53. Working on the Group Art Project.

Land in Tolkien.

Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: land. By default
the Middle-earth legendarium is about a place that never was, however rooted
in the actual planet we live on, and the range of details from sweeping
mountains and vast continents to small roads and fields evident throughout the
cycle of stories is a key part of what has made Tolkien’s work so vivid and
loved. Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are specifically about
journeys as the key plotline, where characters move into spaces that they’d
only heard about dimly or not at all as they seek to fulfill their aims. That
said, there’s certainly more than this to how Tolkien considers and situates
the geography of his creation, including the in-universe explanations of that
creation to start with and Melkor’s marring of it. How has Tolkien’s grounding
of Middle-earth in the feeling of Northern Europe in general shaped
perceptions of fantasy worlds since, and what authors and traditions have
worked against it? What are the senses of how layers of history have both
informed and shaped the land and the peoples who were and are there in the
legendarium, and how does that emerge along the way as the stories progress?
Have the expectations and experiences of quick and easy travel shaped our
reaction to understanding how slow journeys are, especially on foot, as was
the case for most of human history? And did the stones of Eregion indeed
actually speak?

Jared’s
doodle. And
who wouldn’t enjoy that view, we ask?

The WGA strike is of course still
happening. And you should still support
it! And the actors too!

And indeed, Andy Serkis’s The Silmarillion
reading is out!

So yes, not only did a fan purchase the Magic: The Gathering The One Ring card
by lucky chance, following the episode recording he sold it to hardcore MTG
fan Post Malone. Truly this is a world we are in.

The promo performance of “Now And For Always”
from the revival of the LOTR musical is pretty nice! Performances did start soon after the episode
recording and an initial Guardian
review was quite complimentary.
More promo photos are
available,
and again there’s always our episode on the original
production…

The Rings of Power Emmy
nominations. Of course, when the Emmys themselves will
happen is another matter.

The Society of American Archivists’
announcement of William Fliss’s
award for his continuing work with the Marquette University Tolkien
archive.

We meant to mention that fellow Megaphonic podcast The Spouter-Inn discussed The Fellowship of the
Ring as part of a cluster of books
about land, and then had Oriana on as a
guest.

Much of the Christopher Tolkien-edited History of Middle-earth
series is
essentially about Tolkien’s decades-long process of setting down what Middle-earth actually was. Among the key books in the series in this regard are The
Shaping of Middle-earth and
Morgoth’s Ring.

I suspect most of us had our own Oregon
Trail experiences.

No, we are not going to relitigate the Eagles. Just listen to our
episode.

The article on Tolkien and Aldo Leopold is Lucas Niiler’s 1999 piece “Green
Reading: Tolkien, Leopold and the Land
Ethic.”

Who wouldn’t love the Glittering
Caves? (And indeed, check
out our dwarves episode as well
as our Ghân-Buri-Ghân episode.)

Colonialism/imperialism and environmental destruction? Who could guess
there’d be a connection. (Enjoy
this book for some
other light reading.)

Very light, but this piece on Roman ruins in the present
day helps underscore this sense of persistence into the present
Tolkien captures well. (In contrast, the
Duwamish have had to fight erasure.)

If you want to go to Three
Rivers, learn a
little more about it.

A 2015 Vox piece on the invention and criminalization of
jaywalking.

Peter Jackson’s vision of Isengard as industrial
hellhole. (The tree being flung
down is at 1:20.)

Earthsea is always a vibe but as
Jared notes, check out Annals of the Western
Shore.

A Thousand Thousand Islands is indeed no longer
going,
sadly, but you can get a taste of it
here.

Guy Gavriel Kay’s had quite the career!

And indeed some younger authors to check out who aren’t doing Europe all over
again include R. F. Kuang and Tasha
Suri.

Fonda Lee has the Green Bone Saga to check out,
aka the ‘Jade’ series.

And indeed the fan film Born of
Hope about Arathorn is on
YouTube!

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