Verlyn Flieger’s forthcoming collection

On the heels of other recent announcements I have made here, there is more welcome news in Tolkien publishing. A new collection of Verlyn Flieger’s essays will be published by the Kent State University Press this summer under the title, Green Suns and Faërie: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien (ISBN 978-1-60635-094-2; list price $24.95). I’m told the cover features Ted Nasmith’s painting, The Glittering Caves of Aglarond. It looks like a wonderful collection, bringing together most of Verlyn’s uncollected essays on Tolkien — along with several new ones — in a single convenient volume.

Courtesy of Verlyn herself, and with the permission of the Kent State University Press, I am pleased to share the full table of contents below. Since most of the essays have appeared in print before, I have briefly annotated previous publication in square brackets where appropriate. Those without annotation are new essays. (These annotations are mine, not Verlyn’s; consequently, any errors are likewise mine. Please let me know if you spot a problem.)

Introduction

Part One: Tolkien Sub-creator

• Fantasy and Reality: J.R.R. Tolkien’s World and the Fairy-story Essay [Mythlore 22 (1999)]
• The Music and the Task: Fate and Free Will in Middle-earth [Tolkien Studies 6 (2009)]
• Tolkien and the Idea of the Book [The Lord of the Rings 1954–2004, ed. Hammond and Scull]
• Tolkien on Tolkien: “On Fairy-stories”, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
• When is a Fairy story a Faërie Story? Smith of Wootton Major [Myth and Magic: Art according to the Inklings, ed. Segura and Honegger]
• The Footsteps of Ælfwine [Tolkien’s ‘Legendarium’, ed. Flieger and Hostetter]
• The Curious Incident of the Dream at the Barrow [Tolkien Studies 4 (2007)]
• Whose Myth Is It?

Part Two: Tolkien in Tradition

• Tolkien’s Wild Men From Medieval to Modern [Tolkien the Medievalist, ed. Chance]
• Tolkien and the Matter of Britain [Mythlore 87 (Summer/Fall 2000)]
• Frodo and Aragorn: The Concept of the Hero [Tolkien: New Critical Perspectives, ed. Isaacs and Zimbardo]
• Bilbo’s Neck Riddle
• Allegory Versus Bounce: Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major [Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 12/2 (2001)]
• A Mythology for Finland: Tolkien and Lönnrot as Mythmakers [Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader, ed. Chance]
• Tolkien, Kalevala, and “The Story of Kullervo” [A new essay, or perhaps some of the editorial apparatus published in Tolkien Studies 7 (2010)]
• Brittany and Wales in Middle-earth
• The Green Knight, the Green Man, and Treebeard: Scholarship and Invention in Tolkien’s Fiction [Scholarship and Fantasy, ed. Battarbee]
• Missing Person [Mythlore 46 (Summer 1986)]

Part Three: Tolkien and His Century

• A Cautionary Tale: Tolkien’s Mythology for England [Probably the same essay published in The Chesterton Review 28.1/2 (February/May 2002); reprinted in A Hidden Presence: The Catholic Imagination of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Boyd and Caldecott]
• The Mind, the Tongue, and the Tale
• A Postmodern Medievalist [Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages, ed. Chance and Siewers]
• Taking the Part of Trees: Eco-conflict in Middle-earth [J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances, ed. Clark and Timmons]
• Gilson, Smith, and Baggins [Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: Sources of Inspiration, ed. Caldecott and Honegger]
• The Body in Question: The Unhealed Wounds of Frodo Baggins
• A Distant Mirror: Tolkien and Jackson in the Looking-glass [Studies in Medievalism: Postmodern Medievalisms, Volume XIII (2003; published 2005)]

Bibliography

Notes

Index