Anna Smol: A Single Leaf

Tag: alliterative poetry

  • New website: Tolkien and Alliterative Verse

    I’ve just launched a new website designed as a research resource for anyone interested in Tolkien’s alliterative poetry: Tolkien and Alliterative Verse at https://tolkienalliterative.ca. How much alliterative verse did Tolkien write? Check out our Descriptive Bibliography. What is alliterative verse? We’ve got Some Online Guides to Alliterative Metre to illustrate this medieval English style of…

  • Tolkien the Playwright

    We don’t often think of Tolkien as a playwright. Fantasy novelist — of course. Poet, scholar, artist – yes. But we shouldn’t forget that Tolkien also wrote one published play, “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son” – let’s call it “The Homecoming” for short – which was produced by BBC Radio and has been read…

  • Eala! Unlock your word hoards!

    I’ve just heard about a new project, the journal Eala, which will publish compositions in Old English and other medieval Germanic languages. The founding editor and editor-in-chief of Word Hoard Press, Richard Littauer, plans to publish the journal online and include original compositions in Old English, Old Norse, and the like, as well as translations.…

  • Tolkien at UVM conference April 10-12

    The 12th Annual Tolkien at University of Vermont conference is just days away.  The conference is free and open to the public. It starts with a Friday night Fireside reading at which participants can get up and read their favorite passages, and continues on Saturday with a day of conference presentations. On Sunday afternoon, the…

  • 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…

  • 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…