Celebrating Tolkien’s 120th birthday

I am very pleased to be able to share some detailed information about a special upcoming issue of L’Arc et le Heaume, the publication of Tolkiendil (the French Tolkien Society). This is an exciting publication for me, since I contributed an essay — but especially for the franco-phone Tolkien community, for even better reasons. But I will let Vivien Stocker, its editor, do the rest of the talking from here. Everything that follows this paragraph is the announcement Vivien forwarded to me. I’ve edited it only slightly (e.g., giving the titles of the essays in both French and English).

[Vivien Stocker:] As you already know, this year will mark the 120th anniversary of Tolkien’s birth. To celebrate the event, the association Tolkiendil, which promotes the work of J.R.R. Tolkien throughout the French-speaking world, will publish a special issue of its magazine L’Arc et le Heaume, release scheduled for the coming summer. Several authors honoured us by writing brand new essays for this volume, or by providing us with texts never published in French before. In addition, The Tolkien Estate, HarperCollins and Verlyn Flieger allowed us to translate Tolkien’s own essay on Smith of Wootton Major, previously issued in the expanded edition of that tale in 2005 and still unreleased in French. Thus, we are proud to announce the contents of this volume:

• Vivien Stocker: “Éditorial”
• Isabelle Pantin: “Tolkien et le Romantisme” [Tolkien and Romanticism]
• Thomas Honegger: “Plus de Lumière que d’Ombre? Approches Jungiennes de Tolkien et de l’Image Archétypale de l’Ombre” [More Light than Shadow? Jungian Approaches to Tolkien and the Archetypeal Image of the Shadow]
• John D. Rateliff: “Un Fragment, Détaché: Bilbo le Hobbit et Le Silmarillion” [A Fragment, Detached: The Hobbit and The Silmarillion]
• Tom Shippey: “Arbres, Tronçonneuses, et Visions du Paradis” [Trees, Chainsaws, and Visions of Paradise]
• Jason Fisher: “La Jeune Fille Elfe dans la Forêt: Une Image Récurrente chez Tolkien” [Tolkien’s Recurrent Image of the Elf Maiden in the Wood]
• Jérôme Sainton: “Amdir ah Estel”
• Jean-Rodolphe Turlin: “Wandering Madness: Le Motif de l’Errance dans l’Œuvre de Tolkien” [Wandering Madness: The Motif of Wandering in Tolkien’s Works]
• Ursula Le Guin: “Schémas Rythmiques dans Le Seigneur des Anneaux” [Rhythmic Pattern in The Lord of the Rings]
• Ted Nasmith: “Une Longue Histoire” [A Long Affair]
• Bertrand Bellet: “Sir Orfeo, une Traduction” [Sir Orfeo, a Translation]
• J.R.R. Tolkien: “Essai sur Smith de Wootton Major” [Essay on Smith of Wootton Major]

The entire volume will be in French. We hope to present the original versions of English articles online on Tolkiendil.com after its release. For more information, follow this link. [By the way, the wonderful portrait above, which I reproduce here with permission, is by the talented Belgian artist, Pascal Legrand.]