Tolkien Things That Talk

In many ways, Middle-earth, the secondary world created by J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973), is a medieval place. While he might be best known as the author of the popular fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s day job was Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford and he specialized in the study of medieval English language and literature. His academic interests clearly fueled his literary inspiration and the world in which his famous fiction is set has many parallels with the Middle Ages. These medieval influences range from language and poetic style (the language of the Rohirrim in The Lord of the Rings, for instance, is represented as Old English and their songs are rife with early medieval poetic techniques) to plot-elements (Bilbo stealing a cup from the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit has a direct analogue in the Old English poem Beowulf). Aside from language and texts, Tolkien also drew inspiration from ‘medieval things’ (material objects, archaeological finds and locations) to create his Middle-earth. The ‘Tolkien Things That Talk’ in this zone each discuss early medieval things that can be linked to Tolkien’s fiction, scholarly practice and/or the early medieval texts that inspired him, either directly or indirectly. In doing so, the objects discussed here also call attention to aspects of materiality in Tolkien’s medievalism.

The ‘Tolkien Things That Talk’ in this zone have their origins in the MA course “The Medieval in Middle-Earth: J. R. R. Tolkien and Old English Philology”, taught at Leiden University in 2021. This course’s main focus was on the relationship between Tolkien’s academic work in the field of Old English philology and his fantasy fiction. Students started out by reading about Tolkien’s views on philology in his valedictory lecture upon his retirement from the University of Oxford. Following that, they witnessed how Tolkien himself interacted with medieval texts through his scholarly publications on such Old English poems as Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon and Exodus, alongside the medieval originals. Following in the footsteps of Tom Shippey, Verlyn Flieger and Thomas Honegger (and others), the students next learned to approach Tolkien’s fiction ‘as philologists’ and through the lens of his early medieval sources. Reading Tolkien’s academic work provides students with a thorough grounding of Old English philology and gives them a set of tools with which to approach and appreciate the medieval roots of Middle-Earth. Given the increasing importance of science communication and outreach in modern-day academia, the students were also tasked with more public-focused writing, in the form of academic blogs. The selection of ‘Tolkien Things That Talk’ published in this zone not only demonstrate the students’ ability to speak to wider audiences, they also showcase how interesting it is when medieval objects and medieval(ist) literature are brought into conversation with one another.