Stratofanatic's Emporium

So, having just received my copy of Tolkien Studies , I dropped everything (as one does) and immediately starting reading "The Year's Work in Tolkien Studies 2018", the year-end literature review of all things published on Tolkien during that calendar year. These literature reviews were a godsend to me as a graduate student, and they're absolutely vital for anyone hoping to keep up with the field. Well, my essay on Verlyn Flieger's two YA novels published in A Wilderness of Dragons  (ed. John Rateliff) as a Festschrift  for Flieger, ended up getting some very nice coverage. Like, one-of-the-nicest-things-anyone's-ever-said-about-my-research coverage, which meant more both because it was so unexpected and because I assumed that this book chapter in particular would likely never be widely read. The review's worth quoting in full: Dennis Wilson Wise drills deeper into Flieger's use of fantasy fiction to comment on her Tolkien scholarship in the most exten...

YES!!! So, my two contributor's copies from the most recent issue of Tolkien Studies  have just arrived .... my article is " Depth, Globalization, and the Domestic Hero: The Postmodern Transformation of Tolkien’s Bard in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit Films ," and I think it'll be a highly useful application of neo-Straussian and Marxist theory to Tolkien Studies as a field. Here's a quick recap of the argument. Afterward, though, I'll spend this entry discussing the absolutely tortured publication path my brave little article had to follow. ARGUMENT : Does anyone remember the scene from The Battle of The Five Armies when Alfrid Lickspittle asks Bard, “The Master’s mantle was there for the taking, but you threw it all away. And for what?” Bard doesn't answer, but Jackson, who's not really known for his subtlety, quickly pans the camera to Bard's children, thereby implying that family (duh!)  is important. Anyway, that's Jackson in a nutshell. He takes...