So, a while back I was asked to write a brief Foreword to the new book TOLKIEN'S TRANSFORMATIVE WOMEN: ART IN TRIPTYCH by Annie Brust (Vernon Press, Series in Literary Studies, 2024). I'm happy to say the book is now out:
https://vernonpress.com/book/1702
Brust's major innovation is to bring Tolkien's works within his legendarium into dialogue with his scolarly work explicating, editing, and translating poems in Old and Middle English -- which was, of course, his life's work at Leeds, Pembroke, and Merton as a working medievalist. Brust suggests we could learn a lot by bringing together in comparison or contrast women from the LotR (Galadriel, Eowyn, Shelob, Goldberry, Arwen, Rosie Cotton) and the core texts from the legendarium, esp the 1977 Silmarillion and 1980 Unfinished Tales (Luthien, Melian, Erendis the mariner's wife, Haleth, Aredhel, Ungoliant, Morwen, Nienor, Elbereth, Yavanna, Arien) with figures from medieval literature (Pearl, Wealtheow, Lady Bertilak, Gudrun, the Corrigan, Gwinever, Grendel's Mother).
For more on Brust's method, see the next post.
--John R.
P.S.: extra points for anyone who can identify all these Tolkien characters without having to look up any of then,
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