Curumo’s Current Affairs #001
Please note With the recent wars in Ukraine and Israel/ Palestine Tolkien-inspired imagery has been used many times but not only in these contexts. J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings have become a global phenomenon and people from all over the world appreciate them, are inspired by them - or abuse them.
I do not want this newsletter - the Roving Ranger - to be a medium of political discussion but of information; so I will be presenting you articles I consider relevant and important if you take an interest in these issues at the bottom of this newsletter in a new category: Curumo’s Current Affairs.
Curumo’s Current Affairs
I will be providing you with current affairs’ mentions of Tolkien’s works to the best of my ability. Having said this, the complexities of the issues involved often make it difficult to discern the biases of the writers and their intentions. If you happen to have more insights in any of the topics mentioned please do not hesitate to send me suggestions.
Transparency note I was born in 1972, raised in Germany by German parents, from a working-class family, a union member for more than twenty years, raised in a mixture of protestant and catholic ethics but am now an agnostic, and consider myself to have a left-centre bias.
The Italian Tolkien exhibition continues to make headlines. Here is a list of posts you might want to read to better understand where this is coming from, particularly looking back at Italian history, for example, the Years of Lead (Opens in a new window), and the making of the Hobbit Camps (Opens in a new window).
https://harpers.org/archive/2024/03/leggete-tolkien-stolti-hari-kunzru/ (Opens in a new window)Tolkien about fascism (Opens in a new window) [Socialist Worker] | Tolkien’s biggest fan? Italy’s Giorgia Meloni opens new exhibit (Opens in a new window) [Washington Post] | Meloni gifts herself an exhibition on Tolkien, a reference point for the Italian radical right (Opens in a new window) [El País] | An Exhibition of Orcs and Elves Has Rome Abuzz, and Bewildered (Opens in a new window) [New York Times] | How Tolkien’s hobbits got political (Opens in a new window) [GZERO] | Italy's Far-Right Leader Giorgia Meloni Is a 'Lord of the Rings' Stan (Opens in a new window) [VICE] | One ring and the right wing: Giorgia Meloni’s love of Tolkien (Opens in a new window) [New European] | From 2022: Italy’s New Leader Is a Very Weird, Tolkien-Obsessed Right-Wing Extremist (Opens in a new window) [Mother Jones]
https://pesaagora.com/columns/hobbits-and-the-rebirth-of-italian-fascism/ (Opens in a new window)https://www.economist.com/1843/2024/02/15/why-right-wing-italians-love-hobbits-pirates-and-talking-seagulls?utm_medium=social-media.content.np&utm_source=linkedin&utm_campaign=editorial-social&utm_content=discovery.content (Opens in a new window)The Lord of the Rings, Israel, and Palestine: Reflections of the Gaza-Hamas War in Tolkien (Opens in a new window) [Real Context News]
Constructing the Orc: Embracing Fiction in Ukraine’s Tactical Narrative (Opens in a new window) [RUSI is a UK security and defense think tank (Opens in a new window)]
Elves, Orcs, Hobbits And The One Ring: Echoes Of Tolkien In The Ukraine War (Opens in a new window) [Worldcrunch]
The religious angle:
Tolkien's Literary Output: Fundamentally Religious and Catholic? (Opens in a new window) [Church Life Journal]
Bradley J. Birzer mentioned on Xitter (Opens in a new window):
The revised and expanded Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien affirm one major thing: Tolkien was even more Catholic than any of us expected him to be. And, many of us already thought he was really, really Catholic.
The Gurtum Charity Foundation (Opens in a new window) has built a hobbit house (Opens in a new window) as a bomb shelter for children in the Kyiv area.
The Hamas Massacre Is A Wake-Up Call For America To Fortify Itself Against Evil (Opens in a new window) [The Federalist; media bias (Opens in a new window)]
J.R.R. Tolkien Offers an Antidote Against New Forms of Paganism in the West (Opens in a new window); Joseph Pearce on Hobbit Day and Tolkien Week (Sept. 23) (Opens in a new window) [National Catholic Register; media bias (Opens in a new window)]
J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the most important and influential vectors in the transmission of Christian culture and transcendence from the earliest ages to our own era, and it is probably not a coincidence if currently there is a true battle raging around the interpretation and reappropriation of Tolkien’s work.
Austin M. Freeman easily agrees, calling Lord of the Rings a Christian classic (Opens in a new window).
Slovakian IT workers certainly seem to be hardcore Tolkien fans (Opens in a new window).
How J. R. R. Tolkien Influenced Tim Keller (Opens in a new window) [The Gospel Coalition]
