Around the World and Web

Tolkien Society Autumn Seminar: Translating and Illustrating Tolkien Registration Open

Tolkien’s appeal has led to his fiction and non-fiction being translated into over fifty languages. The art of translation is immensely complex and when discussing the Dutch translation of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien himself saw the task as “formidable”, offering his own supportive intervention to achieve a satisfactory result. The author’s invented names and languages prompt the question of how the translator should approach Tolkien’s immense mythology. Recent scholarship has emphasised the need for a wider range of Tolkien’s work to be translated in order for readers to gain a fuller understanding of Arda and the author’s development. But with a wealth of translated texts existing already, this seminar hopes to spark new interpretations about old texts and for unacknowledged translations to be brought to light and examined.

An illustrator of his own work, Tolkien had a keen eye for the visual representation of a text. He admired the work of illustrators such as Pauline Baynes, Cor Blok and Ingahild Grathmer (the Queen of Denmark) and others who illustrated the original English and translated versions of his texts. The manner in which illustrators have engaged with Tolkien’s stories varies dramatically and can often be influenced by culturally specific ideas. This seminar hopes to re-examine renowned illustrations of Tolkien’s work while calling for new or overshadowed illustrations to be discussed.

Registration is free for this online seminar, which will be held on 6 November 2021.

Teitho Contest September/October Challenge: Fruit

The Teitho challenge for September and October is Fruit.

How will you choose to approach this month’s prompt? Summer’s bounty in the Shire? A harvest meal with Tom Bombadil and Goldberry?

Or does your story follow the fruit of the vines and the vintages of Old Dorwinion that make their way to cellars in Middle-earth?

Or will you take us all the way back to Valinor, to the fruit of the Two Trees. Or perhaps Isildur’s brave action of stealing a fruit from Nimloth the Fair, the White Tree of Numenor.

Fruit can have other connotations as well: the fruit of one’s labours, an idea or concept coming to fruition, the satisfaction of a fruitful life.

Whatever path you choose we wish you fruitful endeavors with this month’s story!

Remember submissions are due by October 31. Please email them to teitho.contest@gmail.com.

LOTRO Coupon Code for Free Quest Packs

Get caught up just in time for the upcoming Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) Fate of Gundabad Expansion with a special coupon Code that will let you acquire all currently-available quest packs permanently on your account(s)! However, you will need to act quickly, as this Coupon Code is available to redeem through November 30th, 2021.

The coupon code and a list of quest packs included is available on the LOTRO site.

Finwëan Ladies Week

This is a week-long event on Tumblr celebrating the ladies of the line of Finwë! There have been events within the Silmarillion fandom focused on the sons of Finwë and their descendants, and to add to the fun this week was established to give his wives, daughters, and other female descendants their own time to shine. We are back for our third year, from October 4-10, 2021!

Any content and creations about the ladies of Finwë’s line are welcome! You can create edits, gifs, fanart, fanfic, fanmixes, and more! Please tag your posts with #finweanladiesweek AND @ mention this blog @finweanladiesweek so they can be easily found. If your submission turns into a long post, please put what you can beneath a “Keep reading” divider.

Below are some prompts for each day of the week. They are not mandatory, but they are here to inspire you. This page will lead to a detailed explanation for each one.

DAY ONE: Míriel Þerindë and Indis
DAY TWO: Findis and Írimë Lalwen
DAY THREE: Aredhel and Galadrield
DAY FOUR: Later Generations
DAY FIVE: Ladies Who Married In
DAY SIX: Original Characters
DAY SEVEN: Freeform

October Challenge at tolkienshortfanworks

The October Challenge at the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth has been posted. (New members are very welcome to join the community.)

The thematic prompt is Apple.

The formal challenge is to write a piece in blank verse. either unrhymed iambic pentameter (the most common kind of blank verse in English) or other similar unrhymed metre.

(For  bonus quotation prompts and more details on the challenges, see the linked Dreamwidth post.)

Fall for Tolkien: Scribbles & Drabbles

Scribbles & Drabbles (Fall For Tolkien):

An autumn exchange pairing artist with writers, with lower minimum requirements.

Artist Sign-ups end on September 25th

What counts as art? If you say it's art, it's art. Digital art. Drawings. Paintings. Music. Playlists. Mood boards. Animations. Toilet paper tube Elves. Cosplay. Your pet in cosplay. Photos. Crafts. Calligraphy. Maps. Food. Finger-painting. Sculpture. Paper Bag Puppets. I could keep going, but you get the idea. As the name 'scribbles' implies, you can submit your piece as 'unfinished' -- just think of how much Unfinished Tales has inspired people to create content.

Author & Beta Sign-ups are now open! Author sign-up end October 3rd.

What's the minimum word count? 100 words. As the name 'drabbles' refers to, your submissions need only be 100 words minimum to count. You can write a drabble, a scene, a character study, a dialogue exchange, a headcanon, a poem--you get the idea. And like the art, your piece is as 'finished' as you feel like it needs to be.

There is a website on Weebly (linked),  an AO3 collection, and a Discord.

More details and the schedule at the linked website.

Half-Elven Week starting on Tumblr on 13 September

Half-Elven Week will run 13 to 19 September on Tumblr, a week to appreciate Tolkien’s half-elven characters (characters who have the blood of elves and some other race, no matter if they are called so in the canon).

Characters and themes as prompts by day of the week:

Day 1 - Being Different; Doriathrim - Lúthien, Dior, Eluréd, Elurín, Elwing

Day 2 - The Choice; People of Sirion - Elwing, Eärendil, Elrond, Elros

Day 3 - Heritage; Númenoreans - Elros, his children and descendants

Day 4 - Power; People of Rivendell - Elrond, his children and descendants

Day 5 - Legacy; Princes of Dol Amroth - Galador, Gilmith and their descendants

Day 6 - Loss; Parents of half-elves - Melian, Thingol, Tuor, Idril, Beren, Nimloth, Celebrían, Elros’s wife, Imrazôr, Mithrellas, and others

Day 7 - Freeform

- prompts aren’t mandatory, only a source of inspiration. 

- all kinds of content are allowed - art, fanfiction, headcanons, meta, character analysis, moodboards, fancast, aesthetic, etc.

- OCs are welcome - children of Caranthir/Haleth, Aegnor/Andreth, any elf/other race pair

- book-related content is preferred, but movie content is still welcome

More details at the linked post.

September Challenge at tolkienshortfanworks

The September Challenge at the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth has been posted. (New members are very welcome to join the community.)

This month, both parts of the challenge are in honour of Bilbo's and Frodo's birthday on 22 September.





The thematic prompt is based on Bilbo's farewell party: your piece must either contain mention of the

number 144 or the word "gross" (in any sense of that word).



The formal challenge is to write a piece based on any of the verse forms used by Bilbo, from any of Tolkien's works, whether simpler or more intricate–as, for example, I sit beside the fire, Attercop, Earendil, the Bath Song, or any others you can think of.

(For more details on the challenges, see the linked post.)

"Comrades of the Ring" by Joel Merriner (Foreign Policy)

Joel Merriner, a scholar of artwork based on Tolkien's legendarium, tackles how Soviet artists enacted their visions of Middle-earth within an authoritarian regime:

It has been 20 years since the premiere of film director Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring. As Amazon approaches completion of principal photography on season one of their $465 million TV reimagining of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Second Age, a continuation of the epic neo-medieval visuals that have become synonymous with Middle-earth appears inevitable.

However, the emergence in April of Leningrad TV’s Khraniteli (“Keepers”), a “lost” two-part 1991 Soviet television retelling of Volume I of The Lord of the Rings, has provided Western and young Russian Tolkien fans alike with brief but colorful insight into an alternative vision of the tale. This delightfully lo-fi production, with its earworm opening song, rudimentary special effects, and cobbled together costumes, has been labeled by some as symptomatic of a country on the brink of collapse. But, in fact, Khraniteli represents a rich sub-culture of resourcefulness and creativity in the face of oppression: the world of Soviet Tolkien.

Continue reading "Comrades of the Ring" on the Foreign Policy website.

Call for Proposals: Once and Future Fantasies Conference

Submissions are invited for the first conference co-sponsored by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts to take place outside North America, which will be hosted by the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow on 13-17 July 2022.

The art of the fantastic has never been more visible than it is today. Streamed, read and written, drawn, painted, designed and modelled by amateurs and professionals, performed and played in theatrical events and games, and marketed the whole world over, the art of the fantastic occupies every available cultural niche with unprecedented energy and enthusiasm. This conference asks what the fantastic in the arts has to offer at this time of crisis, rooted as it is in the distant and recent past while remaining extraordinarily sensitive to the shifting landscape of the present and the infinite possibilities of the future.

The conference committee welcomes proposals for individual twenty-minute papers, pre-formed panels of three twenty-minute papers under a coherent theme, and roundtable discussions with three to six participants (ninety-minute sessions).

Suggested topics can include but are not limited to the following:  

• Fantasies of history and imagined futures
• Historical and contemporary fantasy media  
• Changes in the definitions of fantasy and the fantastic through history 
• Fantasies of national/cultural belonging and identity  
• Fantasy and the major challenges of the present moment 
• Fantasy as method for imagining alternative futures 
• Canonicity and its alternatives
• Radical re-imaginings and re-interpretations of SFF ‘classics’   
• Fantasy and temporality (hauntings, time-travel narratives, etc)  
• Fantasies shattering and coalescing  
• The relationship between fantasy and its audiences/consumers/co-creators   
• Borders and their usefulness (or lack thereof) in the fantastic  
• State of the Field-type contributions asking questions such as:  
  • Wither fantasy/fantasy scholarship?  
  • Developing theoretical approaches to the fantastic  
  • Historicising fantasy scholarship  
  • Fantasy pedagogies  
  • How to organise (or unorganise) the discipline?   

We invite submissions from researchers, practitioners and fans of all branches of the fantastic, whether within the academy or beyond it. We are particularly interested in submissions from researchers and practitioners who have been underrepresented in fantastic art and its commentaries. We warmly encourage younger or less experienced scholars and creatives to take part. We are committed to offering everyone a welcoming environment for interaction, speculation and enjoyment. We will also invite creative workshops for those interested in exploring the creative process (separate call for creative workshops to be released soon). 

To submit, please send us a 200-300 word abstract using our submission form by 22 October 2021. See the full call for proposals for more information.