Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: the Istari. Also

Jared’s

Yup, it’s been a year. Stay

No Amazon series news but you can read Oriana’s

Tolkien Gateway’s summary entry on

Our earlier episode on magic.

There’s plenty of discussion of how the Istari are essentially angels on

Letter 156 from The Letters of J.

“Of Aulë and

To say there’s a lot of writing on ‘classic’ wizards in world literature and

And indeed, modern wizards in other media: Harry

Gandalf’s letter to Frodo is such a fun-yet-important element.

Linked it before but Lindsay Ellis really did call

The figure on the edge of

Have a laugh with our Silver Call

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Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: Orcs. While not

Jared’s

The Amazon

Tolkien Gateway’s Orcs entry gives you

Our episode on death, in contrast

Morgoth’s Ring does have a

You can guess what we think about QAnon. We hope for the best for the

The scene with the dead Haradrim

Aphantasia, as Oriana mentions having.

Tolkien’s letter #210 from the

Porcs! They’re apparently coming back?

The concept of the Yellow Peril

Totalitarianism in Middle-earth is a rich vein of study—and Tolkien clearly hated it in our world.

Sing along with the Orcs!

Tolkien’s Father Christmas

You might be familiar with the 1984 film

Oriana’s conlang piece in Vox

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Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: Smith of Wootton

Jared’s

Try a medieval goose

One of the many reports on the newly announced cast

The Independent’s report on the apparent wrapping up of season 1.

Smith of Wootton

More on George MacDonald, as well as the

Our Farmer Giles of Ham episode.

Jonathan Strange & Mr.

The Spielberg film in question is

Protestant work ethics,

We’ve mentioned the Kalevala before

Blackfriars in Oxford.

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ At the Earth’s

Tolkien and Lewis, we all know the story. But if you

Shel Silverstein’s The Giving

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Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: The Father

Jared’s

Photos

TheOneRing.net’s debut of the

The formal publisher announcement about The Nature of Middle-earth.

The Father Christmas

The centenary edition of the

A quick English-language

Quite literally the only mention of an Anglican guilt

Father Christmas himself,

The Narnia Father Christmas is

Santa Claus Village in Finland, should you

The Great British Bake

Epistolary novels are pretty

The staircase

The cave painting

Baillie Tolkien is indeed

A formal term for a name that replaces a forbidden name, such as is the case

The Karhu Concept Store in Helsinki.

Our previous episodes on

Dickens’s A Christmas Carol’s Ghost of Christmas

The Muppet Christmas

Medieval marginalia is the best.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: Éowyn. As

Jared’s

Now that’s how to win an election!

J. A. Bayona says a half-way

New Zealand-based film and TV

Ismael Cruz Córdova, a talented and sharp fellow, we’d say.

Éowyn’s Tolkien Gateway entry.

That moment in Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King? You know

Tolkien’s Letter 43 to his son

Our episode on magic, where

We’re not steeped enough in the scholarship to say what would be good

The Rankin-Bass-via-Topcraft Éowyn is

We didn’t mention it but there’s been recent work on the question of women’s

The Jackson extended Two Towers scene with the

Twin Peaks: The

Our Erendis and

The Valkyrie are not unknown, to put

A depiction of Éowyn in front of Meduseld in

Alan Lee’s depiction of

“Courage, Merry.” When Jackson

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Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: Boromir, Faramir and

Jared’s

They’re fully filming again in New Zealand. Isn’t it wonderful when a society actually

Morfydd Clark continues to give good interview quotes.

Nudes, nudes,

Denethor via Tolkien Gateway, and

Jingoism — it’s not a good look.

Our imperialism episode, where we

If you are enjoying the show, and if you can, please consider supporting the

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: the Ents. Like

Jared’s

Gennifer Hutchison being clear she has nothing to

Maybe Kaya Scodelario is on that TV series

I mean who could blame Hugo Weaving at this point.

Look if you really want to follow news of this Gollum video

A useful Ent summary via Tolkien

Beyond Bree is still around, and long may

The recent Tides of History episode by Patrick Wyman

The article Jared read on a related subject: “The Lost Forest Gardens of

There are approximately eight million artistic depictions of

The Entish language is its own

Treebeard’s speaking voice being modeled on C.S. Lewis is another part of

The fate of the Entwives, as well

Quickbeam, a favorite of ours.

So how do plants break down rocks and things anyway? There are answers of

You’re more than welcome to read about Tom Cruise and Katie

We did indeed have a few thoughts about

Frankly the Treegarth of

Don’t be an ecofascist, it’s not a good look.

Quiet is disappearing, but there are attempts

There are indeed Ent-draught

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: imperialism. As a literal citizen of the British Empire at birth in a colonial holding of what would eventually become South Africa, Tolkien’s life was directly shaped by both the seeming omnipresence of empire and its simultaneous retreat and reshaping over the course of his life. But while his creative work shows many strains of considering what an empire is and how imperialism could be seen in it, his own personal unease with empire shows in views that are complicated in many ways. What does his legendarium show as examples of empire, and are they uniform in nature? How does Tolkien conceive of a political polity like Gondor in terms of both its history and functioning as an heir to empire? What are the exact contrasts between human empires and inhuman ones such as Sauron’s, and how does Tolkien use fantasy to heighten the contrasts? What forms of empire exist through the history of Middle-earth, from linguistic to political to economic? And in a time in the real world when statues have been falling, why did Gondor love that monument in Umbar of Númenor’s simultaneous greatest triumph and spark of its absolute destruction?

Jared’s doodle. “Sailing, sailing, over the ocean main…”

Take Your Pick! Check out our collective appearance on an episode last month where we did the ultimate Lord of the Rings fancast. 

TheOneRing.net’s Twitter summary of the Amazon series news from SDCC. Also, enjoy an article featuring one of the cast members that says literally nothing about what’s going on.

Beyoncé’s Black is King is very much on Disney+—speaking of empires. 

The 2000s Battlestar Galactica wasn’t perfect, maybe leaned a little too much into recentish American history in general for beats and imagery, but absolutely aimed for a still too rare depiction of a refugee society where instead of ‘good triumphs over evil’ everything slowly but surely falls apart over time.

Episode 7 on Ghân-buri-Ghân, with some discussion of empire’s impact and colonialism.

Merriam-Webster on imperialism. There you go.

The British Empire’s afterechoes continue to reverberate.

David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water” speech.

Totalitarianism—it’s not imperialism but you can see where one can be a subset of the other.

Esperanto. The speakers are out there.

Episode 4 on Aldarion and Erendis, plus the initial origins of the Númenorean empire.

Umbar! We did misremember the details in our chat, but the monument there of Sauron’s submission to Ar-Pharazôn was first put up not by the remnant of evil Númenoreans but by Gondor itself. Making the monument’s existence even more complicated!

Faramir’s full thoughts on Minas Tirith and empire: “‘For myself,’ said Faramir, ‘I would see the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Tirith in peace: Minas Anor again as of old, full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens: not a mistress of many slaves, nay, not even a kind mistress of willing slaves. War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Númenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom. Not feared, save as men may fear the dignity of a man, old and wise.‘“

Imrahil and Dol Amroth—we’d still would love to know more about all that.

The Byzantine Empire had military themes. Quite a few of them.

The Athenian Empire aka the Delian League.

The British Raj, also the reason why the British Empire can be called that in the first place. (As Oriana mentions later, she’s currently reading The Anarchy, a book about the East India Company and the ultimate origins of the Raj.)

The Kin-strife is another one of those things that we know a little about, but clearly there was a lot more there.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: the Lord of the

Jared’s

Take Your Pick! Do please join us for the

By all means listen in for the Tolkien content in Episode 72 of It’s Just a

The news about The Nature of Middle-earth

Do check out Vinyar Tengwar! It’s a wonderful

HarperCollins’s

Variety’s news story confirming that Amazon’s series as well as other

The Daily Mail’s

The new casting

Peter Jackson’s fond memories of Ian

The archived

Gary Russell’s official ‘companion’

A B-roll of scenes from the

The New York Times’s review of the Toronto

The National Geographic

An official ‘behind the scenes’

The New York Times once

A (London) Times

Scenes from the London

The 2007 episode of the UK podcast Musical

The

TheOneRing.net provided a very helpful

News

The London cast recording is streaming in various locations (like this

Do yourself a huge favor and check out A. R. Rahman’s

Similarly, Värttinä will never steer you wrong.

Laura Michelle Kelly, to give her full

Jason Robert Brown would have been great for

Rob Howell has gone from strength

Hamilton! You’ve heard

Michael Thierrault’s thoughts

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Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: Sir Gawain and the

Jared’s

Black Lives Matter and there it is.

Anyway yes, Samuel R. Delany! Octavia E.

As for, shall we say, militarized police forces in non-Shire settings,

The ramping up of filming in New Zealand is

Print-to-order hardback History of Middle-earth books? Go

There is a LOT of scholarship out there on Sir Gawain and the Green

Here’s Luke Shelton’s post about how the name Tulkas, one of

Courtly love? Oh there’s a lot

A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman is indeed a cracking read.

Patrick Wyman’s Tides of History is a very enjoyable podcast for sure. Some of the specific episodes

The Green Chapel is very clearly a neolithic site, as evidenced by the

There is indeed an official audiobook version of Tolkien’s

Alternate translations noted by Jared: Bernard

E.R. Eddison was indeed a skilled writer. But,

The Matter of Britain is

Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur is an interesting experiment, if incomplete.

The Gawain Poet’s identity is

The history of hunting in England is rather extensive. Leave it to the Daily

Homoeroticism in Sir Gawain? You don’t

Turns out there are three film versions of Sir Gawain—the

Some Order of the Garter info if you need it.

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