7. Crypto-magical in Their Own Way.

All about Ghân-buri-Ghân.

Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: Ghân-buri-Ghân.
Briefly featuring in The Return of the King as a leader of ‘Wild Men’ who
offers to help the Rohirrim on their ride to Minas Tirith, Ghân-buri-Ghân is
on the surface seemingly little more than a caricature on several levels: a
stoic ‘tribesman,’ perhaps even a noble savage with all that implies. But in
both his sharp, sometimes very darkly sardonic responses to the Rohirrim and
in the further backstory that Tolkien then created for Ghân-buri-Ghân’s
culture as a whole, Tolkien explores some very deep waters indeed. What might
be the connections between Tolkien’s depiction of small powers in the shadow
of an empire and the realities of the British Empire he grew up in? What do
Tolkien’s writings on the Drúedain show in terms of how he viewed them in the
grand scheme of Middle-earth’s design? And on a final note, what does the
little known story “Tal-Elmar” show in terms of imperialism, colonialism and
conquest during the era of Númenorean dominance?

Jared’s
doodle of
Ghân-buri-Ghân and the Púkel-men.

Luke Shelton’s tweet
response that
led us to Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R.
Tolkien.

John Rateliff absolutely knows his
Tolkien.

Here’s the news on the wider casting call for the Amazon series.

Taika Waititi! He’s a guy.

Ghân-buri-Ghân—only
there for a couple of pages, but it’s a hell of an appearance.

Separately, more on the Púkel-men and the Drúedain. (One of
the Púkel-men statues does make a very brief
appearance in Peter Jackson’s Return of the King.)

Louise Liebherr’s “Reimagining Tolkien: A Post-colonial Perspective on The
Lord of the
Rings.”

The Neanderthals remain a vividly
strong presence in how society considers prehistory—and how that
consideration can change over
time.

Orientalism
retains a strong—and pernicious—influence to the present day.

Irish Home Rule was
absolutely a dominant political question in Victorian and Edwardian days.

Tolkien’s Letter 61 is one of his
most vivid and revealing.

Christina Fawcett’s “Play and Pacifist Space: Language in the Writing of
J.R.R.
Tolkien.”

“Tal-Elmar” may in the
end be the most mysterious Middle-earth story Tolkien ever wrote.

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