a companion to j. r. r. tolkien || front matter

A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien

Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture

This series offers comprehensive, newly written surveys of key periods and movements and certain major authors, in English literary culture and history. Extensive volumes provide new perspectives and positions on contexts and on canonical and post-canonical texts, orientating the beginning student in new fields of study and providing the experienced undergraduate and new graduate with current and new directions, as pioneered and developed by leading scholars in the field.

Published Recently

70. A Companion to American Literature and Culture Edited by Paul Lauter71. A Companion to African American Literature Edited by Gene Jarrett72. A Companion to Irish Literature Edited by Julia M. Wright73. A Companion to Romantic Poetry Edited by Charles Mahoney74. A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West Edited by Nicolas S. Witschi75. A Companion to Sensation Fiction Edited by Pamela K. Gilbert76. A Companion to Comparative Literature Edited by Ali Behdad and

Dominic Thomas77. A Companion to Poetic Genre Edited by Erik Martiny78. A Companion to American Literary Studies Edited by Caroline F. Levander and

Robert S. Levine79. A New Companion to the Gothic Edited by David Punter80. A Companion to the American Novel Edited by Alfred Bendixen81. A Companion to Literature, Film, and Adaptation Edited by Deborah Cartmell82. A Companion to George Eliot Edited by Amanda Anderson and

Harry E. Shaw83. A Companion to Creative Writing Edited by Graeme Harper84. A Companion to British Literature, 4 volumes Edited by Robert DeMaria, Jr.,

Heesok Chang, and Samantha Zacher

85. A Companion to American Gothic Edited by Charles L. Crow86. A Companion to Translation Studies Edited by Sandra Bermann and

Catherine Porter87. A New Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture Edited by Herbert F. Tucker88. A Companion to Modernist Poetry Edited by David E. Chinitz and

Gail McDonald89. A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien Edited by Stuart D. Lee

A C O M P A N I O N T O

J. R. R. TOLKIEN

EDITED BY

STUART D . LEE

This edition first published 2014© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Registered OfficeJohn Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

Editorial Offices350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UKThe Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our web site at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.

The right of Stuart D. Lee to be identified as the author of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

Hardback ISBN: 978-0-470-65982-3

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Photograph of J. R. R. Tolkien by Pamela Chandler, © Diana Willson.Cover design by Richard Boxall Design Associates

Set in 11/13 pt Garamond 3 LT Std by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited

1 2014

http://www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell

For Conaire (“Con”) Lee

Acknowledgments xiNotesonContributors xiiiEditorialPracticesandAbbreviations xivBriefChronologyoftheLifeandWorksofJ.R.R.Tolkien xxii

Introduction 1

Part I: Life 5

1 ABriefBiography 7JohnGarth

Part II: The Academic 25

2 AcademicWritings 27ThomasHonegger

3 TolkienasEditor 41TomShippey

4 Manuscripts:Use,andUsing 56StuartD.Lee

Part III: The Legendarium 77

5 Myth-makingandSub-creation 79CarlPhelpstead

6 Middle-earthMythology:AnOverview 92LeslieA.Donovan

Contents

viii Contents

7 TheSilmarillion:Tolkien’sTheoryofMyth,Text,andCulture 107GergelyNagy

8 TheHobbit:ATurningPoint 119JohnD.Rateliff

9 TheLordoftheRings 133JohnR.Holmes

10 UnfinishedTalesandtheHistoryofMiddle-earth:ALifetimeofImagination 146ElizabethA.Whittingham

11 “TheLostRoad”and“TheNotionClubPapers”:Myth,History,andTime-travel 161VerlynFlieger

12 Poetry 173CoreyOlsen

13 “Minor”Works 189MariaArtamonova

14 InventedLanguagesandWritingSystems 202ArdenR.Smith

Part IV: Context 215

15 OldEnglish 217MarkAtherton

16 MiddleEnglish 230ElizabethSolopova

17 OldNorse 244TomBirkett

18 Finnish:TheLandandLanguageofHeroes 259LeenaKahlas-Tarkka

19 Celtic:“CelticThings”and“ThingsCeltic”–Identity,Language,andMythology 272J.S.Lyman-Thomas

20 TheEnglishLiteraryTradition:ShakespearetotheGothic 286NickGroom

21 EarlierFantasyFiction:Morris,Dunsany,andLindsay 303RachelFalconer

Contents ix

22 TheInklingsandOthers:TolkienandHisContemporaries 317DavidBratman

23 LaterFantasyFiction:Tolkien’sLegacy 335DimitraFimi

24 Modernity:TolkienandHisContemporaries 350AnnaVaninskaya

Part V: Critical Approaches 367

25 TheCriticalResponsetoTolkien’sFiction 369PatrickCurry

26 StyleandIntertextualEchoes 389AllanTurner

27 TheHero’sJourney 404AnnaCaughey

28 Evil 418ChristopherGarbowski

29 Nature 431LiamCampbell

30 Religion:AnImplicitCatholicism 446PatPinsent

31 War 461JanetBrennanCroft

32 Women 473AdamRoberts

33 Art 487ChristopherTuthill

34 Music 501BradfordLeeEden

35 FilmAdaptations:TheatricalandTelevisionVersions 514KristinThompson

36 GamesandGaming:Quantasy 530PéterKristófMakai

GeneralBibliography 545Index 555

I am extremely grateful to several people for providing the inspiration for this volume, and for assisting in its production. I am particularly grateful to Catherine Parker at the Bodleian Library, Cathleen Blackburn of Maier Blackburn, and William Fliss of Marquette University for their assistance in key areas of this project. My thanks also to Emma Bennett of Wiley Blackwell for supporting the venture. Personally I would also like to thank my wife, Sarah, for putting up with the countless hours I had to spend editing; my family for their support and insights into Tolkien; Nick Gleeson and Tim Jones, my inspirational English teachers; Barbara Raw for allowing me to do my first extended undergraduate essay on Tolkien; and all the members of the Ban-croft’s School Games Club (1981–1983) who led me down this path in the first place.

My thanks also go to the Tolkien Literary Estate and HarperCollins Publishers Ltd for allowing material to be reproduced from the following works: The Hobbit © The J. R. R. Tolkien Estate Limited 1937, 1965; The Fellowship of the Ring © Fourth Age Limited 1954, 1955, 1966; The Two Towers © Fourth Age Limited 1954, 1955, 1966; The Return of the King © Fourth Age Limited 1954, 1955, 1966; Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien © The J. R. R. Tolkien Copyright Trust 1981; The Silmarillion © The J. R. R. Tolkien Estate Limited and C. R. Tolkien 1977; The History of Middle-earth © The J. R. R. Tolkien Copyright Trust and C. R. Tolkien 1983–1996; On Fairy-Stories © The Tolkien Trust 1964; A Secret Vice © The J. R. R. Tolkien Copyright Trust 1983; Mr. Bliss © The J. R. R. Tolkien Estate Limited 1982; Letters from Father Christmas © The J. R. R. Tolkien Estate Limited 1976; Roverandom © The Tolkien Trust 1998; Farmer Giles of Ham © The J. R. R. Tolkien Estate Limited 1949; Leaf by Niggle © The Tolkien Trust 1964; Smith of Wootton Major © The Tolkien Trust 1967; The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son © The J. R. R. Tolkien Estate Limited 1953, 1966; Unfinished Tales © The J. R. R. Tolkien Estate Limited and C. R. Tolkien 1980; Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics © The J. R. R. Tolkien Copyright Trust

Acknowledgments

xii Acknowledgments

1983; The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún © The Tolkien Trust 2009 for writings by JRRT, Foreword, Introduction, Commentaries, Appendices, and all other materials © C. R. Tolkien 2009; English and Welsh © The J. R. R. Tolkien Copyright Trust 1983; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo © The J. R. R. Tolkien Copyright Trust 1975; Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode © The J. R. R. Tolkien Copyright Trust and Professor Alan Bliss 1982; Progress in Bimble Town © The J. R. R. Tolkien Copyright Trust 1931.

Stuart D. LeeOxford University

Maria Artamonova, D.Phil. (Oxon.), has taught Old and Middle English as well as courses on Tolkien at the Oxford University’s Department of Continuing Education and a number of summer schools. Her publications include “Writing for an Anglo-Saxon Audience in the Twentieth Century: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Old English Chronicles,” in Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination (2010), and translations of Tolkien’s scholarly articles into Russian.

Mark Atherton, D.Phil., teaches English language and literature at Oxford Univer-sity and specializes in medieval literature. He has published on Hildegard of Bingen, the study of language in the nineteenth century, and late Anglo-Saxon literature; his recent publications include Teach Yourself Old English (2006/2010) and There and Back Again: J. R. R. Tolkien and the Origins of The Hobbit (2012).

Tom Birkett is a Lecturer in Old English at the School of English, University College Cork (UCC). He gained a D.Phil. in Old Norse and Old English from Oxford, and has written essays on the Old English riddles, manuscript marginalia, and the use of the runic script in early medieval poetry, as well as working as research assistant on a study looking at the influence of Old Norse myth on poets writing in English. He teaches on the undergraduate and MA programs at UCC, and is continuing research into medieval textual culture and the reception of Old Norse literature.

David Bratman is co-editor of Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review, and edited The Masques of Amen House by Charles Williams. His articles include studies of Tolkien, the Inklings, Mervyn Peake, and Neil Gaiman. Formerly a librarian at Stanford Uni-versity, he works as a classical music critic.

Liam Campbell is an independent writer and scholar from Northern Ireland who has lectured in English literature for the University of Ulster. He is the author of The Ecological Augury in the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien (2011) and has published previously

Notes on Contributors

xiv Notes on Contributors

on Tolkien and environmentalism, as well as given many talks across Europe and America on Tolkien, ecocriticism, and contemporary literature.

Anna Caughey D.Phil. (Oxon.), teaches Old and Middle English at Keble College, Oxford. Her primary research interests are in the representation of masculinity, knight-hood, and chivalry in both medieval and contemporary literature. Her most recently published articles are on conciliation in fifteenth-century Scottish romance, the Alex-ander the Great and adaptations of Arthurian literature for children.

Janet Brennan Croft is Head of Access Services and Delivery Services and Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma Libraries. She is the author of War and the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien (2004; Mythopoeic Award for Inklings Studies). She has also written on the Peter Jackson films, J. K. Rowling, Terry Pratchett, Lois McMaster Bujold, and other authors, and is editor or co-editor of four collections of literary essays, including Tolkien on Film (2004), Tolkien and Shakespeare (2007). She edits the scholarly journal Mythlore.

Patrick Curry is a writer and scholar living in London. He is the author of several books, including Defending Middle-earth: Tolkien, Myth and Modernity, 2nd edn. (2004) and, most recently, Ecological Ethics: An Introduction, 2nd edn. (2011), as well as many papers in collections on Tolkien. He has been a Lecturer at Bath Spa University and the University of Kent.

Leslie A. Donovan teaches interdisciplinary undergraduate courses as an Associate Professor in the Honors College at the University of New Mexico. Her Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington emphasized Old and Middle English literature. Among her publications are studies of valkyries in The Lord of the Rings, women saints in Old English prose, the character of Hunferth in Beowulf, and various pedagogical topics.

Bradford Lee Eden is Dean of Library Services at Valparaiso University. He has a masters and Ph.D. degrees in musicology and an MS in library science. He publishes in the areas of librarianship, medieval music and liturgy, and J. R. R. Tolkien. His most recent book is Middle-earth Minstrel: Essays on Music in Tolkien (2010). He is also the editor of The Journal of Tolkien Research.

Rachel Falconer is Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Lausanne. Her publications include Orpheus Dis(re)membered: Milton and the Myth of the Poet-Hero (1996), Hell in Contemporary Literature (2005), and The Crossover Novel: Contemporary Children’s Fiction and Its Adult Readership (2009). She is currently working on contemporary nature writing, and editing a collection of essays on the poet Kathleen Jamie.

Dimitra Fimi is a Lecturer in English at Cardiff Metropolitan University. She is the author of Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits (2008), which won the Mythopoeic Scholarship award in Inklings Studies. She has also published articles

Notes on Contributors xv

and essays in journals (including Folklore and Tolkien Studies) and in edited collections (including Picturing Tolkien, 2011, and Critical Insights: The Fantastic, 2013). She lectures on Tolkien and fantasy literature at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Verlyn Flieger is Professor Emerita, Department of English, University of Maryland. Her books on Tolkien include Splintered Light, A Question of Time, Interrupted Music, and Green Suns and Faërie. She edited the Extended Edition of Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major, and with Douglas A. Anderson the Expanded Edition of On Fairy-stories. With Carl Hostetter she edited Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth. She is co-editor of the journal Tolkien Studies.

Christopher Garbowski is an Associate Professor at the Department of English at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Poland. He is the author of a number of books, including Recovery and Transcendence for the Contemporary Mythmaker: The Spiritual Dimension in the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien (2000) and Spiritual Values in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings (2005).

John Garth is the author of Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (2003), winner of the Mythopoeic Award for Scholarship in Inklings Studies. He has reviewed books by and about Tolkien in The Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Beast, The Times Literary Supplement, The London Evening Standard, and Tolkien Studies, and he contributed key articles to the Routledge J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. He lives in Oxford and has spoken on Tolkien to general and specialist audiences in Britain, mainland Europe, and the United States.

Nick Groom is Professor in English at the University of Exeter. He has written extensively on eighteenth-century and Romantic literature and culture, and on national identity. Among his books are The Forger’s Shadow (2002), The Union Jack (2006), The Gothic (2012), and The Seasons (2013). He is currently writing a cultural history of British saints’ days, a polemic on the English landscape, and a study of Tolkien and the Gothic.

John R. Holmes has been teaching English at Franciscan University of Steubenville (Ohio) since 1985. He has published numerous articles on Tolkien, including several in the Routledge J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia.

Thomas Honegger holds a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich (Switzerland) where he taught Old and Middle English. He is, since 2002, Professor for English Medieval Studies at the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena (Germany).

Leena Kahlas-Tarkka is a University Lecturer in English Philology in the Depart-ment of Modern Languages at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her main research interests lie within the area of historical linguistics, especially syntax from Old to Early Modern English. She has also published an article on Beowulf and Tolkien in Finnish.

xvi Notes on Contributors

Stuart D. Lee is a member of the University of Oxford’s English Faculty, and Merton College. His Ph.D. was in Old English and he lectures on Old English, Tolkien, and the Poetry of World War I. He co-authored The Keys of Middle-earth: Discovering Medieval Literature through the Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien (2005) and Key Concepts in Medieval Literature (2006), both with Elizabeth Solopova. He has published in Tolkien Studies, and also numerous articles on Old English, War Poetry, and Digital Humanities.

Jaquelyn S. Lyman-Thomas is a Professor of English, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Humanities at Anne Arundel Community College (Arnold, MD). She is a free-lance writer, an advanced student of the Welsh language, and a member of the Board of Cymdeithas Madog, the Welsh Studies Institute in North America.

Péter Kristóf Makai is a Ph.D. candidate at the Doctoral School of Literary Studies at the University of Szeged, Hungary, investigating the representation of mental functioning in novels about autism. He has published articles about the relationship between the fantastic and games in Tolkien Studies and in Postmodern Reinterpretations of Fairy Tales (ed. Anna Kérchy, 2011). His research interests include game studies and ludology, narratology, cognitive literary and cultural studies, science fiction, and fantasy studies.

Gergely Nagy is a Junior Assistant Professor at the University of Szeged, Hungary, where he teaches contemporary popular culture (including Tolkien) and medieval cultural history and literature. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on The Silmarillion, and has published articles on Tolkien, Malory, and Chaucer.

Corey Olsen is the President of Signum University and the founder of the Mythgard Institute, an online teaching center for the study of Tolkien and other works of imagi-native literature. He received his Ph.D. in medieval English literature from Columbia University, and his first book, Exploring J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, was published in 2012.

Carl Phelpstead is a Professor of English Literature at Cardiff University in Wales. He has published extensively on Old Norse and medieval English literature and on modern medievalism, including Tolkien. His book Tolkien and Wales: Language, Litera-ture and Identity won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies in 2012.

Pat Pinsent is Senior Research Fellow at Roehampton University, London, special-izing in Children’s Literature, the subject matter of most of her 15 books, and supervising research students. She researches the current development of children’s literature, and the relationship between it and spirituality/religion; she also edits two journals.

John D. Rateliff, an independent scholar, holds a Ph.D. from Marquette University. His major contribution to Tolkien studies is The History of The Hobbit, an edition, with extensive commentary, of the manuscripts of The Hobbit. He has contributed to volumes such as Tolkien’s Legendarium and journals such as Tolkien Studies.

Notes on Contributors xvii

Adam Roberts is Professor of Nineteenth-century Literature and Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of various books, including several books of and on science fiction and fantasy. His latest critical work is The Riddles of the Hobbit (2013).

Tom Shippey has taught medieval studies at several universities, including Oxford and Harvard, and for many years held the Chair at Leeds which Tolkien held in the 1920s. His The Road to Middle-earth was published in 1982, and has appeared in suc-cessive revised and expanded editions to 2005. It was followed by Tolkien: Author of the Century (2000) and Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien (2007). He has also published extensively on Old and Middle English, and Old Norse.

Arden R. Smith holds a Ph.D. in Germanic Linguistics from the University of Cali-fornia, Berkeley, and has published numerous articles on Tolkien, particularly on Tolkien’s invented writing systems and translations of Tolkien’s works. He is a member of a project to edit Tolkien’s unpublished linguistic papers.

Elizabeth Solopova is a Research Fellow at the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and William Golding Research Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford. She researches on Old and Middle English literature, historical linguistics, book history, and medieval liturgical and biblical manuscripts. She is the author, with Dr Stuart Lee, of The Keys of Middle-earth: Discovering Medieval Literature through the Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien (2005).

Kristin Thompson received her Ph.D. in cinema studies in 1977 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she has been an Honorary Fellow since 1982. With husband David Bordwell, she is the co-author of two widely used textbooks: Film Art and Film History. She has published ten other books on cinema, most recently The Frodo Franchise: The Lord of the Rings and Modern Hollywood and, with Bordwell, Minding Movies: Observations on the Art, Craft, and Business of Filmmaking. She has also published a study of P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves/Wooster series and is at work on a book closely analyzing narrative technique in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings novels.

Allan Turner is a Lecturer in English at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. His main areas of research are translation studies and stylistics, particularly in relation to the works of Tolkien.

Christopher Tuthill is Assistant Professor and Information Services Librarian at Baruch College, The City University of New York. He has recently published articles on Tolkien and on Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea novels.

Anna Vaniskaya D.Phil. (Oxon.) is a Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the Uni-versity of Edinburgh. She is the author of William Morris and the Idea of Community: Romance, History, and Propaganda, 1880–1914 (2010), and has published over 20 articles and chapters on topics ranging from Chesterton, Orwell, and Tolkien to

xviii Notes on Contributors

socialism, popular reading, education, historiography, and Anglo-Russian literary relations.

Elizabeth A. Whittingham teaches English at the College at Brockport State University of New York and at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York. Her book, The Evolution of Tolkien’s Mythology: A Study of the History of Middle-earth (2008), examines nearly six decades of Tolkien’s writings. She has been published in the Routledge J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006), The Mythic Fantasy of Robert Holdstock (2011), and in various journals. In 2009 she was a guest lecturer at the NEH Tolkien Summer Institute at Texas A&M University. She has presented at various conferences, most frequently at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts.

Editorial Practices and Abbreviations

This section lists the editorial practices and main abbreviations used in this volume, which for the most part are in keeping with those established in the journal Tolkien Studies. Titles of Tolkien’s works are always notoriously difficult. Those that have been published in their own single volume are italicized, such as The Hobbit. Other titles of chapters, poems, or texts that are contained within other volumes are given in inverted commas, such as “Errantry,” “Leaf by Niggle,” “The Notion Club Papers,” or “A Secret Vice.” Three particular instances deserve special mention. “On Fairy-stories” refers to the lecture/essay of that name, whereas On Fairy-stories or OFS refers to the edition by Flieger and Anderson. “Narn i Hîn Húrin” or “Tale of the Children of Húrin” or “Narn” refers to either the chapter in Unfinished Tales or the text in The History of Middle-earth, The Children of Húrin is the edition published by Christopher Tolkien in 2007. “The Silmarillion” or “Silmarillion” refers to the collection of papers and tales assem-bled by Tolkien during his lifetime, The Silmarillion to the version published in 1977.

Similarly one must confront the issue of the races of Middle-earth. Elves, Men, Dwarves, etc., are capitalized (as are Hobbits, though Tolkien himself was inconsistent here). Foreign or unfamiliar words are italicized and then translated: for example, sigel “sun.” Tolkien’s use of diacritics (macrons, circumflexes, accents), usually denot-ing length marks in vowels (or in the case of diaeresis, e.g. “ë” separate enforced pronunciation of the vowel), was not consistent. They have been retained in keeping with the authoritative printed edition.

Bibliography

Each essay has a list of non-Tolkien References specific to that chapter, and occasion-ally specific Further Reading. The General Bibliography at the end of the volume

xx Editorial Practices and Abbreviations

contains details of texts by Tolkien, suggested Further Reading, and web sites. A list of Tolkien’s academic publications can be found at the end of ch. 2.

Abbreviations

A&U Allen & Unwin (Publishers).AW Ancrene Riwle: Ancrene Wisse (Tolkien 1962a).“Beowulf” “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” (MC 5–48).Beowulf The Old English poem of the same name.Chronology Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond. 2006. The J. R. R.

Tolkien Companion and Guide. Vol. 1: Chronology. London: HarperCollins.

Companion Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, eds. 2005. The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion. London: HarperCollins.

EETS Early English Text Society.Exodus The Old English Exodus (Tolkien 1981).f. folio.FG Farmer Giles of Ham (Tolkien 2008a).FH Finn and Hengest (Tolkien 1982).FR The Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien 2004a). For The Lord of the

Rings, citations are by book, chapter, and page number. For example, “RK, V, i, 977” is The Return of the King, Book Five, chapter 1, page 977.

H The Hobbit (Tolkien 1995).HoH John Rateliff. 2012. The History of The Hobbit. 2nd edn. London:

HarperCollins.Jewels The War of the Jewels (Tolkien 1994).l. or ll. line(s).Lays The Lays of Beleriand (Tolkien 1985).Letters The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (Tolkien 1995b). Citations are by page

number.Lost Tales I The Book of Lost Tales, Part One (Tolkien 1983b).Lost Tales II The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two (Tolkien 1984).Lost Road The Lost Road and Other Writings (Tolkien 1987).MC The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (Tolkien 1983a).MED R. E. Lewis, ed. 2001. Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor:

University of Michigan Press.MEV A Middle English Vocabulary (Tolkien 1922).Morgoth Morgoth’s Ring: The Later Silmarillion (Tolkien 1993).OED The Oxford English Dictionary.OFS “On Fairy-stories” (Tolkien 2008b).

Editorial Practices and Abbreviations xxi

“Papers” “The Notion Club Papers” (in Tolkien 1992a).PDE Present Day English.Peoples The Peoples of Middle-earth (Tolkien 1996).Reader’s Guide Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond. 2006. The J. R. R.

Tolkien Companion and Guide. Vol. 2: Reader’s Guide. London: HarperCollins.

RK The Return of the King (Tolkien 2004a). Cited by book number, chapter, and page.

S The Silmarillion (Tolkien 1977).Sauron Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age (Tolkien 1992a).SG The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún (Tolkien 2009a).SGGK Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Tolkien and Gordon 1967).SGPSO Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo (Tolkien 1995d).Shaping The Shaping of Middle-earth (Tolkien 1986).Sir Gawain The Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.Smith Smith of Wootton Major (Tolkien 1990a).TL Tree and Leaf (Tolkien 2001a).Treason The Treason of Isengard (Tolkien 1989).TT The Two Towers (Tolkien 2004a). Cited by book number, chapter,

and page.UT Unfinished Tales (Tolkien 1998c).War The War of the Ring (Tolkien 1990b).YWES The Year’s Work in English Studies.

Date Significant Events1 Selected Publications of Note (for indication of when Tolkien started work on individual pieces of work see chs. 1–3)2

Selected Historical Events

1892 Born January 3, Bloemfontein, South Africa to Mabel and Arthur Tolkien.

1894 Brother Hilary is born. Oxford University English School established (Faculty of English Language and Literature).

1895 Returns to England with Mother and Brother.

1896 Father dies. Moves to Sarehole.

William Morris dies.

1897 Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

1899 Start of 2nd Boer War.1900 Attends King Edward’s

School, Moseley, Birmingham.

1901 Queen Victoria dies.1902 Enters St Philip’s

Grammar School.Coronation of Edward

VII.End of Boer War

Brief Chronology of the Life and Works of J. R. R. Tolkien

Brief Chronology xxiii



1903 Awarded scholarship and returns to King Edward’s School.

1904 Mother dies. Barrie’s Peter Pan.1908 Meets Edith Bratt.1910 Moves to Edgbaston.

Passes Oxford Entrance exam.

Edward VII dies. George V crowned.

1911 Enters Exeter College, Oxford.

“The Battle of Eastern Field” published in The King Edward’s School Chronicle.

1913 Awarded Second Class degree in Honour Moderations, begins Honours School of English Language and Literature.

“From the many-willow’d margin of the immemorial Thames” in The Stapledon Magazine, 4.20: 11.

Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers.

1914 Start of World War I. August 4, Britain declares war on Germany.

Oxford English Faculty Library opens.

1915 Awarded First Class Honours. Commissioned into the Lancashire Fusiliers.

“Goblin Feet” in Oxford Poetry 1915, reprinted in 1917 and 1920.

Dardanelles Campaign.

1916 Marries Edith Bratt. Sees action on the Somme. Invalided home.

Battle of Jutland.July 1, start of the

Battle of the Somme.

1917 Son John is born. United States enters War. 3rd Battle of Ypres.

1918 Joins staff of New Oxford English Dictionary. Works on letter W.

Introduction to G. B. Smith’s A Spring Harvest.

Women over 30 get the vote.

World War I armistice.

(Continued )

xxiv Brief Chronology



1920 Appointed as Reader in English Language, Leeds University. Son Michael is born.

“The Happy Mariners” in The Stapledon Magazine, 5.26: 69–70.

Oxford University admits women.

Ancient Greek no longer required for Oxford entrance.

1922 E. V. Gordon joins Leeds University.

A Middle English Vocabulary for K. Sisam’s Fourteenth Century Prose and Verse. Issued separately at first then included as glossary.

BBC formed.Joyce’s Ulysses.Eliot’s The Waste Land.

1923 “Iúmonna Gold Galdre Bewunden” in The Gryphon, N.S. 4.4: 130.

“Holy Maidenhood” in Times Literary Supplement, April 26: 281.

“The City of the Gods” in The Microcosm, 8.1: 8.

“Obituary: Henry Bradley” in Bulletin of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 20: 4–5.

“Tha Eadigan Saelidan (The Happy Mariners),” “Why the Man in the Moon Came Down too Soon,” and “Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo” in A Northern Venture: Verses by Members of the Leeds University English Association, 15–20.

“The Cat and the Fiddle: A Nursery Rhyme Undone and its Scandalous Secret Unlocked” in Yorkshire Poetry, 2.19: 1–3.

1924 Appointed Professor of English Language, Leeds University. Son Christopher is born.

“An Evening in Tavrobel,” “The Lonely Isle,” and “The Princess Ni” in Leeds University Verse 1914–24.

“Philology, General Works” in The Year’s Work in English Studies, 4: 20–37.

First Labour Government.

Brief Chronology xxv



1925 Appointed Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, Pembroke College, Oxford.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (edited with E. V. Gordon).

“Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography” in Review of English Studies, 1.2: 210–215.

“Light as leaf on Lindentree” in The Gryphon, N.S. 6.6: 217.

“The Devil’s Coach-Horses” in Review of English Studies, 1.3: 331–336.

“Tinfang Warble” and “The Grey Bridge of Tavrobel” in the Inter-University Magazine (1925? 1927?).

Contributes translation to Rhys Roberts’s “Gerald of Wales and the Survival of Welsh.”

Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway.

1926 Moves to 22 Northmoor Road, Oxford.

Forms “Coalbiters” club.

Meets C. S. Lewis.


The General Strike.

1927 “The Nameless Land” in G. S. Tancred (ed.), Realities: An Anthology of Verse, 24.


“Adventures in Unnatural History and the Medieval Metres, being the Freaks of Fisiologus” in The Stapledon Magazine, 7: 40.

1928 “Foreword” to W. E. Haigh’s A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District.

1929 Daughter Priscilla is born.

“Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meithhad” in Essays and Studies, 14: 104–126.

(Continued )

xxvi Brief Chronology



1930 Whilst marking exam scripts writes “In the hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

“The Oxford English School” in The Oxford Magazine, 48.21: 778–782.

1931 Moves to 20 Northmoor Road.

Conversation with Dyson and Lewis possibly leads to theory of sub-creation and “Mythopoeia.”

“Progress in Bimble Town” in The Oxford Magazine, 50.1: 22.

1932 “Sigelwara Land” Pt 1 in Medium Ævum, 1.3: 183–196.

“The Name ‘Nodens’ ” in Report of the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman, and Post-Roman Sites in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, 132–137.

“A Philologist on Esperanto” in The British Esperantist, 28.

1933 “Errantry” in The Oxford Magazine, 52.5: 180.

1934 “Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale” in Transactions of the Philological Society, 1–70, see also Tolkien Studies, 5 (2008): 109–171.

“Looney” in The Oxford Magazine, 52.9: 340.

“The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” in The Oxford Magazine, 52.13: 464–465.

“Sigelwara Land” Pt 2 in Medium Æevum, 3.2: 95–111.

“Firiel” in The Chronicle of the Covenants of the Sacred Heart, 4.

Brief Chronology xxvii



1936 Delivers Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture on “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” (London)

Songs for the Philologists with E. V. Gordon and others. Tolkien has 13 poems in the volume including “Ofer Widne Garsecg.”

“The Shadow Man” and “Noel” in Annual of Our Lady’s School.

George V dies. Abdication crisis.

1937 The Hobbit: or There and Back Again.

“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” in Proceedings of the British Academy, 22: 245–295.

“The Dragon Visit” in The Oxford Magazine, 55.11: 342.

“Knocking at the Door” in The Oxford Magazine, 55.13: 403.

“Iúmonna Gold Galdre Bewunden” in The Oxford Magazine, 55.15: 473.

Contributions to E. V. Gordon’s The Battle of Maldon.

George VI crowned.

1938 Letter in The Observer, February 20.

Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet.

T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone.

1939 Delivers Andrew Lang Lecture “On Fairy-stories” (St Andrews).

World War II begins. Britain declares war on Germany, September 3.

1940 “Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of Beowulf” in J. R. Clark Hall, Beowulf and the Finnsburg Fragment: A Translation (revised by C. L. Wrenn).

The Battle of Britain.

1941 Pearl Harbor. United States enters war.

1942 Introductory note in A Philological Miscellany.

1944 Sir Orfeo [booklet]. D-Day.

(Continued )

xxviii Brief Chronology



1945 Elected Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, Oxford.

“Leaf by Niggle” in The Dublin Review, 432: 46–61.

“The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun” in The Welsh Review, 4.4: 254–266.

Letter on “The Name Coventry” in The Catholic Herald, February 23.

Germany surrenders. Atomic bombs exploded over Japan.

1946 Letter on “Research v Literature” in The Sunday Times, April 14.

Peake’s Titus Groan.

1947 Moves to 3 Manor Road.

“ ‘Iþþlen’ in Sawles Warde” in English Studies, 28.6: 168–170.

“On Fairy-stories” in C. S. Lewis (ed.), Essays Presented to Charles Williams, 38–89.

1948 “MS. Bodley 34: A Re-collation of a Collation” in Studia Neophilologica, 20.1–2: 65–72.

1949 Finishes The Lord of the Rings.

Farmer Giles of Ham. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

1950 Moves to 99 Holywell Street.

Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

1951 Revised edition of The Hobbit.1952 Tolkien is interviewed

and recorded reading several extracts from his works by George Sayer.

George VI dies. Queen Elizabeth II crowned.

1953 Delivers W. Ker Memorial Lecture on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Glasgow).

Move to 76 Sandfield Road, Headington.

“The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorthelm’s Son” in Essays and Studies, N.S. 6: 1–18.

“Middle English ‘Losenger’ ” in Essais de Philologie Moderne (1951), 63–76.

“A Fourteenth-Century Romance” in Radio Times, December 4.

Contributions to E. V. Gordon’s Pearl.

Brief Chronology xxix



1954 The Fellowship of the Ring. The Two Towers.

1955 Delivers O’Donnell Lecture “English and Welsh” (Oxford).

“The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth” dramatized for BBC radio.

The Return of the King.“Imram” in Time and Tide, 1561.“Preface” in M. B. Salu’s The

Ancrene Riwle.

1958 “Preface” to Gooden’s The Old English Apollonius of Tyre.

Pinter’s The Birthday Party performed.

1959 Retires from Oxford Professorship. Delivers Valedictory Address.

1960 Letter in Triode, 18. Latin no longer required to be admitted to Oxford University.

Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.

1962 The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.Ancrene Wisse: The English Text of

the Ancrene Riwle.

“Love Me Do” by The Beatles reaches no. 1.

1963 C. S. Lewis dies. “English and Welsh” in Angles and Britons: O’Donnell Lectures, 1–41.

1964 Tree and Leaf.1965 Ballantine Books in

New York issue second edition of FR with new foreword, TT and RK to follow (1966).

Ace Books scandal in United States.

“Once Upon a Time” and “The Dragon’s Visit” in C. Hillier (ed.), Winter’s Tales for Children: 1, 44–45 and 84–87.

Cooper’s Over Sea, Under Stone.

(Continued )

xxx Brief Chronology



1966 Deitch makes 12-minute animation of The Hobbit.

“Tolkien on Tolkien” in Diplomat, 18.197: 39.

Contributed to The Jerusalem Bible.

The Tolkien Reader.“A Elbereth Gilthoniel” and

translation in Tolkien Journal, 2.1.

1967 Smith of Wootton Major“For W. H. A.” in Shenandoah:

The Washington and Lee University Review, 18.2: 96–97.

The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle.

1968 BBC Radio adaptation of The Hobbit.

Interviewed by BBC TV for Tolkien in Oxford.

Moves to Bournemouth.

Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea.

1969 Letter in W. L. White’s The Image of Man in C. S. Lewis.

Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham.

Moon landing.

1970 “The Hoard” in R. L. Green (ed.), The Hamish Hamilton Book of Dragons.

1971 Edith Tolkien dies.1972 Tolkien is awarded

CBE.Returns to Merton

College rooms.Receives Honorary

Degree of Letters from Oxford.

Letter in The Daily Telegraph, July 4.

1973 Dies September 2.

Posthumous Events Related to Tolkien

Posthumous Publications

1974 Bilbo’s Last Song.

Brief Chronology xxxi



1975 Translations of Sir Gawain, Sir Orfeo, and Pearl.

“Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings” in J. Lobdell (ed.), A Tolkien Compass.

Letter in Mythlore, 3.2: 10.1976 The Father Christmas Letters.

Drawings by Tolkien.1977 Carpenter’s Biography.

Rankin/Bass release TV animation of The Hobbit.

The Silmarillion.

1978 Carpenter’s The Inklings.

Ralph Bakshi releases animated version of The Lord of the Rings.

The Tolkien Scrapbook.

1979 “Valedictory Address” in M. Salu and R. T. Farrell (eds.), J. R. R. Tolkien: Scholar and Storyteller.

Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien.1980 Rankin/Bass release

The Return of the King for TV.

Poems and Stories.Unfinished Tales.

1981 BBC produce full dramatization for radio of The Lord of the Rings.

Carpenter publishes The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien.

1982 Tom Shippey publishes The Road to Middle-earth.

The Old English Exodus.Mr Bliss.Finn and Hengest: The Fragment

and the Episode.1983 The Monsters and the Critics and

Other Essays.Lost Tales I.

1984 Lost Tales II.1985 Lays.1986 Shaping.

(Continued )

xxxii Brief Chronology



1987 Lost Road.The Hobbit (50th Anniversary).J. R. R. Tolkien: The Hobbit:

Drawings, Watercolors, and Manuscripts.

1988 Return.“Mythopoeia” in Tree and Leaf

(reprint).1989 Treason.

Oliphaunt.1990 War.1991 The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth.1992 Bilbo’s Last Song.

Sauron.The End of the Third Age.The Tolkien Family Album.

1993 Morgoth.Poems by J. R. R. Tolkien: I–III.

1994 Jewels.1995 J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and

Illustrator.Pullman’s Northern

Lights.1996 Peoples.1997 Tales from the Perilous Realm. Rowling’s Harry Potter

and the Philosopher’s Stone.

1998 Roverandom.1999 Farmer Giles of Ham (50th

Anniversary).2000 The End of the Third Age (The

History of The Lord of the Rings, Part 4).

2001 Peter Jackson releases film of The Fellowship of the Ring.

2002 Jackson releases film of The Two Towers.

The Annotated Hobbit.Beowulf and the Critics.A Tolkien Miscellany.

2003 Garth publishes Tolkien and the Great War.

Jackson releases film of The Return of the King.

Brief Chronology xxxiii



2004 Tolkien Studies launched.

Sir Orfeo in Tolkien Studies.

2005 Lee and Solopova publish The Keys of Middle-earth.

Hammond and Scull publish The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion.

Smith of Wootton Major (Critical Edition).

“Gerald of Wales” in Tolkien Studies.

2006 Hammond and Scull publish the two volumes Reader’s Guide and Chronology.

Gilliver et al. publish The Ring of Words.

2007 Rateliff publishes The History of The Hobbit.

The Children of Húrin.The Silmarillion (30th

Anniversary)2008 On Fairy-stories.

“Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale” and “The Reeve’s Tale” in Tolkien Studies.

2009 The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún.“Fate and Free Will” in Tolkien

Studies.2010 “The Story of Kullervo” and “On

the Kalevala” in Tolkien Studies.

2011 Phelpstead publishes Tolkien and Wales.

The Art of the Hobbit.

2012 Jackson releases film version of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Letters from Father Christmas.

2013 Jackson releases film version of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

The Fall of Arthur.

xxxiv Brief Chronology

Notes

1 See also Chronology.2 Does not include interviews or extracts of

publications. Note also numerous writings by Tolkien on his invented languages have appeared in the journals Quettar, Vinyar Tengwar,

and Parma Eldalamberon (see chs. 1 and 14; and http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Index:Manu scripts_by_J.R.R._Tolkien, accessed September 2, 2013.)

Everyone has their own Tolkien story. Mine began with the early 1980s BBC Radio dramatization of The Lord of the Rings lent to me at school. This was followed by the book itself, and then The Hobbit (a common experience). Enthused by what I had read I approached my English teacher to discuss the merits of both books, and having listened sympathetically to my arguments, he then presented me with another book he suggested I might like – it was a translation of Beowulf.

Tolkien led me then to my future academic discipline of Old English which was to be such an important part of my life as it was of his. Yet every now and then our paths contin-ued to cross. At University I chose to do an extended essay on the links between what I was studying as a student and Tolkien’s fiction. I innocently assumed that I was the first to notice this, but then I found Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-earth. This book opened my eyes to what could be possible, probably more so than any other book I had read.

Anyone who studies Medieval Literature is never far from Tolkien, and his essay on “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” is still essential discussion material in any course. However, that was not the end of it for me. I found myself at the Faculty of English at Oxford – Tolkien’s own department; Northmoor Road, Manor Road, Holy-well Street were all places I came across daily; and eventually I became affiliated to Merton College – Tolkien’s last college at Oxford. Academically I also specialized in the literature of World War I, an event that occasionally brought Tolkien across my path again. Finally, at a time when the future of Old English was being discussed, enthusiasm for all things medieval soared with the release of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films. Tolkien’s work was introducing millions of people indirectly to medieval languages and literature – a driving factor also in my joint publication with

Introduction

Stuart D. Lee

A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien, First Edition. Edited by Stuart D. Lee.© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

2 Introduction

Elizabeth Solopova of The Keys of Middle-earth: Discovering Medieval Literature through the Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien.

However, ever present during all of this was the recognition that Tolkien could be very divisive. As Patrick Curry notes (ch. 25) the critical reaction to his works has not always been favorable (or fair). When I first opted to run a lecture series on Tolkien at Oxford, possibly the first ever, it was met with some disdain from other Faculty members. Partly this resulted from a dislike of his fiction, or a view that it was not worthy of a University literature course, but also because the wounds still ran deep in the Faculty over the prominence of medieval studies in the English syllabus which many felt originated with Lewis and Tolkien (“the Germanic wedge” as one colleague called them).

To those, and to the people who no doubt will fulminate at the mere thought that Tolkien has been allowed a Companion in a literary series by such a respected pub-lisher, I can only suggest they put their prejudices to one side and begin by looking at the table of contents for this volume. Presented here are 36 essays focusing on a single man who was a soldier, academic, lexicographer, but at the same time created a mythology that in itself was interwoven with the legends of medieval Europe, drew on the English literary tradition, and took forward (or possibly created) an entire genre. His works subsequently led to a film series that has broken box office records, controversially regularly topped polls as the best books of the twentieth century, inspired musicians as diverse as Led Zeppelin, and heavily influenced the direction of the computer-based gaming industry.

Starting with John Garth’s brief account of Tolkien’s life in Part I, the temptation to dive directly into his mythology has been avoided, and instead Part II devotes its attention to exploring Tolkien’s career and impact as an academic – not only through his lectures and publications (Tom Honegger), but also in his excellent work as an editor (Tom Shippey).

With this in mind one can then have a more balanced view of Tolkien’s fictional work which is clearly what he is best known for world-wide. Carl Phelpstead lays the foundations of Part III by exploring Tolkien’s own theories on fantasy (ch. 5), followed by an overview of the legendarium (the common term used to encapsulate Tolkien’s mythology) by Leslie Donovan. The key texts in Tolkien’s corpus are then taken in turn – The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings (chs. 7–9 by Nagy, Rateliff, and Holmes respectively) – but as became clear with the work in the 1980s and 1990s by Tolkien’s son, Christopher, these were only a fragment of what was there. Tolkien had spent an entire lifetime creating his Middle-earth and the stories most people know seem to only skim the surface. Elizabeth Whittingham takes us through the extraordinary complexity of the 12-volume History of Middle-earth series; Verlyn Flieger then explores in detail his “time travel” stories (ch. 11); Corey Olsen looks at the extensive corpus of Tolkien’s often overlooked poetry; Maria Artamonova brings his so-called minor works to the fore; and the picture is completed by Arden Smith who details the invented languages of Middle-earth and Tolkien’s “secret vice.”

What came before, what came after, and what might have influenced Tolkien is explored in Part IV. As a student and lecturer he studied and researched Old English,

Introduction 3

Middle English, and Old Norse, and was enthused (or not) by Finnish and Celtic Literature. Mark Atherton, Elizabeth Solopova, Tom Birkett, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, and Jackie Lyman-Thomas consider each of these in turn (chs. 15–19), looking at Tolkien’s engagement with them, and how they may (or may not) have influenced his writing. Nick Groom then looks at the contentious area of post-medieval literature, often overlooked in part due to Tolkien’s own apparent dismissal of the period. The next essays consider Middle-earth against the range of fantasy writers from those who preceded Tolkien (ch. 21 by Falconer), through his contemporaries and especially the role of the Inklings (ch. 22 by Bratman), to Tolkien’s legacy among later fantasy writers (ch. 23 by Fimi). Running through these essays is the common question – where do we place Tolkien? Is, as was once said, The Lord of the Rings the last literary masterpiece of the Middle Ages (Blisset 1959, 449) or is it a modernist novel dealing with themes core to the twentieth century as Anna Vaninskaya argues (ch. 24)?

The final Part V includes a series of cross-cutting thematic explorations drawing from examples in all of Tolkien’s work – his fiction, his essays, his lectures, and his academic publications. Such an endeavor could run to several volumes in itself so the focus has had to be on the most widely discussed topics. Allan Turner considers Tolk-ien’s style, often used by critics to attack his writing (ch. 26); Anna Caughey looks at the recurring theme of the Quest as highlighted by W. H. Auden (1956) and then elaborated (1962) (ch. 27); and Tolkien’s depiction of evil (is it too simplistic as many say, or actually a finely tuned study?) is explored by Christopher Garbowski (ch. 28). In such a light how might we consider his own devout Catholicism with the seem-ingly pagan world he created – is there a Christian message there (ch. 30 by Pinsent)? Similarly, does Tolkien revel in warfare or is he more realistic in reflecting the attitudes of his time and personal experiences (ch. 31 by Croft)? And how should we react to his depiction of women (or lack of), an issue which has vexed many readers for some time (ch. 32 by Roberts)?

What cannot be denied even by his staunchest of critics is the powerful afterlife of Tolkien’s work. An observer and supporter of the natural world, Tolkien’s depictions of the flora and fauna of Middle-earth and their destruction are seen by Liam Campbell as pioneering in their environmental attitudes (ch. 29). Similarly, while Tolkien himself engaged with the creative arts and wove them into his mythology, we also explore the creative industry that Tolkien’s imagination has engendered. From the various artists (ch. 33 by Tuthill), musicians (ch. 34 by Eden), and film-makers (ch. 35 by Thompson) who have tried to engage with his work, to the virtual representa-tions of Middle-earth in the online world (ch. 36 by Makai), the Tolkien industry shows no sign of abating.

A Companion is a guide, a vade mecum (“walk with me”), which can only hope to take the reader through the preliminary paths of discovery. Each essay will do just that, introduce the reader to the topic, but then point them in the direction of further study through the select bibliography after each chapter, and the further reading at the end of the volume.

Wes þu hal!

4 Introduction

References

Auden, W. H. 1956. “At the End of the Quest, Vic-tory.” New York Times Book Review, January 22: 5.

Auden, W. H. 1962. “The Quest Hero.” Texas Quarterly, 4: 81–93.

Blisset, William. 1959. “The Despots of the Rings.” South Atlantic Quarterly, 58: 448–456.

a companion to j. r. r. tolkien || front matter

Documents