Anna Smol: A Single Leaf

Category: Publications

  • What a day for Tolkien news!

    This morning, in the midst of grading and preparing class notes and answering student emails, I happened to glance at my twitter feed to find that the long-awaited Beowulf translation by Tolkien is about to be published on May 22! Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary is another in a series of publications by the author’s…

  • The Tolkien Encyclopedia & Reader’s Diary: A Look Back

    The J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment is now available in paperback and Kindle version, making this reference work much more affordable than the $100-plus Canadian and US hardback edition (with similar pricing in the UK). The Encyclopedia, edited by Michael D.C. Drout, includes entries by well-known critics such as Tom Shippey, Verlyn Flieger,…

  • CFP: Humour in and around Tolkien’s work

    This call for papers just came in. The original deadlines have been extended. Proposals are now due on March 3 and, if accepted, final papers by June 30. Call for Papers: Humour in and around the works of Tolkien Tolkien has until recently been seen primarily as a writer of epic fantasy, a genre usually…

  • CFP: Tales After Tolkien: Medievalism and Genre in the Twenty-First Century

    The following call for papers came through the Studies in Medievalism email list. You can find some information about the Tales After Tolkien Society on their website, which outlines their formation at the 2013 International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo. CFP:  Contributions are sought for an edited collection titled Tales After Tolkien: Medievalism and…

  • Year’s Work in Medievalism becomes open access

    The peer-reviewed scholarly journal Year’s Work in Medievalism has just become an open-access online publication.  One of its editors, Ed Risden, summarizes the contents of the latest volume: “This current volume includes essays by Nick Haydock on Beowulf in film, Alison Ganze Langdon on Maria Edgeworth’s “The Modern Griselda,” Nick Utzig’s on The Cloisters, William…

  • Tolkien’s Guinever

    In my previously posted thoughts on Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur, I predicted that the character of Guinever would give rise to a lot more discussion, and we are seeing that debate occurring already on several sites.  Troels Forchhammer, who has listed a thorough collection of reviews on his blog Parma-kenta, has added his own…

  • Now Available: The Body in Tolkien’s Legendarium

    I am pleased to announce that The Body in Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on Middle-earth Corporeality, edited by Christopher Vaccaro, has been published and is now available for ordering.  I am also very happy to see that my essay in this book (“Frodo’s Body: Liminality and the Experience of War”) is in such great company! See…

  • Fall of Arthur – more reviews

    I posted a list of reviews of Tolkien’s Fall of Arthur back in June, but I now have a few more to add.  Most recently, Kathy Cawsey has published “The Lord of the Round Table” in Open Letters Monthly. Below is my collated list of selected reviews in online publications and in a few blogs (including…

  • “Wild blow the winds of war”: Tolkien’s Fall of Arthur

    [Can there be spoilers in an Arthurian tale? I don’t know if my review would count as a spoiler, but if you’re worried about such things, you might want to proceed with caution.] In a darkening world, tides are flowing fast and winds sweeping into the west while ghostly apparitions ride through the skies. Tolkien’s…

  • Fall of Arthur reviews

    I’m gathering my own thoughts on the recently published Fall of Arthur poem by Tolkien; in the meantime, here are a few reviews. John Garth, “Tolkien’s Unfinished Epic: ‘The Fall of Arthur.’” The Daily Beast. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/23/tolkien-s-unfinished-epic-the-fall-of-arthur.html Elizabeth Hand.  “J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘Fall of Arthur’ and the Path to Middle-Earth.”   Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-jrr-tolkien-fall-of-arthur-middle-earth20130526,0,7954386.story Some brief comments…