Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: resisting Tolkien. With Jared’s long-awaited and happily long-hyped-by-us debut novel The West Passage due later in the month, we wanted to celebrate that by picking an appropriate theme that tied that together with our general focus. There’s long been a stereotype that fantasy was so forever changed and codified by Tolkien that seemingly everything that followed in its wake was essentially marked by it, sometimes in outrageously obvious fashion. But the truth has always been that as much as Tolkien left an impact, there have been authorial voices in the field from his time to now that have advanced critiques or demonstrated by example that there’s a much wider range of possibilities, something that the 21st century has shown in particular even as Tolkien’s profile exploded to new heights in the wake of the live action movie adaptations. With Jared answering questions about how he considered his own work and creativity as a longtime reader not trying to simply reinvent the wheel, we look more closely at our own thoughts as readers and writers about where Tolkien functions for us as an example to not specifically emulate, or to maybe even push back upon at points, if in a sublimated fashion. Also there was a LOT of news of Tolkien adaptations in general that’s come out and we had things to say, sometimes in a very pained voice.

Jared’s doodle. And if you’re wondering who these figures are it’s because…

The West Passage is here! (Or about here but definitely here this month!) Order locally or through Bookshop or the like, please. And as Jared says at the end of the episode, Seattle-area folks, please attend the release event on July 17th at Third Place Books Ravenna!

Jared’s The Sewers of Paris appearance. (Look for future appearances on Turn The Page and Dragonmount.) 

Oriana’s short film Kickstarter! Check it out! Support it if you can, or at least spread the word!

The new paperback version of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is out in August.

TheOneRing.net with reports from Annecy on The War of the Rohirrim panel as well as a separate interview with Philippa Boyens.

The Rings of Power season two teaser trailer. Yup. Sure is.

Vanity Fair’s piece showing Tom Bombadil is going to be in The Rings of Power. What?

Variety’s piece on The Hunt For Gollum. 

Edmund Wilson! Influential? Sure. Pleasant? The jury is out.

“Oo, Those Awful Orcs!” was rather high profile. (W. H. Auden’s much different piece was as well.)

Guy Gavriel Kay and his work is well worth checking out.

“Epic Pooh,” Michael Moorcock’s 1978 essay out on a tear against Tolkien and others.

China Miéville has had some thoughts on Tolkien, indeed.

Definitely pick up the republished Ursula K. le Guin collection The Language of the Night, where “From Elfland from Poughkeepsie” can be found.

George R. R. Martin’s comment on Aragorn’s tax policy, originally from a 2014 interview from Rolling Stone, can be found here.

“If Tolkien Were Black,” a Salon piece from 2011 featuring David Anthony Durham and N. K. Jemisin.

Marlon James’s 2019 Tolkien lecture “Our Myths, Our Selves.”

The full Terry Pratchett quote on Tolkien with the Mt. Fuji comparison.

Gormenghast forever! (If you will.)

David Lynch and evil, there’s a lot out there. (This essay looks at his famed Hiroshima-and-after episode from Twin Peaks: The Return.)

The Poppy War is the first in a series by R. F. Kuang, while Tasha Suri was the British fantasy author with a South Asian background Ned was thinking of.

The Once and Future King by T. H. White, his famed Arthurian retelling. 

Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, Lord Dunsany, all worth checking out. But Lloyd Alexander and Prydain, DEFINITELY check that out.

Stephen King, you might have heard of him, who can say? (This piece delves a bit into his own admitted Tolkien fandom and The Dark Tower.) Also Ned got it wrong a bit, The Stand is clearly a post-disaster story but not post-nuclear!

John Crowley is well, well worth your time.

And yes, if you want more info on the book event Ned is ‘in conversation with’ in August in San Francisco, here ya go!

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: allegory and applicability. In a much-referenced section from his introduction to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote: “I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned – with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.” It’s been a point of discussion ever since in both specific Tolkien critical discussion and general fandom circles – and we’ve certainly referenced it quite a lot over the years – with the distinctions between the two terms and what they are meant to further represent not always clear or universally agreed on, even as readings of Tolkien across the map consider what Middle-earth and its inhabitants consider widely varying perspectives on what the work can be said to represent. What were the evident divisions between Tolkien and his friend and colleague C. S. Lewis on allegory in their work, and how did both of them speak about it and each other’s approach in turn? Where does Tolkien’s perceived modernism – and potential postmodernism – factor into how he was stated to consider allegory in writings beyond the famous quote? How is his seeming hostility to allegory squared with his most overtly allegorical work, “Leaf By Niggle”? And what part of you is a little bunny, or is the little bunny you – or are you a middle manager? 

Jared’s doodle. Much will be explained when you listen to the episode itself.

The return of the original Jackson LOTR trilogy to the theaters: cool. The fact it’s in the crappy 4K version: not as.

Bernard Hill’s passing is a damn shame. Here’s just some of the many reactions.

Allegory! Maybe you remember the English or literature class where you first heard the term, or maybe it was somewhere else, or…

C. S. Lewis knew allegory? And used it in his Narnia books? The deuce you say.

Vermeer’s work is also known as The Art of Painting, and it’s well known indeed.

Our episode on Tree and Leaf, including both “On Fairy-Stories” and “Leaf by Niggle.”

Letter 109 from the collected letters, as summarized by Tolkien Gateway.

Animal Farm! It’s pretty well known, it is. And boy is it allegorical.

It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis sure did get some new attention in recent years. Wonder why?

The Pilgrim’s Progress and The Faerie Queene, oh they thrive on allegory! And they thrive on not being Catholic, the latter especially.

Our Beowulf episode.

Letter 241 from the collected letters, again via Tolkien Gateway.

Ah, smol beans. 

Allegory versus myth? There’s a lot of randomness out there.

On the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius is one of the most well known works in the general field – and boy is it allegorical. (Our friends over at The Spouter-Inn did an episode on it.)

The Tolkien versus Lewis cartoon on allegory. It is pretty great.

Greta Gerwig and Narnia…we’re still wondering about that.

The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis are out there.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: the Rohirrim. As personified most clearly by three key members of its royal family – the elderly but reenergized king Théoden, his passionate, driven niece Éowyn and his equally loyal and fearless nephew Éomer – the people of Rohan come across in The Lord of the Rings as a noble people, proud but warm-hearted, willing allies to both surviving members of the Fellowship after its breaking and to their long-time geopolitical partner Gondor, whose Stewards long ago gave the land that became their kingdom to them. Yet more than once in the narrative there are signs that this was not a universally welcome situation to other peoples of the area, as well as moments that seem to suggest a casual cruelty – or much worse – at the heart of the Riddermark in its history, something further underlined by the short history of the nation Tolkien created for the book’s appendices. With a key story from that short history soon to be dramatized via the anime production The War of the Rohirrim later this year, a look into these complexities is well worth considering. What are the possible connections to Tolkien’s own understanding of imperialism and colonialism, both as he directly experienced it and in the larger context of his legendarium? How do the jarring moments that suggest something darker in Rohan’s ruling elite and its soldiers play out across the centuries, and is there a wider complicity with attitudes that adaptations like Peter Jackson’s put more to the fore? What kind of possible wish fulfillment was Tolkien looking for in creating the Rohirrim, as he discussed it himself in his letters and other conversations? And just how wound up is Helm anyway if he can kill someone with one punch?

Jared’s doodle. It says it all. (If you need a little context…)

Look, we know we keep saying it, but you really can preorder The West Passage, and you should!

Rose City Comic Con! Happening in September! Go see Jared!

The redone revival of the Lord of the Rings musical comes to Chicago, so check it out for more info. (And don’t forget our episode on the original production.)

A report on Paul Corfield Godfrey’s planned Lord of the Rings opera from TheOneRing.net

The Rohirrim! There’s been a lot thought and written about them.

The War of the Rohirrim is due later this year indeed, after having its original March opening date changed due to last year’s strikes.

Our Ghân-buri-Ghân episode, with more on the Druedain.

The Dunlendings kinda really just get the shaft throughout history.

When you’re talking the Roman Empire and then the Anglo-Saxons, the Welsh did go through a lot.

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is truly, truly wonderful, funny and essential. All hail Diana Wynne Jones!

Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan is the specific chapter in Unfinished Tales. Ted Nasmith’s second painting of the key scene is his favored one, but the first one works too.

TheOneRing.net’s summary of the Annecy panel last year.

Helm Hammerhand. He’s…well, he’s got anger issues.

“FATALITY!” 

And yes, Shōgun was pretty goddamn great. Anna Sawai in particular.

The Habsburgs did at least escape the Romanov fate. (Karl is the current head.)

Our Éowyn episode!

The rider who encountered Théoden en route to Helm’s Deep was Ceorl.

Not the exact Anglo-Saxon horse head Ned was thinking of but this one from a Staffordshire find is quite something. And then there’s the Sutton Hoo burial mound and what was found within…

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: Terry Brooks’s debut novel The Sword of Shannara. Released in 1977 after the author had been working on it for almost a decade, The Sword of Shannara became a massive publishing success for its then-new imprint Del Rey Books, helping to establish the viability of fantasy literature as a steady and profitable part of the book business as a whole, as well as starting Brooks’s continuing writing career with a bang. At the same time, more than a few voices said in response to that success and the book itself that it was pretty clearly using The Lord of the Rings as a model, its own author having now been conveniently dead for a few years at the time of publication. This, as it happens, is a massive understatement – and more to the point it is an absolutely awful book, the success of which seen through the eyes of nearly fifty years later is almost impossible to imagine given both the expansion of the field in general and the fact that Tolkien is no longer solely the lodestone for young writers to look towards. What makes Brooks’s work so remarkably un-Tolkien-like despite taking on many of its trappings, and are those trappings used well to start with? How does Brooks’s desire to create a rollicking adventure story/page-turner play out in terms of actual story dynamics, character development and other rather important things a good book should have? How do the key themes of Tolkien in general not apply – or rather, get heavily misapplied or transformed – in Brooks’s vision of a post-apocalyptic fantasy world? And do Jared and Oriana still wish Ned ill fortune for having made them read this? (Audibly so, yes.)

Jared’s doodle. If only the book were this exciting.

Five years indeed! If you want the full story of how we all got started, as mentioned, Ned talks about that in the introduction to our live episode aka Episode 50 from last year.

The big news about The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, as reported on by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull, its editors.

The not-so-big, in fact really annoying, news about The Rings of Power Season 3 already being worked on. Lovely. Really.

The Sword of Shannara! It’s a book! Sure is a book!

Dan Sinykin’s 2023 Slate article “The Man Who Invented Fantasy,” which details Lester Del Rey’s career and role in bringing Brooks to wider attention as part of his overall plans for Del Rey with his wife Judy-Lynn. So now you know who to blame.

The Brothers Hildebrandt being recruited as the illustrators was a good move from a publishing point of view, especially then.

Gene Wolfe’s defense of Brooks is in his essay “The Best Introduction to the Mountains.”

Our Dennis McKiernan/Silver Call duology episode.

Our episode on the orcs. Gnomes they are not.

Brooks’s TED talk “Why I Write About Elves”.

You want to watch The Shannara Chronicles? Enjoy. Without us.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: Beowulf. The famed Old English poem, the longest extant poetic work in general preserved in that language, almost accidentally survived over the years until it became more widely recognized in the 1700s, including surviving a fire. It has since become a cornerstone of studies of English literature, telling the story of a heroic Geat warrior who defeats two monstrous presences on a visit to an afflicted Danish kingdom, and who in later years as an aging king slays a dragon at the cost of his life and, it is strongly implied, his kingdom’s. Tolkien knew the work thoroughly and regularly taught it in his academic career, leading to both a prose translation and various notes and commentaries that Christopher Tolkien presented and edited for a 2015 publication. But besides the notable connections that can be made between the poem and elements of his own legendarium, Tolkien has a further place in Beowulf scholarship thanks to his most famed academic work, the 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and The Critics,” which single-handedly reframed the poem from being primarily seen as a historical document to being considered as a remarkable work of imagination. What are some of the key differences between Beowulf’s world and ethos and Tolkien’s own reworking of it into his legendarium, in terms of character, society and more? What points does Tolkien bring up in his lecture that provides a deeper insight into how he was not only arguing for the Beowulf poet – whoever it might be – but also placing his own work into that lineage? How do the portrayals of the various monsters Beowulf faces differ, and what in particular makes Grendel’s mother such a fascinating character? And how many moments per episode are points raised and then suddenly realized to be maybe not accurate? (Sorry about that.)

Jared’s doodle. Gotta be careful with dragons.

Ooooooh boy, the angst this Fellowship of Fans post unleashed in some corners when it came to Rings of Power rumors. (On a side note, RoP’s Morfydd Clark is in the new two part Agatha Christie Murder is Easy adaptation on Britbox and is unsurprisingly really good!)

The whole Matthew Weiner spoiler-war thing re Mad Men was a thing. Was it ever a thing. Here’s a sample.

Beowulf! You might have heard of it. Plenty of translations freely available, and of course there’s Seamus Heaney and Maria Dahvana Headley and etc. And yes there’s Tolkien’s too.

“HWAET!” (Tolkien allegedly really loved to get his students’ attention by delivering this full on.)

If you haven’t read “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” we really do encourage this. (And picking up the full essay anthology too, key pieces like “A Secret Vice” and “On Fairy-Stories” are included among others.)

Kennings are very cool. (But please avoid ‘whale road.’)

Imagining Tolkien delivering this to the other Beowulf critics is something wild to think about.

There’s a wide variety of pieces about the women of Beowulf out there; here’s one that provides a general summary and consideration about them.

If you’d like to see the Nowell Codex, head on over to the British Library, physically or virtually.

We’ve mentioned E. R. Eddison before. Definitely NOT Tolkien.

The full historical background that Beowulf draws on is definitely there, though treating the poem as a history itself is not the way to go. Here’s a useful piece tackling the history as such.

The Geats aren’t around as such anymore, and there are reasons for that…

It’s not directly mentioned in the episode but Tolkien did write and lecture about one of the ‘side’ stories in Beowulf, with the results published in the book Finn and Hengest.

Did we mention we’re not impressed with Silicon Valley’s take on Tolkien?

Grendel’s mother is, no question, awesome.

Kenneth Grahame’s “The Reluctant Dragon” – definitely not Smaug.

“Sellic Spell” really is interesting, and may be the most notable part of the volume it’s published in.

Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead! (But avoid The 13th Warrior.)

A last little bonus: didn’t bring it up in the episode but Ned remembered seeing Robert Macneil’s 1986 documentary series on PBS The Story of English back when it first ran, and the second episode, “The Mother Tongue,” has a brief bit discussing Beowulf and how it might have been performed as a song, as well as a separate section on the impact of the Viking invasions on English as a language led by noted Tolkien scholar and academic descendant Tom Shippey.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: Silicon Valley’s

Jared’s

Queen Margrethe bows out, and hey, why not enjoy

One of various pieces on Margrethe’s Tolkien

We share TheOneRing.net’s

Never invent the torment nexus.

Peter Thiel. Great. Just great.

Techno-fascism!

Palantir Technologies.

Palmer Luckey. Another piece of

Ah, Ready Player One and

If you want to know our thoughts on “The Greatest Adventure” and more besides,

That whole taking your money with you when you die thing, jeez. Mother Jones

The Last Ringbearer aka

Wicked the book is

Tim Alberta’s book, which probably isn’t

Tolkien Gateway has some of the further details from Unfinished Tales on

The TechCrunch article about Anduril Industries’s rather paranoid geopolitical

Quick reminder about our orcs

Blood in the Machine by Brian

Thiel buying his New Zealand

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: The Letters of J. R. R.

Jared’s

Remember, join the Megaphonic Patreon!

Did we mention preordering Jared’s book? Let’s mention it

Here’s preorder info for that British Library talk on Twenty First

In which writing an unauthorized sequel to The Lord of the Rings further goes

Our Dennis McKiernan/Silver Call duology

Ah, cotillions. Look, you want

AO3…waits.

The letters! (New edition that

Letter 131 is a doozy! These

That withdrawn article on Edith

Zero inbox, the blessed and

Worth briefly noting The Tolkien Family

Vatican II’s impact is

The Power Broker once again. (Consider our episode on

Yeahhhhhh the Spanish Civil

Tolkien and anarchism, there’s a lot of talk about that out there. (Tolkien balancing out

The Song of

Milton and Tolkien would have been at total odds in terms of religion but they

Our episode on Aldarion and

Gloria Steinem as a Tolkien

C.S Lewis and women…well THAT’S a subject.

The 1955 radio version of The Lord of the

Robert Graves! Was he a snack

Ava Gardner! Pretty awesome,

One of John Scalzi’s various

Again, consider supporting our network,

Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss their collective choice of topic: Peter

Show Notes.

Jared’s

Hurrah for the SAG-AFTRA strike

Our episode on evil. Evil!

TheOneRing.net

Jason Horowitz’s New York Times

Our episodes on Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the

The sole trailer for The Return

Trilogy

The opening

The screenwriting guru Ned mentions is Robert

The opening exchange between

Oh did Christopher Lee have things to say in the run-up to the

Our episode on the Rankin-Bass Return of the

Yeah yeah the Arwen

But boy that introduction to Minas

And the beacons

For examples of the Gondor theme earlier on in the series, skip ahead to

Ride the Empire Builder! If you

Hurrah for John Noble (and hurrah

Minas Morgul, a triumph of John

The Holdo

When Theoden and Eowyn part at

When Aragorn and Eowyn part at

“...and Rohan will

“The stars are veiled.” Are

Oh you know the Shelob scene.

“The Edge of Night” sequence is

The Nazgul as the angels of

Grond! It is great design for sure,

Gothmog isn’t bothered with your petty

The Ride of the

“I am no man!” Yeah, it

Air

That crazy Witch-king

And indeed skip ahead to the end of the

It still only counts as one, we guess.

Sam finds Frodo in Cirith

“On this good

“I can carry

The Crack of

And yeah when Mount Doom completely

Will they? Won’t

A great way to do individual

“You bow to NO

A wordless toast indeed. And a

The Grey

“Into the West” and the end credit

The Triplets of

Enjoy all the Oscar

Ah yes the Eragon movie.

And the Chronicles of Narnia

This ran after the episode was recorded but the LA Times had a

Our Rings of Power and Hobbit

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: the Noldor. Also

Show Notes.

Jared’s

Negotiations, negotiations. The SAG-AFTRA strike has a lot of

The new edition of the letters will be out in mid-November.

Holly Ordway’s book Tolkien’s

The Bandcamp Daily story on Jim Kirkwood and his early Tolkien-inspired

Some details on Starve Acre, the new

I mean if you WANT the Tolkien Gateway definition of the

Recommending the Andy Serkis reading of The

Our episode on Galadriel.

Turgon via Tolkien Gateway;

Gildor Inglorion, a truly

Míriel and

Glorfindel seems like he’s about

We discussed the Kinslaying as part of our episode on

Ah yes, The Shibboleth of

Then there’s the Oath of

Our episodes on “Leaf by Niggle”

Finduilas – again, would be good

And yes The Wheel of Time is really good. Really!

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: The Notion Club

Jared’s doodle. This is why it’s

And indeed the WGA strike did end

More from the Lord of the Rings musical

Amazon’s plans for ads for Prime

News about the Tales Of The Shire game and we are very

Yeah that whole Warren Beatty Dick Tracy thing.

There are indeed skeletons in Stardew

The Notion Club

Knowing a little about the

Socratic dialogue can

Our episode on “A Secret Vice.”

Thomas Pynchon is out there and is happy not to

That Hideous Strength

If you haven’t seen Inspector

Interstellar is trippy,

The Great Storm of 1987 as

“The Call of

C. S. Lewis’s “The Dark

Ringu aka The Ring, which of

Monty Python’s Constitutional

David Lindsay’s A Voyage to

The Grink! (RIP Twitter,

Per Ned’s closing comment, Roger Zelazny’s A Night In The Lonesome

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