The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy: One Book to Rule Them All / Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson, eds. -- Chicago: Open Court, 2003

 In the year 2000, Open Court Publishing launch a series titled, "Popular Culture and Philosophy" with the book Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book About Everything and Nothing. Open Court has gone on to publish scores of books in this series.  As someone interested in both philosophy and Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, I was pleased to receive as a Christmas gift Volume 5 in the series, The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy.  Books in the series are anthologies by authors, largely philosophers, who seek to tease out the philosophical themes that appear in whatever pop culture subject is the subject of the book.  TLotR and Philosophy is the only work in the series that I've read.  This is perhaps a reflection of my distance from so much of pop culture -- nothing to be proud of, just a fact. Whether I'll read other works in the series is an open question, but I'm glad to have read this one.

As with most anthologies, the articles are uneven.  Perhaps my biggest complaint is that too many of the authors spend an inordinate amount of time describing major events in TLotR, as if someone reading this work would not be quite familiar with the fact that, say, Gandalf battled a balrog in Moria or Boromir was slain defending Merry and Pippin.  But setting this aside, many of the articles do a good job of exposing philosophical ideas in TLotR.  There are five parts to the work, titled, I. The Ring, II. The Quest for Happiness, III. Good and Evil in Middle-Earth, IV. Time and Mortality, and V. Ends and Endings.  Each part contains three articles, except for the last which contains four.  

Stand out articles include Eric Katz's article "The Rings of Tolkien and Plato: Lessons in Power, Choice, and Morality."  The comparison between Tolkien's One Ring and Plato's Ring of Gyges is an obvious topic for philosophical discussion.  In Plato's Republic, Glaucon argues that anyone with a ring that made them invisible would eventually use it for immoral ends, even an otherwise moral person.  Socrates responds that the moral person would prefer a life of peace and integrity to whatever would be gained by illicit uses of the ring.  Tolkien's characters better reflect this latter theory, though they present a more complicated response to the One Ring than Plato imagines for the Ring of Gyges.  Katz examines the reactions of numerous characters to the One Ring and shows how they respond according to their established character.  Each does experience a least a moment of temptation (except Tom Bombadil), but they each resist, except for Gollum and Frodo.  Gollum because he is murderous to start with, and Frodo because he simply can't overcome the force of the ring he has carried so long.  This suggests that the adage "absolute power corrupts absolutely" is not Tolkein's view.

In Scott A. Davison's article, "Tolkien and the Nature of Evil," persuasively argues that evil is not an independent force in opposition as thought by Manichaeans, but merely the absence of good.  In that sense, TLotR isn't really a story of "good versus evil," it is a story of an effort to keep corruption at bay.  Though Davison doesn't make much of this observation, Tolkien makes shadows a stand in for evil.  This is true not just in TLotR, but in The Silmarillion, Tolkien's realm of the god-like Valar, is originally illuminated (as is all of the world) by two trees.  How this might be isn't explained, but one can't imagine that these would be specific spatial sources of light.  Instead, their presence would bring light to all the world from every angle, leaving no place for shadows.  It is only when the two trees are destroyed by Ungliant and Melkor that the Sun and Moon are created, illuminating the world, but still casting shadows.  Evil has entered the world and shadows come into being.

Aeon J. Skoble's article, "Virtue and Vice in The Lord of the Rings" is rather unique in the anthology.  The other articles in the anthology largely start with features that appear in the novel and go on to observe their philosophical import.  Skoble turns this on its head.  His article reads more like an introductory essay on ethics, particularly virtue ethics, with illustrations of his points taken from TLotR.  That is, he centers the philosophical ideas as opposed to elements of the novel.  If all of the articles were like this, the anthology would make an interesting text for an introductory Philosophy course (of course with the pre-requisite that students read TLotR.  As it is, the anthology might be better described as literary criticism appropriate to an English literature class.  

The final article, by John J. Davenport, entitled "Happy Endings and Religious Hope: The Lord of the Rings as an Epic Fairy Tale," is a real stand out. Davenport makes use of Tolkien's essay "On Fairy-stories" and other works by Tolkien to support Tolkien's claim that TLotR is "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work."  This has always been something that has escaped me.  Certainly, some elements of the novel can be seen as religious and specifically Catholic, but to say it is "fundamentally" so, seemed a stretch.  

Davenport claims that the essentially religious message of the work is that "evil cannot stand forever, that its misappropriation of divine power and right destroys itself in the end.  But this does not come about without our participation, our willingness to sacrifice, and our faith (beyond all rational hope) that our mortal efforts will be met with the ultimate response, and day will finally come again."  The "ultimate response" that Davenport refers to is what Tolkien calls a "eucatastrophe" -- a sudden "turning" at the end of fairy-stories that provides an "unexpected deliverance...experienced not as an achievement..., but rather a divine gift."  The resurrection of Christ is seen as the great eucatastrophe of the Christian faith, and the sudden unexpected appearance of Gollum at the Cracks of Doom is the great eucatastrophe of Middle-Earth.  This makes Tolkien's claim that his work is "fundamentally religious" somewhat more plausible.  Of course, one might also argue that despite how seemingly hopeless things are, the future is always essentially uncertain.  There's nothing necessarily religious about that. 

Other articles in the anthology certainly deserve reviews here, but as they are each short, I'll instead recommend picking up a library copy and sampling them at your leisure.  As you should expect, some will be weaker than others, but anyone interested in Tolkien and philosophy will find them entertaining.  

  

Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle Earth / J.R.R. Tolkien -- Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1980

After the publication of The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien's son, Christopher, released Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle Earth.  It was a testament to his confidence in the importance of his father's work as The Silmarillion did not meet the expectations of Tolkien's fans.  As it happened, Unfinished Tales fared no better.  That's a shame as both posthumous works are great achievements despite being unfinished by the author.  Unfinished Tales contains stories from each of the three ages of Middle Earth.  The First Age is primarily the history of the elves.  In Unfinished Tales we can read about Tuor, a human raised by elves and his coming to the hidden elf kingdom of Gondolin.  We also can read about the fate of the children of Hurin, Turin and Nienor, both ill-fated by a curse placed on their father.  From the Second Age, we have stories of the men of Numenor, blessed by the god-like Valar, but virtually destroyed by the seduction of Sauron.  We also find a history of Galadriel and her husband Celeborn, elves of the noblest rank.  Told of the Third Age, the age in which the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place, are accounts of the loss of the Ring of Power, relations between Gondor and Rohan, and stories filling in a few gaps in the account given in The Lord of the Rings. Finally, there are three short accounts of the Wild Men of the Druedain, the five wizards, and the palantiri.

By and large the prose of Unfinished Tales is out of keeping with the novelistic form of Tolkien's more popular works and more akin to The Silmarillion, but there is enough connection to the popular works to make it somewhat more engaging to the casual Tolkien fan than was The Silmarillion.  Most certainly, the stories chosen by Christopher Tolkien to include in this volume are among the most important for gaining a deep understanding of Tolkien's larger vision of Middle Earth.

The Silmarillion / J.R.R. Tolkien -- Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977

The Silmarillion has a bad reputation.  After a spike in the popularity on American college campuses of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, his readers were eager for a similar work.  When they discovered that Tolkien's unpublished stories were consciously not in a traditional novelistic form, they largely turned their backs on them -- not just The Silmarillion, but all of his remaining unpublished works.  In the years following the publication of The Silmarillion, one could easily find copies of it in used bookstores.  This is all too bad, since there is much to appreciate in The Silmarillion, if one does not expect it to be like The Lord of the Rings.

The volume is composed of five works: "Ainulindale," "Valaquenta," Quenta Silmarillion, "Akallabeth," and "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age." "Ainulindale" is and account of the work of Eru, the One, called "Iluvatar" by the Elves.  Eru created everything. First among his creations were the Ainur (or more specifically, the Valar), god-like beings that remind one of the Olympian gods.  Tolkien describes their primary activity as the making of music, which is disrupted by the dissonance of one of the Ainur, Melkor, because of his pride.  Later, the music of the Valar takes on a new ontological form as Ea, the material universe and Arda, the world in which all of Tolkien's stories are set.  Included as a region of Arda is Middle Earth.  The tone of all of this is rather like The Book of Genesis. Never does Tolkien establish what one might consider a novelistic plot or characters of any substance.  What story line that can be found, is based on the rebellion of Melkor.  Upon my first reading, I was thrilled by the depth and majesty of the work and fascinated by its theological undertones, but like so many other readers, I was hoping that the remainder of the work would be more like The Lord of the Rings.

The second work in the volume, "Valaquenta," seems more like a snippet from an encyclopedia, providing entries on the Ainur: the Valar mentioned above and the Maia a demi-god like being.  Ther is also an entry on "the Enemies," including Melkor and Sauron, a Maia of The Lord of the Rings.  There is no doubt value here, but because the roles of the Valar and the Maia are not great in the remainder of the volume, the detail we find here is rather unnecessary for the whole.  We do get, however, a deeper understanding of the powers of the world that the Valar represent and so have a better sense of the cosmology within which the stories of the "Childern of Iluvatar" (elves and men) unfold.  Those stories are told in the three subsequent works in the volume.

The Quenta Silmarillion is the longest and most complex work in the volume.  It is a history of the First Age of the world in which the actions of the elves are of greatest import.  Elves are the "first born" of the Children of Iluvatar, discovered first by Melkor who had taken refuge in Middle Earth. Their fate was decided by a war between Melkor and the other Ainur, the outcome of which was the defeat of Melkor and his imprisonment for three ages.  Following the war, the Ainur invited the elves to come to Aman, "the Undying Lands" to live forever in peace and under the protection of the Ainur.  Three ambassadors were chose from the elves to receive the summons, Ingwe, Finwe, Elwe.  Each became a king of a portion of the elves and each encouraged their subjects to travel across the sea to the join the Ainur.  However, not all of them made the journey.

Perhaps the most gripping story in the Quenta Silmarillion is that of the "Flight of the Elves."  While in the Undying Lands, one elf, Feanor, son of Finwe, made three precious jewels that contained a sacred light.  He called the jewels "the silmarils."  They were, however, stolen from him and taken to Middle Earth by Melkor who had finished his time in prison.  In his pride and lust for the silmarils, Feanor and all his sons made a vow to recover them and treat anyone who withheld the silmarils from them as an enemy.  His decision to return to Middle Earth was opposed by the Valar, who declared that Feanor and any elf that left the Undying Lands with him could not return.  Feanor's pride led him to disregard the decree and he journeyed to Middle Earth.  Shockingly, his departure involved a civil war among the elves in which elves killed elves, forever staining their history.  In the end, Feanor and his followers made it to Middle Earth.  The remainder of the Quenta Silmarillion is the story of their struggle against Melkor to regain the silmarils.

Many of the stories told of that struggle contain thrilling details, but by and large they are schematic, outlining the broad history of the elves in Middle Earth.  The most well developed stories have been published in other works by Tolkien's son Christopher as part of the series of volumes entitled The History of Middle Earth and in one instance as a separate book, The Children of Hurin.  In all, the Quenta Silmarillion truly demonstrates Tolkien's expansive imagination.  If one is fascinated by the complexity and extent of his vision in The Lord of the Rings, one should be absolutely overawed by what he has given us in the Quenta Silmarillion.  Unfortunately, the idiom in which he has chose to write has not attracted the audience it deserves.  To truly appreciate the value of the work, one must give it more than a single reading.  I'm sure very few people have been so committed to understanding Tolkien's vision as to do this.

As if the Quenta Silmarillion were not enough to establish the majesty of his vision, Tolkien provides us with accounts of the Second and Third Ages of Middle Earth in The Silmarillion.  The Second Age is an account of the history of men, particularly the race of men called the Numenoreans, following the defeat of Melkor which ends the First Age.  During the Second Age, the evil of Melkor is carried on by his surviving vassal, Sauron.  Deceived by Sauron, men are induced to attack the Valar in the Undying Lands, which unsurprisingly brings about their destruction, with the exception of a dissident group, loyal to the Valar.

The final work in The Silmarillion is "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age."  This tells the story of the creation of the rings of power by Sauron and ultimate the War of the Last Alliance in which men and elves defeated Sauron and in which the prince of the Numenoreans, Isildur acquired the one ring of power, only to lose it when ambushed by orcs.  It is with the end of this last work that we are finally brought up to the time of Tolkien's more popular works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Undoubtedly, The Silmarillion is not everyone's cup of tea, but for anyone who loves The Lord of the Rings, the stories and history it holds give depth and meaning to that world.  It may take two or more readings to become clear about the various events and numerous figures in the legendarium, but once one has this, Frodo, Samwise, Gandalf, Aragorn, and all the rest of Tolkien's familiar characters can be seen in the supremely heroic light that the author envisioned for them.

 

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary together with Sellic Spell / J.R.R. Tolkien, trans. -- Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014

Several years ago, I heard a rumor that a translation by Tolkien of Beowulf was found in his papers and that an eminent Tolkien scholar was working on editing it for publication.  Later, I heard that the scholar had abandoned the task.  So I was very pleasantly surprised to find Tolkien's translation of Beowulf on sale at my campus bookstore, edited by Tolkien's son, Christopher.  Tolkien's relationship to Beowulf and Beowulf scholarship is legendary.  In 1936, he published an influential study of the entitled, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics."  More than anything, that study elevated the reputation of Beowulf to the preeminent literary status that it has today.  Prior to that, Beowulf was seen mostly as a hotch-potch of story fragments which W.P. Ker described as putting peripheral matters at the center and central matters at the periphery.  According to Tolkien, the tangential narratives and allusions to other histories and legends lent depth and context to the story and that the centrality of the monsters (Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the dragon) and how they were treated by the author offered an important insight into the poem and its telling.  For example, the reference to Grendel as being of the race of Cain and the connection between the dragon and Satan showed that Beowulf was neither fully a pagan epic nor a Christian homily.  Instead, it was a retelling of an earlier pagan legend by a Christian author.  The author's Christian world view could not help but make him (or her?) include a Christian slant on the drama.

It is clear that Tolkien's understanding of Beowulf is first rate if not second to none and so his edition of the poem can not be ignored.  Tolkien was also the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University and so his mastery of Old English verse is also of the first order.  At one time in his life he wrote a poem entitled The Fall of Arthur in the alliterative verse form of Old English.  This form is composed of verses made up of two phrases each usually made up of two stressed and two unstressed units of the form:  x / x / | x / x /.   The alliteration occurs when the third stressed unit is the same sound as the sound of the fist stressed unit and sometimes also the second unit.  For example: "the Geat prince went / for Grendel's mother" or "funeral fires / fumes of wood smoke."  Of course, every line in Old English meter is not slavishly fitted to these forms, but any attempt to capture the sound of the Old English poetry would tend to follow these patterns.  Tolkien, however, chose not to write his edition of Beowulf in verse.  Instead, the narrative is presented in prose.  This permits him to more easily capture the meaning of the poem since he is able to choose Modern English expressions that do not alliterate, but what is lost in poetry is gained in semantic accuracy.  At the same time Tolkien's rendition of the story is colored by his sense of drama.  His diction and word order make the work suitably archaic and often quite stirring.  Anyone with an appreciation for his prose will thoroughly enjoy his rendition.

In addition to the rendition of the poem itself, Christopher Tolkien has included a commentary on the text that was taken from Tolkien's lecture notes.  The commentary is nearly twice the length of the poem and this more than anything will provide the reader with deep insight into the poem and to the pagan times about which the poem is written.  For example, Tolkien explains the passage, "Leave here our warlike shields" with the annotation: "Note the prohibition of weapons or accoutrements of battle in the hall.  to walk in with spear and shield was like walking in nowadays with your hat on.  The basis of these rules was of course fear and prudence amid the ever-present dangers of an heroic age, but they were made part of the ritual, of good manners."  The annotation goes on further to point out that this custom was appropriate to a king's hall and that "It was death in Scandinavia to cause a brawl in a king's hall."

The presence of the commentary in the same volume as the rendition gives a reader three extremely attractive options:  (1)  Read the narrative strait through without reference to the commentary.  This allows you to best appreciate Tolkien's own literary techniques.  (2) Read the the commentary along with the narrative.  This provides you with a deep understanding of the story with Tolkien as your guide.  (3) Read the commentary alone.  This provides you with a fascinating study of Old English and the customs of pagan Northern Europe.  It's hard to decide which of these approaches is best.  Perhaps three readings of the work would be ideal.

The Hobbit / J.R.R. Tolkien -- Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1976

A few weeks ago, I watched the concluding film of Peter Jackson's three-film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.  I was not disappointed, but only because I had seen the prior two films and had low expectations.  Jackson appears to have decided to make a set of films for an audience that loved his adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, but has not read The Hobbit.   In order not to allow the movies to confuse my recollections of the book, I decided to re-read The Hobbit for what was probably the fifth or sixth time.  Mind you, those readings were spread over a period of 44 years, though my last reading of it was only a few years ago, prior to Jackson's first Hobbit film.  Over the course of those decades, my experience of the book has changed little. 


For me, The Hobbit ranks first among light, "escapist" reading.  It's my literary "comfort food."  In contrast, The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's other works provide us with more weighty themes.  Three characters are well-developed in The Hobbit: Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield, and to a lesser extent Gandalf the Grey, but character development is not really the central virtue of the book.  Instead, The Hobbit takes us on a journey through a mysterious world which has horizons that are mainly limited to the scene of its action.  Certainly, there are hints of a wider world.  Much has been made of these hints by literary critics who ascribe the attraction of the novel to those hints.  Tolkien himself thought this, but in truth the hints are quite few.  Instead, the intimation of a wider, imaginary world is mostly a consequence of the non-human cast of characters.  If the characters are so different from us, then surely their world must be different.  No hints are really required for that.  What really makes the story endearing is that the reader understands Middle Earth's horizons to be much wider than what we see, but this world is one which is revealed to us only slowly and in the course of the journey.  This is analogous to a child's experience of his or her development to adulthood.


Following the story of The Hobbit along the journey to the Lonely Mountain, one begins in Bilbo's house.  Despite being built into the side of hill, Bilbo's house is familiar enough.  One can imagine the cozy fire, comfortable chairs, and of course plenty of food.  Soon enough, Bilbo's world is disturbed by a company of dwarves.  As a child, this intrusion from the outside was not terribly different from the appearance (in real life and on television and radio) of people from the world outside of my family and immediate friends.  They produced both interest and anxiety.  Eventually, Bilbo sets out with the Dwarves and plunges into a world that he knows little about.  In the course of his "adventure," his horizons become wider and wider, encounter challenging environments, trolls, goblins, wolves, a shape-shifting bear-man, a dismal forest, elves, men, and finally the Lonely Mountain and its dragon.  Along the way, Bilbo progressively rises to the challenges he faces.


His first real challenge comes with his encounter with the trolls.  Here Bilbo succeeds only in the sense that he musters the courage to attempt to pick the pocket of one of the trolls.  His (and the dwarves') escape is arranged by the intervention of Gandalf.  Bilbo's second challenge comes with his game of riddles with Gollum.  Again his escape is less of his own doing than, luck.  By finding a ring that makes him invisible and accidently uttering a riddle that stumps Gollum, Bilbo manages to escape the caverns beneath the Misty Mountains.  It is really not until the travelers make it into Mirkwood (a dismal forest) that Bilbo really begins to discover his capabilities.  His defeat of the spiders that have captured the dwarves is mostly a product of his invisibility, but by now, the powers of the ring can be thought of as indistinguishable from Bilbo's own evolving resources.


Bilbo's maturity as an agent in the story really begins in full when he formulates a successful plan to free the dwarves from imprisonment in the caverns of the wood elves.  It is an elegant escape, but not without sacrifice to the dwarves.  The culmination of Bilbo's progress comes at the Lonely Mountain, when he rather willingly confronts the dragon Smaug.  Bilbo is now most certainly a formidable actor in the wild and dangerous world that had been far outside his horizons at the start of his journey, but his development is more than one of adult confidence.  In the final acts of the novel, Bilbo steps out of his role as someone having an adventure when he truly acts to shape the course of events by delivering the Arkenstone (a gem prized by Thorin Oakenshield) to the armies arrayed against the dwarves.  Far from betraying his friends, Bilbo's action creates the possibility of their salvation and indeed, results in the moral salvation of Thorin Oakenshield.


What we see in The Hobbit is Bilbo's development from a childish existence to a mature adult actor.  At the same time, his maturity does not completely lose touch with his simple persona.  When the War of the Five Armies breaks out at the very end of the action, Bilbo is struck on the head with a rock and misses the greater part of the battle.  Some things remain too large for the hobbit. 


Reading the story as a child, I was fascinated, indeed enchanted, by the unfolding mysterious world and thrilled by Biblo's capacity to rise to meet its challenges.  I found strength in the idea that someone so small and unheroic might succeed in his foray into the wider world. 


The two other characters that stand out in the novel are Thorin Oakenshield and Gandalf.  Gandalf clearly serves as a parental figure, wiser than Bilbo, watching out for his safety, and guiding his steps.  Still, his failure to save Bilbo, the dwarves, and even himself from the wolves and goblins east of the Misty Mountains reveals both the dangers of the wider world and the limitations of those we must rely upon.  It is noteworthy that Biblo's developing maturity only becomes manifest when Gandalf leaves the adventure. 


Thorin's character development stands as a cautionary tale.  At first Thorin is a reasonably admirable, if flawed, adult character; but he is overcome by his greed and he leads the people for whom he is responsible into needless danger.  It is Bilbo's recognition of Thorin's failing that leads him to take the final step in his own development.   Bilbo's relationship with Thorin reminds us that in the end, one must be responsible for one's own actions and know when to depart from ostensible authority. 


Again, these character developments are not really the magic in the story -- at least not for me.  Instead, it is Tolkien's ability to posit a world unlike our own and show us only what a developing character can see along his journey.   The hints of the grand stories of Middle Earth told in The Silmarillion are not what makes The Hobbit exciting.  What gives the novel its power is the slow, but progressive revelation of a mysterious world that provides a model for one's own actual coming of age.  Reading it much later in life reminds me of those days when the wide, actual world (or should I say the "unimaginary world") seemed dark and mysterious, and where all that was familiar was closely bound in space, time, and culture.  Like no other book The Hobbit allows me to recapture that exciting sense of pending discovery.

The Fall of Arthur / J.R.R. Tolkien -- Christopher Tolkien, ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013

When most of us think of Britain's mythopoeic tradition, the legends of King Arthur and his knights come quickly to mind.  According to J.R.R. Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien found them "too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive," but Tolkien did enjoy them as a child.  His appreciation for them as an adult was great enough to move him to edit (with E.V. Gordon) a Middle English version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and later to translate the poem into modern English, retaining its alliterative verse form.  It is not clear exactly when, but roughly around this stage of his career, Tolkien also began writing an alliterative poem "in the Beowulf meter" (according to his friend R.W. Chambers)  entitled The Fall of Arthur.

The poem was never completed by Tolkien, but numerous manuscripts survived.  Much to our benefit, Tolkien's son Christopher has assembled the best of these verses into a striking version of the story of the death of Arthur.  Tolkien is a master of Britain's traditional poetic meter and "Norther" alliterative verse, having composed numerous works in this style, so it is a pleasure to read Christopher's edition of his father's work, and to see how Tolkien chose to tell a story often told, but often told out of the context of the time.  Tolkien's knowledge of the literature and history of medieval England makes him especially equipped to give us what seems to be an authentic version of legend.

Along with the poem itself, Christopher Tolkien provides us with three essays of his own.  The first is the most interesting.  It recounts various tellings of the events that are included in Tolkien's The Fall of Arthur, including those by Geoffrey of Monmouth and Sir Thomas Mallory.  Christopher Tolkien ably puts his father's imaginative treatment of the story into the context of this tradition, allowing us to see what Tolkien retained from that tradition and what is new in his narrative.  Perhaps the most interesting addition that Tolkien brings to the legend is his treatment of Guinevere (or "Guinever" as Tolkien chooses to spell her name.)  While modern treatments of her character make her out to be a beautiful, but star-crossed, heroine, Tolkien's Guinever seems more akin to Lady MacBeth.  Possibly less sympathetic, Guinever seems a good deal more autonomous and powerful than the more popular Guinevere.

Christopher Tolkien's second essay seeks to draw connections between The Fall of Arthur and Tolkien's larger legendarium, The Silmarillion.  While this essay includes a good deal of interesting paragraphs and valuable insights, it is largely disconnected and confused.  One is never sure if there are any broader points to be made by the essay.  The third essay amounts to little more than a record of various alternative drafts of the version that Christopher Tolkien chose to make "canonical" as The Fall of Arthur.  We are provided with page upon page of alternate passages that serve little purpose than to let the reader know that Christopher Tolkien needed to make numerous editorial decision in creating the canonical version.  Given these alternate passages, one could, in principle, re-do the work of the editor and create a number of very different versions of Tolkien's work, but it is hard to imagine who would want to bother.

In all, The Fall of Arthur is a welcome addition to the compiled work of J.R.R. Tolkien, it illustrates Tolkien's poetic genius, and tempts one to further explore both Tolkien's other alliterative poems and the treatments by other authors of the Arthurian legends.    

Following Gandalf: Epic Battles and Moral Victory in The Lord of the Rings / Matthew Dickerson -- Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2003

A common criticism of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is that it glorifies war and violence.  It is not hard to draw this conclusion in light of the numerous battle scenes depicted in the work and the military heroism of many of its main characters.  According to Matthew Dickerson, such a reading is superficial and a more discerning reader will see exactly the reverse.  War and violence are not glorified.  They are portrayed as the horrible acts of evil forces.  The wisest of the characters are repelled by war and violence and only resort to it out of desperate necessity.

Central to Dickerson's argument is an examination of the words, actions, and motivations of Gandalf, Aragorn, Elrond, Frodo, and Faramir.  Dickerson rightly observes that the most thoughtful and insightful commentary about war and violence come from these "wisest" characters.  Each exhibits a deep reluctance to engage in violence and in the case of Gandalf, Faramir, and Frodo, the characters overtly recognize the moral  value of their adversaries. Gandalf is noted as saying, "Many that live deserve death.  And some that die deserve life.  Can you give it to them?  Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.  For even the very wise cannot see all ends."  Gandalf pities Sauron's slaves, Faramir regrets the death of a man deceived by Sauron to fight against Gondor, and Frodo shows mercy, time again, to Gollum.

One of the most telling passages in condemnation of war comes from Faramir:  "War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory.  I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Numenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom.  Not feared, save as men may fear the dignity of a man, old and wise."  And against violence, Frodo is noted as saying, "Fight?" said Frodo.  "Well I suppose it may come to that.  But remember: there is to be no slaying of hobbits, not even if they have gone over to the other side.  Really gone over, I mean; not just obeying ruffians' orders because they are frightened....And nobody is to be killed at all, if it can be helped.  Keep your tempers and hold your hands to the last possible moment!"

One might wonder if these statements by characters that are certainly portrayed as wise by Tolkien are enough to contradict the general martial tone of much of the story, but Dickerson does an admirable job revealing nuances in the story and its telling that strengthen his conclusions.  After reading Following Gandalf one understands how The Lord of the Rings became so popular among the anti-war college students of the 1960s and 1970s.   War was upon us.  What was morally significant was how we dealt with it.

There is much more in Following Gandalf that deserves attention:  the importance of moral victory as opposed to military victory, mediation on freedom and creativity, power, hope and despair, and the Christian elements in the work.  There is, however, at least one current in Tolkien's work that is overlooked (or at least under-examined and that is what Tolkien thought of as the a great virtue of Northern European peoples: the willingness to remain true to one's duty in the face of certain defeat.  Certainly this virtue is most clearly revealed in times of war, but it is by no means inapplicable in other circumstances.  So too the nearly pacifist wisdom of many of Tolkien's characters hold lessons for us beyond the obvious circumstances of the novel.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: a film directed by Peter Jackson (2012)

I first read J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit 42 years ago and immediately went on to read and re-read everything by Tolkien that I could get my hands on.  Around the year 2000, I was excited to hear that a movie version of The Fellowship of the Rings would be premiering soon.  I was not disappointed.  Certainly, there was much to criticize in Peter Jackson's cinematic treatment of Tolkien's epic story.  The battle scenes loomed far too large in the movies, orcs looked dangerous, but fell like grass before a reaper, and the screen play included, from time to time, some rather juvenile dialogue.  Perhaps most disturbing, though was the characterization of Frodo.  In Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Frodo starts out as a rather feisty character, an aggressive leader of the band of hobbits making their way to Rivendell.  Only after he is stabbed by the morgul blade on Weathertop does he becomes progressively more passive, even pacific.  In contrast, Elijah Wood's Frodo is timid and frightened from the beginning. 

Jackson misses one of Tolkien's most significant sensibilities:  that violence and war, though necessary at times, are extreme horrors and that the wisest among us will not glorify them. For a revealing treatment of this, see The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son in The Tolkien Reader. For these, and many other reasons, Tolkien purists have dismissed Jackson's films.  In the words of Tolkien's son Christopher, "There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away," but the lush cinematography and the chance to see the story unfolding on a film screen led me to look past the deficiencies of Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and simply enjoy the films for what they were. 

It is more difficult to adopt this tolerant attitude toward Jackson's new film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  In contrast to The Lord of Rings, The Hobbit is a small story -- a children's story -- but presumably in an effort to make it accord with the style of his previous films, Jackson tries to turn it into another epic.  Worse, he loads it with grand, action-film violence that is uncharacteristic of the early chapters of Tolkien's The Hobbit.  As before, our heroes face and defeat hundreds of foes as though they were cutting their way through a light back-country brush.  This leaves the battle scenes devoid of any tension or sense of danger and is an insult to the fearsome race of orcs and goblins.  Characters that were only briefly mentioned in passing play significant roles in Jackson's film.  Azog the Goblin who Tolkien only mentions having killed Thorin Oakenshield's grandfather, becomes "the White Orc" and is "hunting" Thorin and company.  Unfortunately, we can expect to see the White Orc in the subsequent hobbit movies, but hopefully not until the Battle of the Five Armies.  Radagast the Brown, who also is mentioned only briefly in The Hobbit, is featured in an extended sequence in the film.  He is aptly used to depict the decline of Greenwood into Mirkwood, but his main role is to divert attacking wargs from Thorin and company by driving a sled drawn by rabbits. This is completely Jackson's invention and is simply silly.

Even more than the film version of Frodo, the film version of Bilbo is unrecognizable. In the early stages of his adventure, Tolkien's Bilbo is an extremely reluctant member of the expedition, quaking at every danger and frequently wishing he was home in Hobbiton.  Jackson's Bilbo does start out this way, but much too quickly becomes a clever and courageous member of the party.  In the encounter with the trolls, it is not Tolkien's Gandalf who defeats them, it is Jackson's Bilbo; and when the party is treed by wolves (wargs in the film), Bilbo leaps to rescue Thorin from the White Orc's minions, standing over his fallen leader.  By this time in Tolkien's story, Bilbo had gained only the slightest confidence and did nothing so rash.  The overly quick development of Bilbo's character robs the story of one of its most interesting features:  Bilbo's transformation from a quiet homebody into a resourceful hero.  We seldom see the mixture of anxiety and excitement that would come to a comfortable, middle aged, middle class man suddenly thrown into a life and death adventure, full of great historical figures.

Tolkien himself had mixed feelings about The Hobbit.  He was pleased, of course, that it was a literary (and financial) success, but he was more attached to his grander work that became The Silmarillion. (The Lord of the Rings occupies a middle ground between these poles.)  Jackson seeks to integrate the story of The Hobbit into the larger epic.  Unfortunately, Jackson is not Tolkien and has done a ham-handed job of transforming The Hobbit.  A more cynical analysis would hold that he has intentionally turned the story into a Hollywood action film extravaganza to please a popular audience -- an audience that has no real appreciation for Tolkien's oeuvre, but simply enjoys modern special effects and video game-like violence.

Still, there are some very good aspects of the film.  The New Zealand scenery is as striking and beautiful as ever.  The sets, particularly Bilbo's home -- Bag End -- and Elrond's Rivendell are still faithful to a Tolkien sensibility, at least as interpreted by Alan Lee, and Bilbo's opening encounter with the dwarves is consistent with Tolkien's own whimsical tone.  I take Jackson at his word that he tells us that he has serious respect for Tolkien, loves the stories, and does not wish to do them any harm.  At the same time, he is a film artist himself, feeling justified in bringing his own vision of the story to the screen. I cannot fault him for this, but I do question the evolution of his artistic judgement.  Tolkien's stories certainly could have fallen into worse hands, but I can't help wishing that Jackson had made a more mature film -- one which captured the deeper themes of Tolkien's visions and which presented Middle Earth in Tolkien's mysterious, enchanting light.  Jackson appears to have set his eyes less on faerie and more on making a Hollywood blockbuster.

The Lost Road and Other Writings / J.R.R. Tolkien -- New York: Ballantine Books, 1996

Following J.R.R. Tolkien's death, his son Christopher Tolkien began combing through Tolkien's papers to provide the world with posthumous works much in demand. Among the material the Christopher published is the twelve-volume series The History of Middle-earth. Volume Five The Lost Road and Other Writings is among the most important of the series. In it, we find versions of the stories that serve as the backdrop for The Hobbit and especially The Lord of the Rings. Furthermore, the versions in Volume Five were written just before the time of the writing of The Lord of the Rings. Consequently, they give us the clearest picture of Tolkien's legendarium as it bears on understanding The Lord of the Rings.

The first part of the work details the history of Numenor and its fall. Numenor was an island created for the race of men who fought with their half-kin the elves in the epic battle against Morgoth. Ultimately, the Numenoreans were seduced by Saron into waging war against the Valar, the gods who inhabited the forbidden Western land of Valinor. Upon the defeat of the Numenoreans, the island of Numenor was submerged into the ocean, with only a remnant of the race (loyal to the gods) escaping to Middle-earth. With the destruction of Numenor, the Valar reshaped the planet -- Arda -- such that it was now impossible for mortals to travel "the road" to the forbidden shores of Valinor, forever separating the men Middle-earth from alinor; hence, the story of "the lost road."

The Lost Road itself was an attempt by Tolkien to write a time travel story in which the travelers found their way back to Numenor through the vehicle of dreaming. The Lost Road was never completed, though Tolkien again attempted the story in a later work known as The Notion Club Papers. The Notion Club Papers can be found in Volume Nine of The History of Middle-earth -- Sauron Defeated.

Time travel as conceived in The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers bears an interesting relationship to the work that Tolkien was engaged in as a philologist. Reconstructing dead, prehistoric languages from the remnants of descendant historical languages and thereby recreating the prehistoric culture is at least as much an art as a science. It inevitably involves creativity and imagination which are most at liberty in our dreams. How much Tolkien saw his work as a philologist as traveling through time is an open question, but The Lost Road is strong evidence that this is how he conceived of it.

Part two of Volume Five reaches even further back in the history of Arda, providing a description of its creation, annals of the world before the fall of Morgoth, and a version of the Quenta Silmarillion which tells the history of elves from their origins to the fall of their arch enemy, Morgoth. It also includes a version of The Llammas, a treatise on the history of the languages of the people of Arda.

Much of the material in Volume Five appears in earlier published work by Tolkien, particularly The Silmarillion. After each section by Tolkien, Christorpher makes an heroic effort to describe how the present version differs from other versions, but the level of detail is too great for the casual reader to appreciate the distinctions. Setting the texts side by side and using Christopher's notes as a guide might yield valuable insight into the transformation of Tolkien's creation, but in the end, it would probably only be of interest to the most dedicated Tolkien scholar. Nonetheless, Tolkien's narative, given to us in The Lost Road and Other Writings will reward anyone who appreciates Tolkien's work.

The Lord of the Rings Sketchbook / Alan Lee -- Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2005

Peter Jackson's series of movies based on The Lord of the Rings was nominated for thirty Academy Awards, winning seventeen. All three movies were nominated for Best Art Direction and the third movie, "The Return of the King" won in this category. Much of the art in the movies was based on the drawings and and paintings of Alan Lee. Work on the movies was, however, not Lee's first effort to depict Middle-earth. By the time of the release of "The Fellowship of the Ring," Lee's vision of Middle-earth had become widely known among Tolkien fans. So by hiring him to work on the films, Peter Jackson ensured that a large portion of his audience would leave the theater thinking, "That's exactly how I pictured it." It was as if a film of Alice in Wonderland would have John Tenniel involved in its art direction.

The Lord of the Rings Sketchbook is a fine collection of work by Alan Lee which takes the reader through the story of The Lord of the Rings by presenting sketches of critical images, including characters, buildings, landscapes, locations, armour, props, and more. Accompanying the sketches are brief paragraphs in which Lee explains his art or elaborates on the subject that image depicts. Lee also provides a peak behind the scenes of the making of the movies.

The book does not have any great pretensions. It neither provides any deep insight into Tolkieana nor does it treat Lee's art as more than story board illustrations. It is nevertheless an enjoyable romp through Middle-earth and Peter Jackson's movies.

J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century / T.A. Shippey -- Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2001

A couple weeks ago, I read The Hobbit, again. This was the first time I had done so after reading Tom Shippey's masterful work, The Road to Middle Earth. (See my review in this blog -- Aug. 22, 2009.) Shippey's analysis of Biblo Baggins rang true when I read The Road, but upon reading The Hobbit, I found it spot on. Shippey argues that Bilbo Baggins functions to connect the modern reader to the mythical, magical world of Middle Earth. Bilbo is in essence a respectable 19th century bourgeois man swept away on an adventure among a wizard, dwarves, elves, and a dragon, among other strange creatures. Without Bilbo, the modern reader would find the Misty Mountains, Mirkwood, and the Lonely Mountain too alien to appreciate. It would be much like dropping into Wonderland without Alice to serve as the reader's anchor.

My appreciation for Shippey's analysis in The Road prompted me to another of his works, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, at least the section on The Hobbit. Sadly, Tolkien: Author covers very little that is not in The Road, but it was enjoyable enough that I continued beyond the chapter on The Hobbit and ended up reading the whole of the book. In retrospect, I wish I had read Shippey's two works in reverse order. Tolkien: Author provides a clearer and perhaps fuller analysis of the themes in Tolkien's main works, while The Road delves deep into the mythopoeic and philological roots of Middle Earth.

The themes Shippey explores in Tolkien: Author include Tolkien's maps, evil, eucatastrophy, allegory, and of course the way in which hobbits function to connect the reader to Middle Earth. Perhaps the most interesting insight is Shippey's application of Northrop Frye's distinctions among literary modes. Frye distinguishes five literary modes: myth, romance, high mimesis, low mimesis, and irony. Shippey identifies each mode in the Tolkien's work. This goes a long way in explaining the richness of the text and illustrating Tolkien's remarkable skill in integrating them all in a single story.

Tolkien's skill however was not born full-fledged with his first works. There is a stronge, even jarring, contrast between the irony and low mimesis of Bilbo Baggins and the romance and myth of the wood elves, Smaug the dragon, and Beorn the shape shifter in The Hobbit, while the various modes appearing in The Lord of the Rings are smoothly integrated. Notably, the lower literary modes are completely absent in Tolkien's Silmarillian works.

Shippey's chapter on Tolkien's followers and critics is among the most enjoyable chapters. Here we read criticism from the literati that so strikingly misunderstand what is at work in Tolkien's stories that it leaves you wondering if they had read anything written before the 18th century. Regarding Tolkien's followers, Shippey's account makes them all seem like dismal amateurs in comparison Tolkien's masterful understanding of the genre. Both assessments are probably close to the mark.

Forced to choose, I would recommend The Road to Middle Earth over Tolkien: Author of the Century. The former is perhaps the best work on Tolkien written. The latter is merely excellent.

The Road to Middle-Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology / Tom Shippey -- Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003.

Much has been written about the roots of the mythology created by Tolkien in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. Some of it is insightful -- some of it is superficial. Tom Shippey's work The Road to Middle-Earth lies on the far end of the insightful side of the spectrum. Shippey, was briefly a personal acquaintance of Tolkien. He is a medieval scholar in his own right, having held the Chair of English Language and Medieval Literature at Leeds University (formerly held by Tolkien himself) and the Walter J. Ong Chair of Humanities at St. Louis University in Missouri. His Road to Middle-Earth was first published in 1982, with a second edition in 1992, and a revised and expanded edition in 2003. The subsequent editions are informed by Tolkien's posthumous publications, particularly, the twelve volume set The History of Middle-Earth.

The most important theme in Shippey's work is how philology informed Tolkien's work. Clearly, Tolkien gave enormous attention to the words he chose in all he wrote. His work was deeply informed by his understanding of Old English, Old Norse, and other Northern European medieval languages. Shippey traces a huge number of connections between these languages and Tolkien's writing, and he provides valuable explanations of the significance of specific word choices and invented names to Tolkien's themes and ideas. Shippey's expert analysis reveals layer upon layer of meaning.

Shippey locates Tolkien's legendarium within the myths and legends of Northern Europe in the same way that a philologist might postulate unrecorded words in long dead languages. For example, based on specific observable rules for word relations between languages, the words for dwarves -- "dweorh" (Old English), "dvergr" (Old Norse), and "twerg" (High German) -- allow philologists to postulate "*dvairgs" in Gothic. They may do this despite the absence of any record of the word for dwarves in Gothic. In writing these inferred words, philologists normally precede them with an asterisk, e.g., *dvairgs, to distinguish it from a recorded word.

According to Shippey, philologist, including Tolkien, came to accept this methodology, and to infer -- not just words -- but the realities to which they were attached. He writes, "The whole of their science conditioned them to the acceptance of what one might call '*-' or 'asterisk-reality', that which no longer existed but could with 100 percent certainty be inferred." Furthermore, this methodology encouraged philologists to blur the distinction between historical discovery and creative construction.

Shippey indicates that Tolkien was particular prone to this. Applied to literature, Tolkien called this technique "Sub-Creation." The resulting story lies somewhere between historical reality and mere fiction. Sub-Creation has a depth of meaning and authenticity that reaches beyond the creative product of a single author relying on his or her individual imagination. Shippey's account does much to explain the sense that many Tolkien fans have that Middle-Earth exists on the same plane as the Garden of Eden, Gilgamesh's Cedars of Lebanon, and Asgard of the Aesir. It also explains what Tolkien meant when he wrote that he wanted to create a mythology for England. Middle-Earth is essentially the *Mythology of England.

Despite the strength of Shippey's analysis, one is sometimes left with the feeling that Shippey imputes more than was intended by Tolkien. As a medieval scholar well-equipped with the tools of philology, it would be easy for Shippey to interpret accidental elements in Tolkien's work as part of Tolkien's conscious Sub-Creation; however, even if this is true, it only indicates the extent to which Tolkien was living and breathing the combined mythologies that form the building blocks of Middle-Earth.

The Road to Middle-Earth is loaded with many more insights than I have described here. It is a tour de force of Tolkien scholarship and deserves to be read by every Tolkien fan.

Beowulf and the Critics / J.R.R. Tolkien -- Michael D.C. Drout, ed. -- Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002.

In 1936, J.R.R. Tolkien gave a lecture to the British Academy entitled, "Beowulf: Monsters and the Critics." It completely transformed scholarship related to Beowulf. The paper, published in the following year, was based on a longer work, "Beowulf and the Critics" that would not see publication for 66 years. The volume in which we receive it includes two versions of "Beowulf and the Critics," labeled "A" and "B" by the editor Michael Drout. According to Drout, comparing both versions to Tolkien's British Academy lecture allows us "a glimpse into the workings of a great mind engaged in a struggle with a complex problem." He also notes that the differences between the versions are too great "to redact some kind of 'best text.'" Be that as it may, I chose to read only the longer B version of the work and skip Drout's copious notes that make up half the volume. Much to my loss, I'm certain, but too many other books remain unread for me to spend the time that Drout's work deserves.

Tolkien's essay (or short book) takes to task the literary critics and historians who had to that time dominated Beowulf scholarship. Literary critics criticized the poem for its disorganization, disproportion, and adolescent focus on the monsters: Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the dragon. It was deemed to be a hodge-podge of pre-Christian folklore, with the most interesting parts mentioned, not in the main story line, but in passing and in narrative tangents. Furthermore, the integrity of the poem was seen to be compromised by the additions of Christian passages tacked on by an embarrassed Christian compiler. Historians merely neglected the poetic features of the work to focus on the clues it gave to life in the early Middle Ages in Northern Europe.

Tolkien found all of these critiques without merit. For Tolkien, the author of Beowulf was a poet of the caliber of Homer or Virgil. Beowulf provides us with one of the best literary celebrations of the Northern European medieval ethic. It is a clear expression of the Northern European hero, seeking glory in this world by vanquishing evil, with a commitment to doing so no matter the cost to himself. Critics saw the main story to be Beowulf's fight with Grendel. The fights with Grendel's mother and the dragon were merely redundant. Against this, Tolkien claims that the final contest with the dragon is an vital component of the story. Without it, the work would fail to fulfill its poetic purpose. It also serves as a necessary counter-weight to earlier struggles.

On Tolkien's view, the story begins with a young man risking all for fame and glory in a noble effort to free a beleaguered people from an devastating scourge -- Grendel. Doing so, he unexpectedly finds himself faced with the even greater task of defending his wards against an even greater terror -- Grendel's mother. That he does not flinch from his duty is an expression both of his desire for glory and his commitment to duty. The final struggle comes to Beowulf fifty years later when he is no longer the indomitable young hero of Hrothgar's hall. Nonetheless, he takes up sword and shield to face the dragon. His doom is evident, but for the hero of Northern lore, failure always eventually comes. What is important is how we behave in the face of it.

Tolkien also makes a strong case against reading the Christian passages as an alien addition to the poem. Instead, Tolkien concludes that the poem was written by a Christian during a time in which paganism was still a going concern in England and that the syncretism of pagan and Christian elements is a natural expression of the Christian author who has not yet discarded his sympathies for the pagan ethic.

Tolkien's reading of Beowulf is compelling, but what is more interesting is what this reading reveals about Tolkien. In many ways, Tolkien is describing himself when he writes of the author of Beowulf. Despite Tolkien's staunch commitment to Catholicism, he had great sympathy for the pre-Christian pagan ethic, and in all of his work, he found ways to coherently integrate both sensibilities into his work. It also is interesting to note that he would have to defend his own writing against critics in the same way that he defended the Beowulf author. He, too, would be attacked for an adolescent fascination with fantasy and monsters.

Besides Tolkien's case for the Beowulf author, "Beowulf and the Critics" is a rich vein of Tolkien's biting wit. His criticism of the critics is chocked full of laugh-out-loud put downs. Some of them probably unfair, but no less entertaining for that. Beowulf and the Critics is a fine work. Someday, I'll return to read the A version and Drout's copious notes and I'm sure it'll be equally worthwhile.

The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun / J.R.R. Tolkien -- Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.

A couple years ago, I read in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien that Tolkien had written poem that attempted "to unify the lays about the Volsungs from the Elder Edda," written in the Old Norse eight-line stanzaic metre. Having read William Morris's brilliant epic poem Sigurd the Volsung, I was delighted to think that Tolkien's poem might still exist, but pessimistic that it might ever see publication. Happily, Christopher Tolkien has found and edited the work and released it as The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun. Rather than a single poem, the work is composed of two poems.

The first recounts the life of Sigurd, the greatest hero of Norse legend, describing his slaying of the dragon Fafnir and his acquiring Andvari's gold. Later, his romance with the beautiful valkyrie Brynhild, his alliance with the Niflung, and his tragic end. The second recounts the life of Gudrun following Sigurd's death. Sigurd had been enchanted by Gudrun's mother, causing him to fall in love with Gudrun and breaking his vow to marry Brynhild. With the death of Sigrun and Brynhild, Gudrun lived in sorrow, watching her family destroyed, and finally cast herself into the sea to drown.

The death of Gudrun in Tolkien's version is different from most treatments of the story. For example, in the Magnusson-Morris translation, Gudrun is washed ashore and eventually marries for a third time, living in sorrow and weaving a tapestry depicting the life of Sigurd. Tolkien's version is, however, not unique. William Morris's later work also ends with her death by drowning.

Tolkien's poetry, faithful to the Old Norse metre, is beautifully archaic and stirring, but nonetheless clear and intelligible to the modern reader. The story's unity seems to owe much to William Morris's work. In his letters, Tolkien notes having read and been influenced by Morris's romances, though he does not mention Sigurd the Volsung. It is unlikely that he did not read it, though.

Much of Tolkien's posthumous work has been of interest only to his die-hard readers. Happily, this work and his previously published work The Children of Hurin are more accessible and in line with the works that have made him famous. For anyone who appreciated The Lord of the Rings, these recent publications will be an exciting adventure back into Middle Earth and the legends upon which it was conceived.

A good bit has been said about Tolkien's appropriation of names from the Eddas for The Lord of the Rings, particularly, Gandalf and Frodo; however, I have not read commentary that has drawn parallels between the life of Sigurd and Aragorn, Brynhild and Arwen, and Gudrun and Eowyn -- parallels that are of much greater interest.

In the Eddas, Sigurd falls in love with Brynhild the valkyrie. Before marrying her he sets off to earn her love and journeys to the house of the Niblungs. There, he leads them to greatness, but is enchanted by Gudrun's mother, causing him to fall in love with Gudrun. Similarly, in The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn falls in love with Arwen the elf, but before marrying her, heads off to join the House of Theoden (the Riders of Rohan), also leading them to greatness. Furthermore, just as the Niblungs defend themselves against the Budlungs in a bloody siege in Atli's hall, so too do the Riders of Rohan defend themselves against the forces of Sauruman at Helm's Deep. Finally, in a looser parallel, just as Atli, King of the Budlungs, is married to Gudrun of the Niblungs, so too is Grima Wormtongue (Sauruman's lieutenant) seeking to marry Eowyn, daughter of Theoden.

There are, of course, dissimilarities in the story. There is no enchantress in Rohan to cause Aragorn to fall in love with Eowyn as Sigurd fell in love with Gudrun, betraying Brynhild, but the attraction between Aragorn and Eowyn surely threatens to betray Arwen. The most significant dissimilarity lies in the victory of the Riders of Rohan at Helm's Deep. Where the Niblungs are defeated by the Budlungs, the Riders of Rohan are saved by what Tolkien describes in an essay as a "eucatastrophe." Just as the besieged Riders of Rohan are preparing to end their lives in a paradigmatically Norse fashion, with an honorable and glorious, but completely hopeless attack on the enemy, Gandalf arrives with a contingent of Riders to rescue the beseiged -- a "good castastrophe."

Clearly, Tolkien is indebted to the Lay of the Niblungs, but in his hands the story is transformed into one in which hope is triumphant, but while the valor characteristic of the ancient Norse remains undiminished.

The Children of Hurin / J.R.R. Tolkien -- London: Harper, 2007

It's hard for me to be objective about this book. I've been a Tolkien fan since 1970 and I've hardly read a word by him that I don't treasure. The Children of Hurin is nicely edited, presenting a very clear and gripping account of the life of Turin Turambar, son of Hurin. Hurin, captured by the Enemy Morgoth, was cursed along with his descendents, making Turin's life a tragedy. The story reveals a great deal about Tolkein's concept of fate in Middle Earth. Elements of the story are rooted in the Volsunga Saga particularly the death of the dragon Glaurung.