in their former lands. They had been accustomed to living with Edainic Men who, in exchange for food and trade, helped to defend them. [my emphasis] The population may have suffered a decline. Then, when Rhudaur came under attack 250 years later, the Harfoots may have suffered great losses again. Although Rhudaur was not overrun, the sudden Hobbit migration out of Rhudaur seems rather alarming. The departure of the Harfoots and Fallohides may imply they suffered grievous losses in the initial war with Angmar."

I confess I haven't given any thought, really, to the hobbits' role in the war against Angmar, but what a picture, imagining them living and trading alongside the Edain and then perhaps even a few doughty Fallohides fighting side by side with the Dúnedain.

Reading articles like this reminds me that I too often fall in the bad habit of thinking only of my "preferred" race when I write my stories. I forget that the Dúnedain of the North didn't live in a cultural or historic vacuum, nor do the Hobbits or the Elves or the Dwarves. Even the more reclusive races like Hobbits had interactions with other races. I'm going to try to keep that thought in mind as I write stories, in the hopes that they reflect more of the marvelous depth that the Professor created in his world.

I hope to have a Hobbity sort of weekend, or at least, a Hobbity afternoon tomorrow, if it works out. There's a speaker coming to our local library tomorrow afternoon, Justin Noetzel, who teaches British Lit and composition at St. Louis University. As a student, he sat under Tom Shippey when he taught there, so I'm very much looking forward to what he has to say about Tolkien and his life and influences. There's another session in the evening, mostly about the movies, but with my mom's health being what it is, I won't be able to attend that one. Still, I'm very much looking forward to the afternoon one. Living where I do, and with the situation with my mom's health, there's not exactly a plethora of opportunities to listen to Tolkien scholars, so I really hope it works out for me to slip away for a few hours to hear him.

Mr. Noetzel is a member of the Woode-walkers, the Grad Student Medievel Reading Group at the university, and they have a blog that occasionally deals with Tolkien, and today's post has a lot of links to articles and symposiums about The Hobbit. I've not had the time to look into all of them, but I'm sure they're very interesting. He even mentions Emil Johansson's LOTRProject, which is an outstanding "family tree" of all the Tolkien characters (and an App I really must download now that I have a better phone that actually lets me use apps).

If I get to attend, I'll post a review of sorts. I'm terrible at synopsising anything (which is a new word, by the way), so it won't exactly be exhaustive, but I'm going to take notes and hope I can put together something coherent.

As many of you no doubt already know, for lo these last several years,

inzilbeth_liz has been hard at work on an academic treatise on the character of Aragorn. I'm very pleased to announce that it's ready to go and will be launched Saturday, August 11, at Redesdale Hall, Moreton in Marsh, Gloucestershire for 10am to 5pm. Would that I could go to the party, but it's some 5,000 miles away (if not more!) so I'll just have to add to the party here on my LJ today. :)

Whether or not you call yourself an Aragorn fan, this is an important book to add to the list of the many wonderful academic studies of Tolkien's writings. Aragorn as a character was rather slow to evolve in Tolkien's mind, and in some ways that kept the character from achieving quite the prominence and certainly the depth in the books that he might have had Tolkien more quickly firmed him up from the original idea of a hobbit with deformed feet and wooden shoes to the great king he was destined to become. There is plenty of evidence that Aragorn, son of Arathorn, has a pivotal role in the history of Middle-earth, but it's very seldom addressed in literary examinations, and rarely with any depth. This book fills that gap by bringing together the influences that went into the character's creation, both story internal and external, gathering up every spare bit of detail about Aragorn from all of Tolkien's books, from The Lord of the Rings a trilogy to the Appendices to Unfinished Tales, The Silmarillion, as well as History of Middle-earth and Letters, and does so with wonderfully readable thoroughness. (I emphasize "readable" because it is truly an accessible work for any Tolkien reader with at least a minimal understanding of the story. No dense, dull, academic obfuscation in this one... in fact, this sentence is probably harder to parse!)

So, for all the particulars, including the full cover including the back cover text with a recommendation from Angela Gardner, author of Black and White Ogre Country: The Lost Tales of Hilary Tolkien, see Liz' own post here.

The book can be ordered from the following sites:

Amazon.co.uk
ADC Books/ABE books (which is the publisher and publisher's book catalog; this link takes you directly to Liz' book ordering page)

It's not available through US markets yet, but it will ship to the US.

As many of you no doubt already know, for lo these last several years,

I raise my own toast to Professor Tolkien, in thanks for the astonishing amount of joy and friendship he has brought to my life. Amazing, that, isn't it?? Many authors create wonderful stories, but Tolkien created community, both for his characters and more importantly, for his fans.

*raises glass of miruvor high* To you, Professor Tolkien, with many thanks!