News archive
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15th July 2020: Ryder W. Miller RIP
It is with great regret that we have learnt of the death of Ryder W. Miller (1965-2020). Miller regularly contrbuted reviews of our publications. He passed away on 15th March.
(to link to this announcement: http://www.walking-tree.org/news_archive.php?item=162 )
11th March 2020: Call for papers Tolkien Conference 2020
The 17th Tolkien Conference will be held at the University of Augsburg from 23rd to 25th October 2020. The topic is Tolkien and Politics. A call for papers can be downloaded here (pdf).
(to link to this announcement: http://www.walking-tree.org/conference/20_augsburg.php )
20th February 2020: Call for papers — The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien
If we examine Tolkien research since the 1960s, we may conclude that the notion of Tolkien as a Romanticist is not a popular approach of interpretation: "When referring to Tolkien's works, Romanticism is hardly the first genre that comes to mind" (Birks 28). His work has instead been largely interpreted within the context of his professional background as philologist and expert of medieval literature. The connection between Tolkien and the Middle Ages has thus become a commonplace of Tolkien scholarship "Tolkien and the Middle Ages: a connection that seems self-evident and has frequently been dealt with by Tolkien scholars over the last years" (Brückner et al. 6). But as important as these studies grounded in history and philology may be, their dominance makes it difficult for other aspects of Tolkien's complete works to become visible.
Continue reading here (pdf) ...
(to link to this announcement: http://www.walking-tree.org/news_archive.php?item=160 )
7th October 2019: Tolkien Conference this Friday
A reminder, and hopefully an encouragement for the undecided, that the Tolkien Conference is taking place at the end of this week, from Friday 11th to Sunday 13th October 2019.
We will be present with our sales stand, and look forward to meeting old and new friends.
(to link to this announcement: http://www.walking-tree.org/news_archive.php?item=159 )
7th October 2019: New publication, Music in Tolkien's Work and Beyond
We are pleased to announce our latest publication Music in Tolkien's Work and Beyond , edited by Julian Eilmann & Friedhelm Schneidewind.
"I love music" (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Music plays a crucial role in Tolkien's mythology, and his tales contain
many songs as well as mentions of musicians and instruments.
The present book edited by Julian Eilmann and Friedhelm Schneidewind is the successor to the well-received 2010 volume Music in Middle-earth, No. 20 of the Cormarë Series, which drew the attention of Tolkien scholarship to the importance and nature of music in Tolkien's work. As the title of this volume suggests, Music in Tolkien's work and Beyond simultaneously follows the path of analyzing the use and significance of music and musical elements in Tolkien's literary texts while also considering the broader context, such as adaptations and other authors and composers.
(read more)
table of contents | abstracts | cover | companion volume | german version | announcements | more
This volume will be presented at the upcoming Tolkien Conference in Jena (11th-13th October 2019)
(to link to this announcement: http://www.walking-tree.org/news_archive.php?item=158 )
23rd September 2019: New publication, "Something Has Gone Crack": New Perspectives on J.R.R.Tolkien in the Great War
We are pleased to announce our latest publication "Something Has Gone Crack": New Perspectives on J.R.R.Tolkien in the Great War , edited by Janet Brennan Croft & Annika Röttinger.
"Something has gone crack," Tolkien wrote about the first death among his tight-knit fellowship of friends in 1916, and the impact of the war haunted his writing for the rest of his life. In Tolkien's body of work, the Great War serves as a source of imagery, motifs, and examples of military operations and strategy; of central themes about conflict, comradeship, duty, and the destruction of the environment; and of personal trauma which he worked out in meaningful symbolic form throughout his life. (read more)
table of contents | cover | announcements
This volume will be presented at the upcoming Tolkien Conference in Jena (11th-13th October 2019)
(to link to this announcement: http://www.walking-tree.org/news_archive.php?item=157 )
16th September 2019: Tolkien Conference 2019
The 2019 Tolkien Conference will be held at Jena University (Germany) from 11th to 13th October 2019.
The conference topic is Power and Authority in Tolkien's Work
The event programme can be downloaded here. The poster can be downloaded here (both as pdfs).
(to link to this announcement: http://www.walking-tree.org/conference/?year=2019 )
7th August 2019: Tolkien and the Classics published
We are pleased to announce our latest publication, Tolkien and the Classics, edited by Roberto Arduini, Giampaolo Canzonieri & Claudio A. Testi.
The origins of this collection are twofold. First, there is the ever-growing awareness of
the importance of making scholars and critics realize how much
J.R.R. Tolkien is, in all respects, a great literary classic, comparable
to those already accepted as 'canonical'. Second, the desire to offer
a publication that could be enjoyed, and made actual use of, by
students and teachers of secondary schools and universities.
This collection of mainly short essays, each one exploring a parallel
between Tolkien and the Classics of Western literature, is divided
into three sections:
— Tolkien and Authors from Antiquity (four essays)
— Tolkien and Authors from the Middle Ages (six essays)
— Tolkien and Authors from the Modern Period (eleven essays)
read more ...
table of contents | cover | announcements
(to link to this announcement: http://www.walking-tree.org/news_archive.php?item=155 )
10th July 2019: Three book reviews in Journal of Tolkien Research
Three reviews of our recent books have been published in Journal of Tolkien Research (Vol. 7, Iss. 1, 2019).
The reviews can be read on the site of Valparaiso University. Clicking on the covers above takes readers directly to the reviews of the respective books on that site. The links are also collected on our site here (with links to our pages on these books).
(to link to this announcement: http://www.walking-tree.org/news_archive.php?item=154 )
9th July 2019: Call for papers — Lewis & Tolkien
It is rather common knowledge amongst the scholars of both Lewis and Tolkien that, although the former played quite a significant role in encouraging the latter to first publish The Hobbit and then to complete The Lord of the Rings, the creator of Middle-earth was never able (or, it seems, even willing) to appreciate the stories set in the land of Narnia. The actual reason(s) may now appear to be somewhat obscure (Tolkien is not known to have been particularly vocal about the matter), but, as he once remarked in a letter to Eileen Edgar (1972), his dislike of Lewis's septology resulted simply from "a difference of taste", doubtlessly caused by Tolkien's well-known aversion to allegory (and religious didactic allegory in particular).
Continue reading here (pdf) ...
The Songs of the Spheres
Lewis, Tolkien and the Overlapping Realms of their Imaginations
Edited by Łukasz Neubauer and Guglielmo Spirito
(to link to this announcement: http://www.walking-tree.org/news_archive.php?item=153 )
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