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.

Middle English

Elizabeth Solopova

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Scholarship

Tolkien’s academic career started with his employment in 1918 as a lexicographer working for the Oxford English Dictionary in Oxford (see ch. 1). As part of his job he researched the history and etymology of various words beginning with w- (the work focused on the final letters of the alphabet at the time when he joined the team). In 1920 he applied for a post at the University of Leeds and was appointed as Reader, and then from 1924 as Professor, of English Language. In 1925 he was elected to the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford and in 1945 accepted a more senior Chair of English Language and Literature at Merton College. Both at Leeds and at Oxford he taught and conducted research on Middle English literature.

One of Tolkien’s earliest contributions to the study of Middle English was A Middle English Vocabulary published in May 1922 as the glossary to Kenneth Sisam’s anthol-ogy, Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose (1921, see ch. 3). The glossary was originally published separately, but was combined with the anthology in a single volume in June 1922. In an introductory note Tolkien wrote that “a good working knowledge of Middle English depends less on the possession of an abstruse vocabulary, but on familiarity with the ordinary machinery of expression” (Tolkien 1922, 295). His aim, therefore, was to give “exceptionally full treatment” to common rather than rare words, including uses of frequently occurring prepositions and idioms, all that a

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modern reader “is predisposed to pass over, satisfied with a half-recognition” (1922, 295). The result was a detailed glossary, recording different spellings, describing multiple meanings of words, listing common expressions with translations and refer-ences to texts, and providing brief indications of etymology of each word.

A year later, in 1923, Tolkien published his first piece of work on a group of Middle English texts that interested him throughout his career. These texts, written in the West Midlands, probably in the second quarter of the thirteenth century, include Ancrene Wisse (“The Guide for Anchoresses”), a book of instruction addressed to three sisters of noble birth who were anchoresses somewhere in the West Midlands, and the so-called Katherine Group of texts. This comprises five closely related prose religious texts: the lives of three virgin martyrs (Saints Juliana, Katherine, and Margaret), a treatise on virginity known as Hali Meiðhad (“Holy Maidenhood”), and a treatise on the protection and guardianship of the soul, Sawles Warde (“Custody of the Soul”). The texts share themes and numerous similarities in vocabulary, phraseology, and style, though they are not thought to be the work of a single author (Millett and Wogan-Browne 1990; Wada, 2003).

Tolkien’s first printed contribution to the study of these texts was an unsigned review in The Times Literary Supplement of an edition of Hali Meiðhad by F. J. Furnivall, published posthumously in 1922 by the Early English Text Society. The review intro-duced many of Tolkien’s ideas about this text which he developed in later publications. In 1925 he published in the Review of English Studies an article “Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography,” partly based on his study of Hali Meiðhad. It con-tained notes on the glossary of Furnivall’s edition, proposing revisions to his inter-pretation of several words and phrases. Tolkien argued that some of Furnivall’s interpretations were implausible, because the forms found in Hali Meiðhad, with its consistent spelling and phonology, could not go back to Old English forms suggested by Furnivall. Tolkien proposed new identifications for such words, citing parallels among words recorded in Old English, Old Norse, and Gothic. He argued, for example, that suti in Hali Meiðhad should not be glossed as “sooty” or “filth,” because “neither context nor phonology allows of this,” but is in fact a different word, sut/sıt, meaning “grief” and related to Old Norse sút (“grief”) and sýta (“lament”). In the same article he comments on some Middle English words outside Hali Meiðhad, proposing, for example, new etymology for Middle English burde (“lady, damsel”), the origin of which is unclear. Tolkien discusses it with reference to synonyms for “man” and “woman” within the tradition of Old and Middle English alliterative poetry and suggests that burde is an agent noun related to Old English borde (“embroidery”) and that the original meaning may have been “embroideress.” He supports this view with examples of Old English and Old Norse poetic formulas, where a woman is referred to as a “weaver” or “embroideress.” Interestingly, chapter 6 of The Silmarillion describes Míriel, the first wife of Finwë, king of the Noldor, and mother of Fëanor, as the most skilled of all the Noldor at weaving and needlework. She is also called Serindnë (in early drafts Byrde), translated in the Index of Names as “the Broideress.”

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Tolkien’s other contribution to Middle English lexicology is an article “The Devil’s Coach-Horses” also published in 1925 in the Review of English Studies. The entire article is devoted to a single word in Hali Meiðhad, eaueres. Tolkien argues that this is not a survival of Old English eofor (“boar”), which is implausible phonologically and makes poor sense, but a word that developed into now obsolete aver, meaning “property, estate,” but also “a cart-horse.” He discusses how such a range of meanings could have originated. A short article “ ‘Iþþlen’ in Sawles Warde” which Tolkien pub-lished in 1947 in collaboration with Simonne d’Ardenne, also focused on a single, partially unreadable word in Sawles Warde, proposing a tentative solution to a notori-ously difficult textual puzzle.

Perhaps Tolkien’s most important article on the West Midland texts is concerned with their language (Tolkien 1929). He made a detailed analysis of the language shared by two early manuscripts containing Ancrene Wisse (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS. 402) and the Katherine Group of texts (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 34). He called it the “AB language,” a term still used today. A and B are short identifiers (used by editors for convenience and known as sigla) of the two manu-scripts, Corpus Christi College MS. 402 (A) and MS. Bodl. 34 (B). Tolkien pointed out the close similarity between their language, emphasizing the unusual (for this period) consistency of its phonology, grammar, and spelling. He suggested that it was not simply a local dialect, but a shared written language of a literary community, descended in part from late literary Old English. He placed the AB language in Herefordshire and argued that it must have been the language in which the texts were originally composed. Tolkien’s argument, refined and modified by later scholars, stood the test of time. The AB language is currently believed to have developed in the late twelfth century within a local scribal tradition. It underwent standardization of spell-ing and possibly morphology, and remained in some aspects close to written Old English, perhaps as a result of unbroken development (see “A Note on the Language” in Millett and Wogan-Browne 1990; Dance 2003). Tolkien’s view that it was the original language of the texts was strengthened by E. J. Dobson’s identification of one of the scribes of the British Library’s Cleopatra manuscript of Ancrene Wisse as the author (Dobson 1972, xciii–cxl).

“Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale” is an article based on a paper that Tolkien read at a meeting of the Philological Society in Oxford in 1931 (published in 1934 but see Tolkien 2008c, and also chs. 2 and 3). This lengthy work (70 pages in all) is a detailed study of what Tolkien calls Chaucer’s “linguistic joke” – the representation of northern dialect in the speech of clerks in The Reeve’s Tale. Tolkien points out that this is unparalleled in Chaucer’s other writings and other Middle English texts. He assumed that Chaucer gave his clerks consistent northern accent, and that deviations from this consistency found in surviving manuscripts of The Reeve’s Tale are due to alterations introduced by the fifteenth-century scribes who had a tendency to “southernize the original.” To reconstruct Chaucer’s hypothetical original text Tolkien produced a criti-cal edition of the relevant passage from The Reeve’s Tale, where he included all northern forms found in the manuscripts he studied (even if they occurred only in a minority of

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his sources) and further regularized the text using northern forms throughout even if they occurred in the manuscripts only in certain lines (published in 1939, see Tolkien 2008d). Tolkien admitted that this was a controversial decision and apologized at the beginning of the article for being able to consult only a small number of the surviving manuscripts. He almost certainly exaggerated Chaucer’s consistency, generally not sup-ported by the surviving manuscripts, though later scholarship confirmed his view of Chaucer’s good knowledge of northern speech (Horobin 2001). Tolkien’s critical text usefully contains notes declaring manuscript authority behind all his adopted northern readings. The article also contains an analysis of northern linguistic features divided into sections “Sounds and Forms” and “Vocabulary.”

Another article concerned with Chaucer’s and more broadly Middle English vocab-ulary is his “Middle English ‘Losenger’ ” paper of 1951 (published in 1953). It is a study of the etymology of the word losenger borrowed from French into Middle English. Tolkien argued that it was unrelated to losenger which survives in modern English and means “a diamond-shaped figure,” “a small cake or tablet” (Tolkien 1953a, 64). His primary interest was the word losengeour found in Chaucer and other Middle English texts, usually translated as “flatterer” or “liar” (MED). Tolkien interprets it as a word with complex history, resulting from mutual influences of two lexical roots, one Romance, represented by Latin laudare (“to praise”) and Old French los (“praise”), and another Germanic, represented by Old English leasung (“falsehood, deception”).

Tolkien also published several editions and translations of Middle English texts (see ch. 3). In 1925 in collaboration with E. V. Gordon, his colleague at the University of Leeds, he produced an edition of the famous alliterative poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a romance set at King Arthur’s court. This poem survives in a single manuscript written around 1400. Its author is unknown, but the poem displays superior literary skill and sophistication in ideas, structure, and style. Tolkien and Gordon’s edition came out at a time when there was no other edition of the poem in print. In the preface the editors wrote that their intention was to produce a scholarly and at the same time accessible text (Tolkien and Gordon 1967, vii). The text of the poem is accompanied by an introduction, notes containing historical and linguistic commentary, an account of language and meter, bibliography, glossary, and an index of names. The edition was revised by Norman Davis in 1967, Tolkien’s successor as Professor at Merton, and until recently remained a standard text for university-level study of the poem. Tolkien began work in collaboration with Gordon on an edition of Pearl, another poem from the same manuscript and probably by the same author. When Tolkien left Leeds, Gordon continued work on the edition, but it remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1938. The edition was eventually revised and published in 1953 by Gordon’s wife Ida, who acknowledged Tolkien’s assistance in her preface. During World War II Tolkien also produced an edition of another Middle English romance, Sir Orfeo, which was printed in a small number of copies in 1944 by the Academic Copying Office in Oxford and published in 2004 by C. F. Hostetter (Tolkien 2004b).

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Tolkien’s translations of three Middle English poems that he edited, Sir Gawain, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo, were published posthumously by his son Christopher in 1975 (see Tolkien 1995d). As explained in the preface, Tolkien wanted to reach an audience without any knowledge of the original poems, but also thought that “a translation may be a useful form of commentary” interesting to scholars (1995d, v). The difficulty of providing interpretative aids suitable for both types of readers was partly respon-sible for the delay with publication of the translations. The translations imitate the highly complex metrical form of the poems and are based on careful study of the originals and much “unshown editorial labour,” because as Tolkien wrote “a translator must first try to discover as precisely as he can what his original means” (ibid.). Tolk-ien’s interest in publishing the translations and reaching a wide audience is evident in his radio work. Stanzas from Pearl were broadcast in August 1936 and the transla-tion of Sir Gawain in December 1953 on the BBC’s Third Programme. The last broadcast was accompanied by the publication in the Radio Times of a short article by Tolkien, entitled “A Fourteenth-Century Romance” (a version of the article appeared as part of the introduction to Christopher Tolkien’s edition of the translations). In the article Tolkien argues that Sir Gawain is a “romance, a fairy-tale for adults” dependent on earlier Celtic and French sources, but reflecting late fourteenth-century concerns.

Tolkien also contributed to efforts to make Ancrene Wisse and the Katherine Group of texts available in modern editions. Ancrene Wisse survives in 17 manuscripts, com-prising versions in English, Latin, and French. In 1944 the Early English Text Society embarked on a project to publish all the existing versions, starting with the French text and finishing in 2000 with the publication of the version preserved in the Vernon manuscript (Herbert 1944; Zettersten, Diensberg, and Spencer 2000). As part of this project Tolkien published in 1962 an edition of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS. 402, one of the earliest and most important copies of Ancrene Wisse. Tolkien also was supervisor in Oxford of the Belgian scholar Simonne d’Ardenne, whose edition of Seinte Juliene (1936), taking into account Tolkien’s work on the AB language, received praise from reviewers. The edition contains diplomatic texts of two manu-scripts of Seinte Juliene, a critical edition, a text of the Latin source, a full glossary, and a detailed description of the language which remains a standard resource for the study of the AB language. Tolkien and d’Ardenne collaborated on an edition of Seinte Katerine and their joint article “MS Bodley 34: A Re-collation of a Collation” (Tolkien and d’Ardenne 1948) includes a discussion of editorial methods appropriate for this manu-script. The edition was not finished during Tolkien’s life-time and was completed and published by E. J. Dobson and d’Ardenne in 1981.

Tolkien’s contribution to the study of Middle English can be described as meticu-lous and usually highly technical, aimed at making texts accessible and intelligible to both professional and non-professional readers. Tolkien contributed to Middle English scholarship primarily as a textual critic and historical linguist, but first of all as a historical lexicologist. When he started his academic career many of the most important Middle English texts were not available in modern editions. Tolkien saw the task of editing as a pressing requirement for medieval studies. In “Some Contribu-

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tions to Middle-English Lexicography” he also commented on the urgent need for “the compilation of the Middle English dictionaries” (1925a, 210). His articles on Middle English typically offer detailed studies of etymology and semantic develop-ment of words considered difficult and in some cases dismissed by scholars as present-ing unsolvable problems. His knowledge of philology (the study of historical development of languages or language families) was most commonly employed to discover the origin and therefore earlier meanings of words in order to understand more correctly their use in surviving texts. As evident from Tolkien’s translations and broadcasts he also wanted Middle English texts to be accessible to the “lovers of English poetry” outside academia (Tolkien 1995d, v).

Themes and Plot Elements

Tolkien’s fiction and literary-critical writing were also influenced by his study of Middle English language and literature. This is evident already in his use of words. Some words appear in his works in their Middle English spellings and their meaning is influenced by their Middle English usage. Examples of this are aventures, Realm, and Faërie. In the essay “On Fairy-stories” Tolkien pointed out that such stories were about “the aventures of men in the Perilous Realm” (OFS 32). He used the Middle English spelling (Anglo-Norman aventur) of this word which acquired a more “correct” Lati-nized form in early modern English (Latin advenıre “to happen”). The purpose of this is almost certainly to distinguish it from modern adventure. Middle English aventure could mean “fate,” “destiny,” “danger,” “dangerous enterprise” as well as “a knightly quest” (MED), whereas in modern English such meanings are weakened, partially giving way to a lighter “novel or exciting experience” (OED).

The word Realm occurs in Tolkien’s literary works. The “Blessed Realm” in The Silmarillion refers to the continent Aman and particularly Valinor which lay in its center. As pointed out by Flieger, the reason for Tolkien’s choice of the word Realm over “region” or “territory” is probably its meaning – “the sphere which something affects or controls” (OED; Flieger 2007, “Faërie”). This implication of “dominion,” “sovereignty” as well as a “community comprising a kingdom” was much stronger in Middle English where the word could also denote “God’s kingdom, the church, the body of followers of God” (MED). Aman in Tolkien’s mythology is indeed not a geo-graphical region, for it was removed from the physical world of Arda, the earth, and made inaccessible by Ilúvatar, but a dominion, an area of influence of the Valar. Finally, Tolkien used the spelling Faërie (in Middle English in a variety of spellings, including fairie, faierie, feirie, farie, etc.) to differentiate this term from modern fairy. As is well known, he employed it to refer to a place, activity, or condition, rather than a super-natural creature, which is consistent with its Middle English meanings “the country or home of supernatural or legendary creatures,” “enchantment, magic, illusion” (MED; Shippey 2005, 65).

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Middle English texts contributed themes and plot elements to Tolkien’s fiction, influencing in particular his descriptions of the Elves. Similarly to Old English and Old Norse texts (see chs. 15 and 17), Middle English literature reflects beliefs that humans share the earth with other races. The hero of Sir Gawain encounters in his travels a whole range of supernatural beings, including dragons, giants, and wodwos (Old English wudu wasa “wood man”; Tolkien and Gordon 1967, ll. 720–723). Encounters of humans with fairies or Elves are referred to or described in several Middle English texts, including Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and romances Sir Gawain, Sir Launfal, a late fourteenth-century reworking of Anglo-Norman Lanval of Marie de France, and Sir Orfeo, composed early in the fourteenth century in the South Midlands, or possibly London, and based on the classical story of Orpheus and Eurydice. As is well known, Tolkien’s earliest portrayal of supernatural beings, such as in his poem “Goblin Feet” published in 1915, relied on conventions developed in Renaissance and Victorian literature which represented fairies and Elves as minute and childish creatures (Shippey 2005, 34–35). His later writing, however, was inspired primarily by their very different portrayal in medieval literature.

Elves and fairie in Middle English literature are powerful beings, that live in another world, but come into contact with humans. They are depicted as strange, beautiful, and dangerous. Sir Orfeo, for example, is a story about a king and a very skillful harper whose wife is abducted by the fairies. Devastated, Orfeo leaves his kingdom to his steward and goes to live in the woods, until by chance he finds a way to travel to the fairy kingdom, charms the King with his music, and is allowed to leave with his wife. The poem contains a striking paradoxical description of what Orfeo sees when he enters through the rock the country of the Fairy King. The land is bright and green, the king’s castle is “rich, regal and wonderfully high,” decorated with gold and precious stones, and its walls “shine as crystal” (Shepherd 1994, ll. 351–358). This description has parallels in Middle English depictions of Paradise, such as, for example, in Pearl (Shippey 2005, 203ff., 247–248; Lee and Solopova 2005, 164–176; Patch 1950). And indeed, at first Orfeo thinks that what he sees is the “court of Paradise” (Shepherd 1994, l. 376), but when he goes inside the castle he notices the humans abducted by the King. He sees dismembered, strangled, wounded, burned, and drowned bodies and wives lying on their “child-bed,” reflecting various medieval beliefs about fairies (Shepherd 1994, ll. 386–404). The theme of power and beauty, and of the fairies’ ability to greatly hurt or reward the humans, continues throughout the poem. Orfeo’s wife, Heroudis, says that she has never seen “such fair and exceptional beings” (Shepherd 1994, ll. 147–148), but at the same time there is a feeling that Orfeo and Heroudis become victims of a merciless and irrational force: their sufferings are undeserved, the reasons for the abduction of Heroudis are not explained, and the actions of the Fairy King are willful and cruel.

Medieval beliefs that fairies are irrational and dangerous in spite of their great beauty, wealth, and supernatural abilities influenced in particular Tolkien’s representa-tion of the Elves in The Hobbit. The fact that the Dwarves are taken prisoners by the Elf-king and kept in a dungeon in his palace evokes medieval stories about abductions,

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such as Sir Orfeo. The character of the king of the Wood-elves has similarities with the King in the poem: he is proud, easily angered, and would not tolerate any chal-lenge to his power; but he is honorable and just in his treatment of Thorin and Bilbo at the end of the story (“The Return Journey”; Shippey 2005, 73). The Wood-elves are described in The Hobbit as different from the High-elves of the West, being “more dangerous and less wise” (H 156).

It seems that there was a change in Tolkien’s portrayal of the Elves between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, supported by a change in vocabulary. Shippey observes that Tolkien employed the word “fairy” in his earlier works, up to and including The Hobbit, but then abandoned it as a foreign word with a confused history in favor of the Germanic word “elf” (2005, 63ff.). Tolkien appears to have further distanced himself not only from the later tradition of representing fairies and Elves as childish creatures, but also from the medieval tradition of portraying them as irrational, and sometimes cruel or evil. Very little is known about the Germanic Elves, though they seem to have been supernatural beings, worshiped alongside the gods, believed to be skillful craftsmen and associated with light (Dronke 1997, 261–263). The word “elf” occurs not only in Old Norse and Old English, but also in Middle English literature. The beginning of Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale, for example, describes the Elf-queen dancing on green meadows:

In th’olde dayes of the King Arthour,Of which that Britons speken greet honour,All was this land fulfild of fayerye.The elf-queene, with hir joly compaignye,Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede. (Benson 1987, ll. 857–861)

The “fairy dance”, also found in Sir Orfeo, is one of many motives shared by Tolkien’s depictions of the Elves and the descriptions of fairies and Elves in Middle English literature. Another shared motif is the “fairy hunt.” Tolkien mentions hunting as one of the occupations of the Wood-elves in The Hobbit (H 156), and while living in the wilderness Orfeo watches the Fairy King coming to hunt and hears “dim” shouts, the blowing of horns, and the barking of hounds (Shepherd 1994, ll. 281–288). He sees his abducted wife for the first time in a retinue of 60 “gentle and merry” ladies hunting with their hawks (Shepherd 1994, ll. 303–313). When Bilbo and his companions see the Elves in Mirkwood there is some uncertainty as to whether they are real or not: when the Dwarves try to approach, the Elves disappear. The same theme is present in Middle English texts – the fairy hunt watched by Orfeo never takes any catch and the ladies with their hawks disappear through the rock. In The Wife of Bath’s Tale when the knight tries to approach ladies dancing “under a forest syde,” they vanish without a trace (Benson 1987, ll. 989–996). Yet another shared motive is the “fairy army”: Orfeo sees a “great host” of armed knights passing him by, or knights and ladies dancing, accompanied by musicians (Shepherd 1994, ll. 289–302).

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In both Tolkien’s fiction and Middle English literature the Elves have a strong connection with music and craftsmanship, as well as a love of precious metals and gemstones. In The Silmarillion Fëanor learns to make gems that surpassed natural stones. The three Silmarils he creates capture the light of the Two Trees of Valinor and become his most precious possession. In Sir Orfeo the land of the Fairy King is always full of light, because at night precious stones shine as brightly as the sun (Shepherd 1994, ll. 369–372), whereas the King’s crown is made of a single precious stone that also shines like the sun (Shepherd 1994, ll. 149–152).

As can be seen from previous discussions, in both Tolkien and Middle English literature the Elves have a connection with woods and trees. This motive is present not only in The Hobbit, but in all Tolkien’s novels. Lothlórien in The Lord of the Rings is covered by the forests of mallorn trees, that have silver trunks, gold leaves in autumn that do not fall until later, and green foliage and yellow blossom in spring (FR, II, vi). In Middle English texts fairies are often seen in or near the woods, and in Sir Orfeo Heroudis sees the Fairy King for the first time when she falls asleep in her orchard under what is described as the ympe-tre, probably a tree with grafted branches (Shep-herd 1994, ll. 63–76; Lee and Solopova 2005, 123–132). Orfeo sees the same tree again when he travels to the castle of the Fairy King, which implies that it exists in both worlds. Several scholars of Sir Orfeo have also observed that some of these motives may hark back to Celtic mythology and folklore (Bliss 1966, xxxv–xxxvi; see also Smithers 1953; Patch 1950, 52–53).

Perhaps the most important plot element shared by Tolkien’s fiction and Middle English texts is the love between a human and an Elf. In Tolkien this is exemplified by the stories of Lúthien and Beren, Aragorn and Arwen, in Middle English by Sir Launfal (Shepherd 1994) and The Wife of Bath’s Tale.

Tolkien also borrowed several motives and plot elements from Middle English Arthurian literature, though as Shippey observes he might have been expected not to like it as an “originally non-English” tradition, whose “commemoration in English verse was merely a final consequence of the stamping-out of native culture after Hast-ings” (2005, 44; see also Flieger 2000). In spite of some negative remarks by Tolkien, such as “Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalised, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English” (Letters 144), the influence of Arthurian texts is undeniable (see ch. 27). Arthurian legends became popular in England in the second half of the twelfth century as a way of celebrating a heroic national past and the ideal of kingship, and enjoyed popularity and royal patronage throughout the medieval period (see Barron 1987 and 2001; Cooper 2004). The first vernacular work to use Arthurian legends, probably composed in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, was Brut, a chronicle in alliterative verse by Laȝamon, who states at the beginning that he is a parish priest from Areley (prob-ably Arely Kings, Worcestershire) and that he decided to write a history of England’s noblemen (Barron and Weinberg 2001). Laȝamon’s most immediate source, which he freely adapted, was the French Roman de Brut, written by the court poet Wace during the reign of Henry II.

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Arthurian legends are also the subject-matter of the largest group of surviving Middle English romances, many dating from the fourteenth century and influenced by the great tradition of the French Arthurian romance. These include the alliterative poem Morte Arthure (“The Death of Arthur”), which deals with Mordred’s betrayal of Arthur and Arthur’s death (Benson 1986), and several romances, which focus on the adventures of Arthur’s knights, such as Gawain, Lancelot, Perceval, and Tristram. Arthurian literature inspired, of course, Tolkien’s poem The Fall of Arthur published by Christopher Tolkien in 2013. But there are other parallels between his novels and Arthurian legends that have been pointed out by scholars. These include Frodo’s journey to the undying lands at the end of The Lord of the Rings which is reminiscent of Laȝamon’s account of King Arthur’s departure in a boat to the Isle of Avalon to be healed of his wounds after the battle with Mordred at Camelford (Shippey, 2005, 69n.; Barron and Weinberg 2001, 252–255). There are also similarities between Gandalf and the Arthurian magician Merlin; and the emergence of a hidden king and a power-ful sword that comes into possession of a king are both plot elements shared between The Lord of the Rings and Arthurian legends (see Flieger 2000 and 2007; Reader’s Guide 56–60).

Narrative Models and Fictionality

Tolkien also used narrative models that were favored by Middle English authors. Perhaps most famously in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings he employed as an organizing principle the concept of the quest, widely attested in Middle English romance (see ch. 27). Another device used by Tolkien, which has a medieval counter-part, is a frame narrative, or a story within a story. As shown by Flieger (2007), this device is present in all his major works, including The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. In The Hobbit Tolkien presents himself as a compiler or editor of Bilbo’s memoirs rather than the author of the story, leaving some uncertainty as to whether it is fictional or real. The Lord of the Rings has a prologue by an invented editor with references to a fictional source, the “Red Book of Westmarch,” the “most impor-tant source for the history of the War of the Ring” (FR, Prologue, 18). In a “Note on the Shire Records” at the end of the prologue Tolkien tells about the composition of the “Red Book of Westmarch,” the making and location of its copies, and gives an account of other contemporary and later manuscripts describing the War of the Ring (see ch. 4). Particularly elaborate frames, connecting narratives with Tolkien’s con-temporary Oxford, are found in his time-travel stories “The Lost Road” and “The Notion Club Papers” (see ch. 11).

Frame narratives flourished in Middle English literature. Perhaps the best known is the dream-vision, as in Pearl, one of the most popular medieval literary genres (see Spearing 1976; Phillips and Havely 1997; Boffey 2003). The dream-vision is used by Tolkien notably in “The Notion Club Papers.” Most medieval works which belong to this genre are stories written in the first person singular which present their events

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as seen in a vision or dream by a narrator. They usually have an introductory scene or a prologue describing the circumstances of the vision. Dream-vision narratives often depict journeys to the other world, frequently inward as in Pearl, where the narrator undergoes emotional and mental change; or similarly in Piers Plowman, a fourteenth-century alliterative poem, which consists of a series of dreams focused on the narrator’s spiritual quest. Dream-vision was valued by writers for a number of reasons, but perhaps most importantly because it provided an authoritative framework for fictional narratives. As is well known, medieval writers were not always happy to admit that they were writing new fiction. For medieval audiences, in order to be taken seriously texts had to be true in a historical or theological sense, or morally edifying (see Minnis 1988; Minnis and Scott 1991; Minnis 1997). Fictional narratives or “fables” were treated with distrust, and often dismissed as lies. Minnis and Scott (1991, 114–115) observe that even Homer, Ovid, and Virgil were criticized by many medieval writers “for having mingled historical truths with poetic fictions of various kinds.”

The most common defense of fiction during the Middle Ages was that truths could be expressed in the disguise of “fables” and that fictional stories, though untrue, could serve didactic purposes, and illustrate religious and moral principles.1 Such a mode of representing the truth, however, was usually seen as inferior, and many authors, even if only by way of paying tribute to tradition, preferred to claim that their nar-ratives were not fiction, but accurate reporting of real events. Such claims were sup-ported by references to ancient authorities and in turn relied on their reputations as trustworthy narrators. “Fictionalization” of sources is widely attested to in Middle English literature, such as the authors’ claims that they had used ancient historical texts when their sources were modern and literary. Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde, for example, partly based on a poem Il Filostrato by his older contemporary Boccaccio, presents himself as a translator of a work by an invented ancient authority, Lollius.

Such attitudes reflect shifts in the perception of fiction, and changing views on its ability to act as an adequate vehicle for important ideas. Realistic fiction did not become established until the early modern period, and in the late Middle Ages its potential to represent real human experience (in spite of being an invention) had not yet been fully tested or recognized. Though fiction becomes more established by the end of the period (as can be seen in Chaucer’s works), for most medieval writers and readers a story had to be either literally true, or true in a symbolic and allegorical way as an illustration of moral and spiritual realities, in order to be taken seriously.

Frame-narratives therefore provided clearly fictional stories with a context which, even if only as a literary convention, presented them as something that could be at least potentially true. It removed the difficulty of explaining and justifying their origin as an invention or new fiction. It also presented them as part of an essentially didactic tradition; that is as narratives that require interpretation (as appropriate for a vision) and can be understood as a symbolic or allegorical revelation of a moral or spiritual truth. When justifying fiction became less of an issue for authors such as Chaucer, frame-narrative continued to be valued for its wealth of technical possibilities. It allowed the author to combine narrative with instruction and meditation, realism

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with allegory, and to bring together multiple stories and episodes as in Piers Plowman or Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women.

Frame-narratives in Tolkien’s works perform a similar function of masking the fictionality of his stories by providing an explanation of how they could have survived as contemporary accounts of real events. Tolkien used a number of other devices which disguised the fictional nature of works, most borrowed from medieval literature. These include his use of genealogies; elaborate geography; numerous place and personal names not necessarily essential for the main story-line; references to events external to the main plot (often expanded in appendices or requiring familiarity with his other published and unpublished works); and the use of the “chronicle” as in The Silmarillion (see Solopova 2009, 20–24, 31–36). All these appear to the modern reader as appro-priate to historical rather than literary writing.

Many conventions of a modern novel reveal to the reader its nature as fiction, that is to say a deliberate invention. Tolkien’s approach was often to avoid or subvert such conventions. It appears that his narrative techniques confused some of his readers, possibly because they were unfamiliar, and differed from the recognizable paradigm of a modern novel. Tolkien wrote that his work was taken “too seriously” by several readers and that several of his correspondents treated it “as if it were a report of ‘real’ times and places” which his own “ignorance or carelessness” failed to represent prop-erly (Letters 188). His success in creating an illusion of historical truth may be partly responsible for a persistent suspicion that he actually believed in the legends and mythology which he invented. The same question is sometimes asked about him, as is asked about medieval writers whose work appears to a modern reader to be some-where on the borderline between history and fiction: is it a deliberate invention or did they think that they were writing history? Did they make such a distinction, and if yes, where did they draw the line?

In a letter to Amy Ronald (November 16, 1969) Tolkien wrote that The Lord of the Rings “ ‘feels’ like history” partly because:

It was written slowly and with great care for detail, & finally emerged as a Frameless Picture: a searchlight, as it were, on a brief episode in History, and on a small part of our Middle-earth, surrounded by the glimmer of limitless extensions in time and space. (Letters 412)2

Tolkien’s Middle English scholarship undoubtedly provided some of the tools that made successful this “experiment in the arts of long narrative, and of inducing ‘Sec-ondary Belief’ ” (Letters 412).

Notes

1 See “Poetic Fiction and Truth: William of Conches, ‘Bernard Silvester’, Arnulf of Orléans, and Ralph of Longchamps” in Minnis and Scott

(1991), 113–164. Minnis and Scott demonstrate that medieval commentators overwhelmingly believed that literature should be concerned

242 Elizabeth Solopova

with truth and ethics, and observe that “His-torical accuracy and exemplification may be regarded as two kinds of literal truth.” Other kinds of truth include, firstly, “the outspoken, unveiled reprehension of actual vices” by sati-rists who “according to their medieval readers – tore aside falsehoods and disguise to reveal facts about society which were unadulterated by poetic invention,” and secondly, “veiled truth” or “philosophy covered with fiction.”

2 Tolkien made similar comments about Beowulf: “The whole must have succeeded admirably in

creating in the minds of the poet’s contempo-raries the illusion of surveying a past . . . a past that itself had depth and reached backward into a dark antiquity of sorrow” (MC 27). He also wrote that the so-called “digressions” – references to various historical events and stories, external to the main plot, and particu-larly frequent towards the end of Beowulf – are a stylistic and narrative device deliberately used by the poet “to give that sense of perspec-tive, of antiquity with a greater and yet darker antiquity behind” (MC 31).

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