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

By Stuart Lee and Elizabeth Solopova

A comprehensive introduction to the medieval languages and texts that inspired Tolkien's Middle-earth. Using key episodes in The Silmarillion , The Hobbit , and The Lord of the Rings , medieval texts are presented in their original language with translations. Essential for those who wish to delve deeper into the background to Tolkien's mythology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Apr 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781137454706

Book preview

1

How to Use This Book

The main part of this book consists of a series of medieval texts presented in both their original forms and in translation, based on episodes highlighted in The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. Whilst this does not represent the full corpus of Professor Tolkien’s fiction, other works are referenced throughout the book.

The first port of call, however, is a discussion of Tolkien’s career as a medievalist (2.1.3–5). This gives essential background material and should be read before progressing further. Newcomers to the field of medieval studies should then read through the introductory guides to Old English, Old Norse, Middle English, Celtic, Finnish, and medieval languages overall to get a bearing on the historical and linguistic context of the texts presented later (2.2). The essays on the quest, epic literature, runes, names, alliterative verse, and the relationship between Middle-earth and the real Middle Ages are presented as examples of major themes and similarities between Tolkien’s writing and those found in medieval literature. These give an overview of these subjects with reference to general parallels in Tolkien’s work and will be of particular use to those wishing to study medieval language and literature further.

The texts themselves are designed to be read in the order they appear in the book, and, to avoid repetition, some cross-referencing to earlier texts occurs. When reading the texts, those who are new to medieval literature are advised to look at the summary which precedes each entry to understand the link to The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings; to read briefly the information about the text; but mainly to concentrate on the discussion, where parallels with Tolkien’s fiction are explored. Such readers are also advised to work mainly with the translations, whilst looking at the original texts on the facing page to see if any patterns or similarities emerge – for example, recurring words or phrases. Readers more familiar with medieval literature will find that the notes to each text provide more in-depth information about language and manuscripts as well as further discussion of Tolkien’s own views of the text.

2

Introduction

2.1 Background

2.1.1 The aim of The Keys of Middle-earth

It is now almost impossible to find a bookshop without a stand or section dedicated to the life and works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Not only are there his original works of fiction (The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and his minor texts), plus his own renditions of medieval texts (for example, The Fall of Arthur, Beowulf, Finn and Hengest, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún), there are also the 12 volumes of The History of Middle-earth series edited by his son, Christopher Tolkien, a range of biographies, books analysing his fiction, atlases, calendars, and drawings. These in themselves could fill a small library, but they have now been joined by a plethora of publications on nearly every aspect one could imagine concerning Peter Jackson’s filmed adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. It is a perfectly justifiable question, then, to ask why do we need another book about Tolkien? What can possibly be written that hasn’t already been covered?

On the face of it very little has been left untouched. The plots, themes, and analogues of Tolkien’s fiction have been discussed at length. In academic circles there has also been a lot of recent interest in his career as a medievalist and what impact this had on his fiction. Yet if we agree with Tom Shippey when he states that ‘Tolkien cannot be properly discussed without some considerable awareness of the ancient works and the ancient world which he tried to revive’ (Shippey, 2000, p. xxvii), then a lot of readers and fans of the Middle-earth books will be left floundering. How can they find out about these ancient works? Where should they start in trying to understand a discipline that Tolkien himself spent over sixty years studying? It is true that there are many public domain translations of medieval texts available on the Internet, for example, but for the most part these are fifty or sixty years old and many of them, without proper guidance, will seem irrelevant and confusing.

This then is the aim of The Keys of Middle-earth – to overcome these barriers. Drawing on a series of episodes from Tolkien’s fiction, key medieval texts, or selections from them, are presented in the context of Middle-earth, drawing out parallels wherever possible. These in turn serve as an introduction to the range of medieval languages and literatures that Tolkien studied and provide the reader with sufficient knowledge to begin to explore more. The translations are presented facing the original medieval texts to ease comparison.

In this second edition of the book we have also included extra texts and discussions. Notably The Silmarillion is now included to engage readers with a further Old English text (Christ I), but, most importantly, the Finnish epic the Kalevala which exerted a great influence on Tolkien. Existing sections based around The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings have also been expanded to introduce readers to the Old English Riddles, and the subject of the Goths and Gothic (via Jordanes’s History – see 2.2.4 and 4.13). In addition, explanatory essays on Finnish, Gothic, and the demanding area of Celtic literature have been included to add further information to the introductory material, plus an attempt to place Middle-earth alongside the real Middle Ages.

This book will be of interest to teachers and students of medieval literature too who are looking for a ‘themed’ reader. The theme here being one of the most popular sets of books of the past one hundred years, a popularity that shows only signs of increasing. Students are not only provided with introductions to the languages, texts, and manuscripts, there are also guides to further readings and more in-depth scholarly notes.

So whether you are a fan of the Middle-earth books, a teacher or student of medieval literature, or just interested in what led Tolkien to write his epic stories, The Keys of Middle-earth will appeal to you.

2.1.2 This is not a source book

To attempt to understand a book it is often useful to start with its title. This addition to the already extensive canon surrounding the life and works of Professor Tolkien is called The Keys of Middle-earth. It presents to the reader a collection of medieval texts in both their original form and in translation. Readers might naturally assume, therefore, that the texts in some way should be looked on as sources for the episodes set in Middle-earth, and that Tolkien used material from them in his own fiction. Yet if this were the case, then this book would have been entitled The Keys ‘to’ Middle-earth not ‘of’, and, as noted above, the title of a book is very significant.

So why the distinction? Well, in part we can turn to Tolkien’s own views on such matters. As Shippey (2005a, p. 388) notes, Tolkien did not like source studies, that is books that attempt to identify where passage x and passage y are taken from or based on. He felt they ‘tended to distract attention from the work of art itself, and to undervalue the artist by the suggestion that he had got it all from somewhere else’. Yet he was aware of the attraction of source studies. In a letter written in 1972, towards the end of his life, Tolkien complained that ‘the search for the sources of The Lord of the Rings is going to occupy academics for a generation or two’, but he wished it wasn’t so (Letters, 337, p. 418). This has certainly not stopped such endeavours, however, as can be confirmed by a glance at the annual ‘Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies: Sources and Comparative Studies’ in the journal Tolkien Studies. Furthermore, as Shippey (2011) suggests, we have to always bear in mind that Tolkien, when attempting to reinforce a point, was prone occasionally to exaggeration so his dislike of source studies may not be as entrenched as first appears.

It could be argued that it would also be impossible to write a source book for The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, or The Silmarillion as it implies that there is always a direct relationship between source material and the finished story. Although some of the entries presented in this book are very similar to the episodes in Tolkien’s fiction (see the link to Beowulf in 4.12 by way of example) most of them are not, and this is the norm.

So if this is not a source book, what is it? Once again we should turn to the title for an explanation. The purpose of a key is to lock, or in this case, unlock. We can imagine the book as a door, beyond which lies the world of medieval literature. To many, this world remains forever hidden, held secret within academic research libraries and universities. To some, who have been exposed to this world full of strange stories of men and women living long ago, told in even stranger languages, this world is both bewildering and daunting. Furthermore, for most, the only exposure to this whole area has been through the pseudo-medieval world of Hollywood where everything can, and does, go. Yet this is the arena in which Tolkien’s imagination roamed, a world to which he devoted most of his life. The Keys of Middle-earth, therefore, is aimed at unlocking that world so that the readers of Tolkien’s fiction can be exposed to the literature he studied, taught, translated, wrote about, and greatly admired. Then, when they return to his fiction, readers will have new insights into his work and begin to see patterns and similarities.

This is not without precedent, of course. Many people who now work or are interested in the field of medieval studies gained their first glimpse of this world through the fiction of Professor Tolkien (see Evans, 2000, p. 21; Lee, 2014a, p. 1). Caught up in the cultures of Rohan and Gondor, the history of the Elves and the Dwarves, they wanted more and found that their curiosity could be satisfied with the original material from which Tolkien drew his inspiration.

One can only guess, of course, what Tolkien’s reaction to such a venture would have been. One could assume that it would have been favourable. Any attempt to expose more people to the texts of Old English, Old Norse, Finnish, and Middle English would have been welcomed, especially one that presents the reader not only with the text in translation, but with the original for them to study and enjoy. Indeed Tolkien’s love of language, and his willingness to convey this to his students, is much attested to (see Solopova, 2009; Smith, 2014, pp. 202–14), extending to inventing his own languages. It was, as he termed it, ‘A Secret Vice’ (Essays, pp. 198–223).

In some ways, what attracted Tolkien to the study of medieval languages also explains his motivation behind the Middle-earth tales. Leaving the often over-emphasized attempt to devise a ‘mythology for England’, which he later rejected with some embarrassment, we can certainly agree with Shippey when he states that:

… he [Tolkien] wished… to give some hint of the charm and the fascination of the poems and stories to which he dedicated his professional life; and that he wanted finally to bridge the gap between the ancient world and the modern one.

(Shippey, 2000, p. 48)

The Keys of Middle-earth provides a further bridge. By selecting episodes from The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and the six books of The Lord of the Rings and directly linking them to a range of medieval texts, the reader is brought to a new world of discovery and at the same time exposed to the delights of our early literature.

2.1.3 Tolkien’s career

J. R. R. Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein, South Africa, and died on 2 October 1973. In the course of his life he was a soldier, lexicographer, and academic (see Carpenter 1987; Garth, 2003 and 2014; Honegger, 2014a; and Shippey, 2014). In terms of his writing he produced academic articles, a few scholarly books, poetry, some drama, and the fantasy works for which he is known throughout the world. Yet if one were to single out the career that dominated his life, what should one select? For the majority of his fans the answer would be simple: Tolkien was a novelist. Yet Tolkien himself would more likely have classed himself as a university lecturer who specialized in the field of medieval literature and language. His writing, though it clearly occupied much of his life and imagination, was perhaps secondary – certainly in what he deemed important.

Tolkien began his academic career at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and subsequently went to Exeter College, Oxford, initially to read Classics but then switching to English Language and Literature. He specialized in medieval literature and linguistics, building on the fascination with ancient languages and tales he had developed as a child. He was awarded a First Class degree in 1915, by which time the First World War was a year old and Tolkien, like many young men of his generation, enlisted (see Garth, 2003). He was commissioned into the Lancashire Fusiliers and saw action on the Somme in 1916, before being invalided home. After the war he took up a job in Oxford working on the New Oxford English Dictionary (concentrating on the letter ‘W’), and in 1920 he was appointed Reader in English Language at the University of Leeds (he became a professor in 1924). Tolkien was joined there in 1922 by the scholar E. V. Gordon and the pair began an ambitious plan (albeit ultimately unfulfilled) to produce a series of editions of medieval texts. Indeed, in terms of joint editions, the only real fruit of these labours was their Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, produced in 1925, but they continued to support each other throughout their lives (see Anderson, 2003b). This was the same year that Tolkien returned to Oxford, becoming Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College (not without some controversy it has to be said, a fact which he recognized at the end of his career; Essays, p. 238).

At Oxford, Tolkien found an even more encouraging environment for his medieval interests. He surrounded himself with friends and colleagues in the field, forming the ‘Coalbiters’ club to discuss works of Old Norse, and eventually became part of the famous ‘Inklings’ (see Bratman, 2014). His most important compatriot in those early years was C. S. Lewis – a kindred spirit not only academically and religiously (though not at first), but also in the writing of fiction, which they read to each other and the rest of the Inklings. This was a relationship that was to be as fruitful for both writers’ fiction as it was for the development of Medieval Studies at Oxford. Over the years Lewis heard all of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in draft, and encouraged Tolkien to finish both, though he himself admitted his role was more ‘as a mid-wife for the books than as a parent’ (Lazo, 2003, p. 40).

In 1945 Tolkien was elected Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, and he retired in 1959. His final years were spent in Oxford and on the south coast of England.

In addition, over the course of his Oxford career, Tolkien contributed to a legacy which is still controversial today, namely the compulsory element of medieval literature (or Old English at least) in the English syllabus at the University (for recent studies of his legacy in Oxford’s English Faculty see Fitzgerald, 2009; Cecire, 2013, pp. 39–44; and also Ryan, 2000, on his lectures). Tolkien had strong views on this and the nature of the courses at Oxford (see his 1930 article ‘The Oxford English School’, published in The Oxford Magazine, XLVIII, 21, pp. 778–82), which he underlined at the end of his career with his ‘Valedictory Address’ given in 1959 (Essays, pp. 224–40). One’s view of Tolkien’s position will be based on the opinion one holds on the range of texts expected in a modern-day English university school. This is, therefore, entirely subjective and can lead (and has done on many occasions) to emotive responses, a trap into which Tolkien himself fell as often as his critics. Yet regardless of whether or not one agrees with him, one could never argue against his commitment to the cause.

This briefest of summaries of his career omits many points, of course, not least his contributions to the field of medieval studies both during his career and posthumously. Yet if we were to look at his published work in terms of academic material, we would find that it is relatively sparse by modern standards for a career that lasted nearly forty years. If one adds together his published notes and lectures/essays, the few articles he saw to print (by himself or jointly) and various forewords to academic publications, plus his scholarly ‘books’, they number around thirty (and that is stretching the point – see Honegger, 2014a, for a list of Tolkien’s academic publications, and Lee, 2014a, pp. xxii ff, and p. 545ff for a list including his fictional works). Compared with other scholars it is safe to say that this is a relatively meagre output. Indeed, the comment that ‘Lewis published too much and Tolkien too little’ is still quoted in academic circles today. As C. L. Wrenn once reportedly remarked, ‘Tolkien is a genius! If only he wrote accordingly what wonders could he accomplish.’

Yet, without wishing to denigrate his contemporaries, we can say that whatever Tolkien published was always of the highest quality. Moreover, his lecture notes (held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford and referenced throughout this book) reveal a wealth of scholarly material that never reached publication and point tantalizingly to what might have been. Some of these have been collected together by other scholars such as his son Christopher and have now seen the light of day (most notably Tolkien’s translation and commentary on Beowulf published in 2014).

It is worthwhile considering at a high level a brief summary of Tolkien’s published scholarly engagement with medieval literature and language:

•  1920s: His most prolific period as a young academic at Leeds and Oxford. He published A Middle English Vocabulary in 1922 (Clarendon Press), and acted as the reviewer on philological works for the English Association’s The Year’s Work in English Studies (for 1924, 1926, and 1927). He published two articles – ‘some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography’ and ‘The Devil’s Coach-Horses’ in the Review of English Studies in 1925, the same year he also produced the joint edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with E. V. Gordon (Clarendon Press). The decade concluded with a ‘Foreword’ in 1928 to Walter E. Haigh’s A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District (Oxford University Press), and a further article on a text he was to devote much attention to ‘Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiđhad’ in the 1929 Essays and Studies by Members of the English Associataion (Oxford University Press). This was also the period in which he worked on his prose translation of Beowulf (Tolkien, 2014).

•  1930s: In addition to tackling the issue of the medieval syllabus at Oxford in ‘The Oxford English School’ Oxford Magazine (1930), he worked further on his philological interests with the 1932 publication of ‘Appendix I: The Name Nodens’ in R. E. M. and T. V. Wheeler’s Report on the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman, and Post-Roman Site in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire (Oxford University Press). He demonstrated his ability to work in both Old English and Middle English with two articles published in Medium Ævum (1932 and 1934) on the topic of the ‘sigelwara Land’, and one on ‘Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale’ in Transactions of the Philological Society from 1934 (see Tolkien, 2008a and 2008b). Perhaps his most famous contribution to the field from this period though was his lecture on ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’, delivered in 1936 and published in 1937 (see Essays, and Tolkien, 2002b). Throughout this period he also began his first drafts of his verse-drama ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son’ which was a study of the events following those depicted in the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon (eventually published in 1953; see Tolkien, 2001a). It is believed by Christopher Tolkien that it was in the 1930s that he also wrote The Fall of Arthur (unfinished), The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, and compiled the notes and lectures that became the commentary material to his translation of Beowulf (Tolkien, 2014, though some material must also be from the 1940s as it post-dates Sutton Hoo).

•  1940s: Although he continued to lecture extensively on medieval literature, this was the decade where he devoted much of his time to The Lord of the Rings. He managed to produce only three publications during this period: some ‘Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of Beowulf’ as part of a reissue of Clark Hall’s translation of the poem; a joint article with his student Simonne d’Ardenne on ‘IÞÞlen in Sawles Warde’ (1947), followed by another joint publication with d’Ardenne on ‘MS Bodley 34: A Re-Collation of a Collation’ (1948). However, this period is also noted for his seminal lecture and essay in which he expounds his theories on subcreation and fantasy – ‘ On Fairy-stories’ first published in Essays Presented to Charles Williams in 1947 (Oxford University Press; but see Tolkien, 2008c).

•  1950s: Apart from producing the published version of ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beorhthelm’s Son’ and two short essays surrounding it for Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association in 1953 (see Tolkien, 2001a), his only other published contribution was ‘Middle English ‘Losenger’: Sketch of an Etymological and Semantic Enquiry’ in Essais de philologie moderne in the same year.

•  1960s: His last major publication was his article ‘English and Welsh’ in Angles and Britons: O’Donnell Lectures (Oxford University Press) in 1963.

What this hides, however, is all the hidden work that either did not see publication (and remains so in his manuscripts), or was not produced in ‘scholarly’ journals or monographs but appeared in publications outside of traditional academia. In addition, there is also the range of testimonies from his colleagues and students to his assistance in supporting their work, often uncredited. Moreover, as we have indicated above since his death there has been a concerted effort to bring some of his previously unpublished major pieces of work to light. Various collected essays and lectures appeared in 1983 (Essays) but to this we can also add his extensive studies of key medieval texts. First there are his translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Orfeo, and Pearl (appearing as a joint publication in 1975, with Sir Orfeo being re-edited by Carl Hostetter in 2004). We also have Tolkien’s ‘edition’ of the Old English Exodus (edited by Joan Turville-Petre in 1981), and his engagement with two fragmentary episodes linked to Beowulf which were edited by his student Alan Bliss and presented in 1982 as Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode. More recently we have seen a series of publications presenting Tolkien’s translations or adaptions of famous medieval texts – notably his renditions of tales of the Völsungs such as ‘The Lay of the Völsungs’ and ‘The Lay of Gudrún’ (The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, 2009); his five-part alliterative poem around the Arthurian myths (The Fall of Arthur, 2013); his translation and commentary on Beowulf (2014) and The Tale of Kullervo (2015).

Attempting to summarize this collection of publications is difficult, but it is worth attempting to see if we can discern some overarching scheme. Putting Tolkien’s scholarly articles to one side (where we can see him engaging closely with philological issues, but at the same time ‘rescuing’ poems such as Beowulf for their literary worth) there remains the curious set of publications (mainly posthumous) which one would be hard to find mirrored in the work of other serious medievalists. What can we make of these? To begin with there are the translations proper, which are in keeping with endeavours by other scholars. We then have the curious (though not unique) practice of attempting to create a pseudo-medieval text in the original language, usually Old English. These range from the entirely new in Songs for the Philologists to such works as his Old English attempt at the Old Norse Atlakviđa found in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún (pp. 368–77). Next we have what could be termed new pieces of work inspired by, or attempting to imitate medieval predecessors such as his The Fall of Arthur, his ‘Lays’ of Beowulf and Grendel,¹ and, perhaps most interestingly, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. The latter in particular is worth noting because what Tolkien is attempting to do is make order from chaos, that is, producing two lays in the manner of Old Norse verse that bring together and resolve the fragments and contradictory stories surrounding the Völsungs, the Burgundians (or Nieblings), and characters such as Gudrun, Brynhild, and most importantly Sigurd. Notably at the end he also produces his own version of the Old Norse ‘The Prophecy of the Sibyl’ based on Germanic myths about the creation, history, and end of the world. Finally, there are texts such as his ‘Sellic Spell’ (in his translation of Beowulf, 2014, pp. 354–414) where it could be argued the intention is entirely different. Here he is attempting to provide something which could have originally existed (in this case the original folk tale that later became the poem Beowulf), which he presents both in Modern English and Old English. This is a point we will return to later.

Yet, as alluded to above it is undoubtedly true that part of the reason for the lack of published output during his lifetime (in comparison with his contemporaries) was the diversion of Middle-earth and the development of his mythology and legendarium. Nevertheless, the unpublished lecture notes reveal a scholar who thought deeply about his subject, and, more importantly, the teaching of that subject. There are extensive notes on medieval literature, translations of texts, editions of texts, lectures on translating, diction, prosody, metre, alliteration, the history of the language and people, on manuscripts, and so on. In addition, there are many scraps of paper, and a few notebooks which attempt to match individual words in Modern English with their Old English counterparts – an unfulfilled ambition, perhaps to produce a Modern English-Old English Dictionary (Tolkien A20/1–4). The papers also bear witness to the fact that Tolkien clearly reworked his teaching notes until they were just right. Even then they bear numerous additional annotations – possibly as a result of delivering the lecture, or a final read-through.

Criticism of his publishing profile, therefore, may be unjust, especially when one realizes how seriously he took his commitment to teaching. Even when he was made a professor at Oxford he ran series after series of lectures and taught far beyond the requirements of such a post, extending into Old Norse in the absence of a professor at Oxford in that field until 1942. Unfortunately, Tolkien’s teaching has also attracted criticism in the past from such noteworthy characters as the novelist Kingsley Amis, or the scholar John Carey. Because of the fame of such critics, the faults in Tolkien’s projection and teaching style which they high-lighted have received excessive attention. In fairness Tolkien should be described as a prolific and thoughtful lecturer, but not necessarily the most audible. Lewis advised one of his students that ‘unfortunately you may not be able to hear what he says’ (Sayer, 1995, p. 21) and described him as ‘an inspired speaker of footnotes’. A flavour of this can perhaps be gleaned from Leslie Megahey’s interview with Tolkien from 1968 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/12237.shtml). Yet reading through his notes one is struck by the inventiveness of his turn of phrase, which could conjure an image that would have undoubtedly enlivened the lecture hall. We should not be surprised, therefore, when we read comments such as:

He was a great teacher, and delightful, courteous, ever so kindly… He had his faults. He would ruffle through his notes rapidly… Then he would light up, expand, expound. He took endless pains with his students, helped them so much…

(Ready, 1968, pp. 17–18)

Yet this is not our concern here. It is his interest and research into medieval literature, and how that linked to his fiction, that we shall concentrate on – not his all-too-human faults as a teacher.

2.1.4 Tolkien’s fiction and medieval literature

It is well known that Tolkien’s interest in languages, especially ancient ones, and their associated literature began when he was young. We know, for example, that he became interested in Old and Middle English, enthralled by the Old Norse legends, and fascinated by such obscure languages as Gothic at an early age (he came across Gothic as a boy when he obtained a copy of Wright’s Primer of the Gothic Language; see Letters, 272, pp. 356–7). Tolkien started concentrating more deeply on Old English at the age of 16 when his schoolmaster George Brewerton lent him an Anglo-Saxon primer. When he won the Skeat’s Prize for English at Oxford in 1914, moreover, he spent his money on extending his knowledge by purchasing books on medieval Welsh and some works by William Morris, whose fiction also had an influence on Tolkien’s mythology.

This was all to manifest itself in his main academic studies at Oxford and subsequent field of expertise as a lecturer. Yet he was not always conventional. Consistently, Tolkien wanted to push his knowledge in interesting directions. He was no stranger, for example, to writing mock Old Norse (Letters, 295, p. 379) or pseudo-Old English (as in his joint publication with E. V. Gordon entitled Songs for the Philologists, which appeared in 1936 where Tolkien composed five poems in Old English and one in Gothic; or his Old English version of his own ‘Sellic Spell’ a possible forerunner to Beowulf – Tolkien, 2014, pp. 404–14). This was a pastime he was to continue late into old age, as is evident in his poem to W. H. Auden, entitled ‘For W. H. A.’ (1967), which he wrote partly in Old English.

Not surprisingly his love of medieval languages and literature was to find its way into his fiction. Many books have been written and studies published on the influences of these ancient texts on The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, the best of which are by Tom Shippey, in particular his The Road to Middle-earth (2005a). The links have been demonstrated beyond refute, but what is more interesting is the way Tolkien used this material in his own writing. Earlier we stated that this is not a source book. The reason for this is that a direct correlation between the medieval texts Tolkien studied and his fiction is not always apparent. Instead we must recognize that Tolkien held many of the tales, myths, and poems that he taught and researched in his memory and occasionally fused these with his own creations to form something new. As he himself stated: ‘one’s mind is, of course, stored with a leaf-mould of memories … and these rise up to the surface at times’ (Letters, 324, p. 409). Yet he would have been the first to acknowledge that these memories and original leaves – the medieval texts themselves – should be recognized and that their influence should not be ignored. This is different from source analysis. When writing on the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for example, Tolkien felt entirely at liberty to state that:

it belongs to that literary kind which has deep roots in the past, deeper even than its author was aware. It is made of tales often told before and elsewhere, and of elements that derive from remote times.

(Essays, p. 72)

This does not detract from the importance of the poem, and more importantly does not attempt a detailed source study, but it does show its indebtedness. In his seminal lecture and essay ‘On Fairy-stories’ he explored this further (Essays, pp. 109–61; see also Tolkien, 2008c) in terms of the depth within fairy tales. Verilyn Flieger summarized this as follows:

Tolkien speaks in this essay of the ‘soup’ of story, that rich mixture which has been simmering since man first told tales, from which stories have been ladled out to nourish the imagination in every age, including our own… the hero, the quest, the struggle with monstrous forces of evil, the ordeal and its outcome.

(2004b, p. 123)

The same is true of his own work. What we are presenting in this book, therefore, are the roots of his fiction, the ingredients of the ‘soup’ that led to Middle-earth, or as we like to term them, the keys.

A more interesting question perhaps is, why did Tolkien choose to allow these ingredients to bubble to the surface of his fiction? Many writers have written novels completely disassociated from their careers. Was this just accidental, then, or was there some purpose to it? The general feeling amongst scholars of Tolkien is that the latter is case. The use, re-use, and reshaping of medieval concepts, themes, and stories were a deliberate policy on his part. The follow-on question is naturally ‘why?’ and to this there are several possible answers.

First, as we have noted, Tolkien greatly admired these texts and the languages they were written in, and wanted to convey that to his audience in an approachable manner. Even when not writing fiction, for example, his style is often lively, jovial and far removed from the usual tone reserved for academic publications.

A single example drawn from his lecture notes on ‘Anglo-Saxon History and Literature’ will suffice. In this he stated:

You can, if you like, speak of an ‘Anglo-Saxon period’ in history, before 1066. But it is not a very useful label. You might as well label all the jars on the topshelf in your store cupboard as PRESERVE, and all the rest JAM. In actual fact, there was no such thing as a single uniform ‘Anglo-Saxon’ period: just a time when all men wore funny trousers with cross-straps, and ate too much pork and drank too much beer; a time whose chief events were the burning of some cakes by Alfred and the wetting of Canute’s feet. That is a legendary time that never happened or existed, and it is not nearly as interesting as the real thing.

(Tolkien A30/1, f. 70)

The analogy of the store cupboard is welcoming, quaint, and amusing, but at the same time conveys two serious points; in this instance, that to label an historical period of nearly 600 years under the single term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is pointless, and that it is all too easy and common to confuse legends with facts.

Second, we already know that Tolkien often toyed with composing his own medieval texts in the original languages using his extensive linguistic knowledge. Tolkien’s typical response to reading a medieval work ‘was to desire not so much to make a philological or critical study of it as to write a modern work in the same tradition’ (Lobdell, 2000, p. 109; Flieger, 2004b, p. 123). It is natural, therefore, that when turning to his great works of fiction he was to continue this practice of creating something new from the old.

The third possible reason why medieval literature played such a prominent part in Tolkien’s fiction is perhaps the most contentious. It centres on the concept of a ‘mythology for England’ mentioned earlier. There has been much scholarly discussion about this phrase, first introduced by Humphrey Carpenter in his famous biography of Tolkien, but never actually used by Tolkien himself. The nearest we have is in a letter to Milton Waldman (c.1951) in which Tolkien wrote:

I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil)… Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend …which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country.

(Letters, 131, p. 144)

Much of this sense of poverty stems from his envy of Finland’s Kalevala, which provides a background epic for that country (see 2.2.5 and 4.1). To Tolkien nothing, not even Beowulf, came close and he dearly wished for ‘something of the same sort that belonged to the English’ (Carpenter, 1987, p. 97). Although Tolkien later stated that this was all ‘absurd’, scholars have long argued about whether this was mere hubris on his part, and if so, whether The Lord of the Rings and the other Middle-earth texts were an attempt to bring together the tales evident in medieval literature, in order to create a mythology for England and the English.

Whilst this is a much-debated topic, the most realistic suggestion is that Tolkien played with the idea of creating something for England that would have provided it with a background epic of its own, but he never actually made this explicit. Even when he attempted to link the events portrayed in Middle-earth to the pre-history of Europe and England (see 4.15) he went so far and no further, withdrawing from the brink of committing himself to anything. Instead, we are left with clues, teasing us about what he may, or may not, have been trying to accomplish. Perhaps the simplest way to express this is as follows. Tolkien was one of the great scholars of medieval literature and read widely in the field, covering several areas (but mainly the Germanic languages). As he did this he recognized common stories and elements, and glimpses of things that were never fully explained (leading one to the assumption that the audience at the time must have been familiar enough with the stories that they needed no explanation). As Shippey (2000, p. 14) states, Tolkien, like many others, felt that the original medieval authors knew ‘something, something consistent with each other and with much later fairy-tales of modern times: and that you might just possibly be able to work out what it was’. Shippey (2005a, pp. 22–6) further suggests that what intrigued Tolkien was what we might term ‘asterisk reality’, referring to the philologists’ practice of using an asterisk to indicate where they are reconstructing a word to attempt to explain a linguistic mystery due to the absence of surviving information. Tolkien then, in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but above all in The Silmarillion and his other tales in the legendarium, presented us with a mythology, an asterisk reality, that could explain why our medieval ancestors believed in Elves, Dwarves, and Dragons (to pick but a few examples), in the same way, as we noted earlier, in his own ‘Sellic Spell’ he attempts an asterisk (‘suggested’) folk-tale that could have been the inspiration for the Beowulf poet. Some of these ancient stories from Middle- earth (in this asterisk reality at least) survived so long that they eventually found their ways, albeit greatly altered, into medieval tales like Beowulf or the Norse poetry and sagas, and these were occasionally written down and fixed in place. If not, they were either lost or passed down orally from generation to generation in the form of myths, legends, and ‘fairy stories’. But the emphasis here is on could. It illustrated what could have been, albeit hypothetically, which was subsequently lost. Tolkien, therefore, was not stating that his Middle-earth ever existed, but something like it might have done, at least in ancient tales, myths, and the imagination of our ancestors.

Finally, and perhaps the most sensible reason for Tolkien drawing on medieval literature as his inspiration, was that it satisfied his role as a ‘sub-creator’, something he stated in his essay ‘On Fairy-stories’ that was essential if your audience was to be drawn into the tale (see Tolkien, 2008c; and Phelpstead, 2014). In essence, this means the creation of a credible secondary world (in this case Middle- earth), and the way to achieve this was by giving it depth, in terms of history, mythology, geography, flora and fauna. Even his most savage critics recognize that this is one of Tolkien’s strengths. By using medieval literature, therefore, Tolkien had a wealth of ideas, but more importantly stories or elements of stories that would strike a chord of familiarity with his audience. This association with hidden memories would add to the depth of the story and make it ‘feel right’. In other words, he was constructing his story out of the elements of existing literature but at the same time creating something new.

None of this should ever detract from our admiration of his work and achievement. We must not fall into the trap that Tolkien was all too acutely aware of; namely, embarking on a quest for sources which at the end implies there is no original work in the piece. As Fuller notes, Tolkien’s work is ‘astonishingly underivative’ and ‘to whatever he has drawn, as all must do, from the common cultural heritage of the human race, he has brought something uniquely his own’ (1969, p. 18). Having said that, let