The blurb for Dr MacLachlan’s book reads as follows: ‘Tolkien famously rejected comparison of his Ring with Wagner’s, though there is good evidence that Tolkien knew much more about Der Ring des Nibelungen than he let on after the publication of The Lord of the Rings. Analysis of that work from a Wagnerian point of view enables consideration of it in a new way. By exploring the parallels between Wagner’s Ring and Tolkien’s, a fresh interpretation of Tolkien’s work emerges, one that hinges on associating Gandalf with Wotan. Like Wagner’s god, Gandalf has to find a way of solving the problems posed by the Ring and like Wotan he cannot succeed without other people. When the plots of The Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit) are examined in this way it becomes apparent how much they owe to Wagner’s music-drama, and the role of Gandalf is opened to new explanation.’

Dr Ian Johnson has been appointed to the Advisory Group of the JISC-funded project Manuscripts Online: Written Culture from 1000 to 1500, which will establish a federated search service of online research resources in the subject domains of medieval English language, literature and history. The project is a collaboration between digital humanities experts at the Humanities Research Institute (University of Sheffield) and subject specialists at several UK universities. It is directed by Michael Pidd (Sheffield).

Manuscripts Online will enable users to search an enormous body of online primary resources relating to written and early printed culture in Britain during the period 1000 to 1500. A single search engine will enable users to undertake sophisticated full-text searching of literary manuscripts, historical documents and early printed books which are located on websites owned by libraries, archives, universities and publishers. One of the resources that Manuscripts Online will be using is the data from the joint QUB-St Andrews AHRC-funded project Geographies of Orthodoxy: Mapping Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ, 1350-1550, in which Ian was Co-Investigator.

On Thursday, 8 March Professor Don Paterson took part in Recovering Connections: Abstract and Analogy in Poetry and Physics at Durham University; on Friday, 9 March Professor Paterson took part in the Norwich Literature Showcase at Norwich Cathedral; and on Thursday, 15 March he attended the International Futures Forum in Edinburgh.

Between 21–24 March, Professor Robert Crawford took part in Moving Modernisms, a four-day interdisciplinary conference in Oxford.

Professor Neil Rhodes returned to the University of Granada as Visiting Professor from 25 to 31 March. He gave a lecture on ‘The Role of Translation in the Elizabethan Literary Renaissance’ and took two postgraduate seminars.

Dr Sarah Dillon will be doing a talk on ‘Madwomen in the Attic’ at the Edinburgh Science Festival on Monday, 2nd April, along with science journalist Vivienne Parry and the psychologist Dr Raj Persaud. Full details here. Connected to her talk at the Science Festival, on the afternoon of Monday 2nd, before her talk, Dr Dillon will also be doing a live interview on BBC Radio Scotland’s The Book Café, as part of a feature on madwomen in literature and the science-literature interface.

On 20 April, Dr Emma Sutton will speak in Oxford at the AGM of CCUE (the Council of College and University English) on the subject of music and literature. The roundtable – with Peter Dayan (Edinburgh) and Stephen Benson (UEA) – will discuss recent developments in musical-literary research, and the ways in which this intermedial subject may affect the teaching of literature.

Professor Don Paterson is visiting several US universities in April. Beginning with a reading at Boston University, followed by a conversation moderated by Dan Chiasson, poetry critic at The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, he will go on to readings and class visits at Vanderbilt University on 3 April, and Emory University on 11 April. Professor Paterson has served as a judge for this year’s Tower Poetry Competition and will be attending the prizegiving ceremony on 19 April, when he will also be giving a reading at the Woodstock Bookshop in Oxford.

Professor Lorna Hutson has been invited to give a lecture and a workshop at the University of Chicago on 18 and 19 April. Full details here. Her presentations for Chicago have been researched using 16th and 18th century printed books in the University of St Andrews Special Collections.

Will Harris and Richard Osmond on the MLitt Creative Writing course launched a new poetry magazine, 13 Pages, at the Byre Theatre on 18 March (during the StAnza poetry festival). 13 Pages is a new limited edition poetry magazine, it features specially commissioned artwork and brand new poems from Niall Campbell, Ian Duhig, John Glenday, Roddy Lumsden, Sean O’Brien, Bernard O’Donoghue, Rachel Piercey, Jacob Polley, Peter Riley, Sam Riviere, Karen Solie, Katharine Towers and Julian Turner.

Marina Cano Lopez will be speaking at the conference, The Popular and the Middlebrow: Women’s Writing, 1880 – 1940, at Newcastle University on 12 April. Her paper is entitled ‘Recuperating the Victorian “middlebrow”: Catherine Anne Hubback, Jane Austen’s lost niece’.