Tolkien Through the Eyes of a Mediaevalist 1

THOMAS HONEGGER

Abstract2
The Lord of the Rings, ever since its publication, has been something of
a nuisance to traditional literary critics and has been maligned often and
with zest. The main reason for these strong – and often irrational –
reactions can be found primarily in the fact that The Lord of the Rings
does not fit into the literary mainstream and challenges standard critical
assumptions about what a work of twentieth-century fiction should be
like. The standard toolkit of the literary critic seems utterly inadequate.
Mediaevalists, in contrast, have often taken a more sympathetic view of
Tolkien’s work. My contribution will therefore present several
‘mediaeval’ approaches towards Tolkien, evaluate their critical value and
discuss their contribution towards a more adequate understanding of
Tolkien’s literary work.

INTRODUCTION

All roads lead to Rome, or so it is said. The roads to Middle-earth and to

Tolkien are not as numerous, but the last few decades of Tolkien criticism
have shown that there exists a wide variety of approaches towards
understanding Tolkien’s work. The ‘interpretatio mediaevalis’, i.e. the
explanation and exploration of Tolkien’s work with the help of mediaeval
studies, is one of them and, as I will argue, not the least one. It claims that a
working knowledge of the various mediaeval languages and familiarity with
mediaeval culture and literature is indispensable for the appreciation of
1
This text is an updated version of a paper that was originally published in 2005 in
Reconsidering Tolkien, edited by Thomas Honegger. Cormarë Series 8. Zurich and
Berne: Walking Tree Publishers, 45-66.
2
I would like to thank Allan Turner for his knowledgeable comments and helpful
suggestions.
2 Thomas Honegger

Tolkien’s work. The ideal mediaevalist would possess expertise in all the
different European national languages and cultures. These ‘ideal
mediaevalists’, however, are few and far between, while the ever-increasing
specialisation in academia has led to subdivisions and restrictions. Being
the product of the European academic system, I too suffer from these
limitations and I will therefore restrict myself to the Anglicist
mediaevalist’s point of view.
Michael Drout, in his study Beowulf and the Critics by J.R.R. Tolkien
(published 2002), propagates the ‘interpretatio mediaevalis’ (without
explicitly labelling his approach) and provides the following
characterisation:

The single best way to understand and appreciate

Tolkien’s fiction is to become literate in medieval lit-
erature. Optimally, one would learn Anglo-Saxon and
Old Norse and Latin and read the many works that T.A.
Shippey and others have shown to be the sources of
Tolkien’s world. (Drout 2002, xiii)

A truly ideal training programme for future Tolkien experts – and like so
many ideal things, it has hardly ever been attained in this world. Professor
Drout is, as one may have guessed, a mediaevalist of the Anglicist
persuasion and therefore biased in favour of the ‘interpretatio mediaevalis’.
Thus, before proceeding, I would like to present briefly some other
important approaches and see whether the ‘interpretatio mediaevalis’ is
indeed the ideal way to Tolkien’s work.

CRITICS

The literary works published during Tolkien’s lifetime (1892-1973), i.e.

The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Smith of Wootton Major, Farmer Giles
of Ham and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, are, with the possible
 Tolkien through the Eyes of a Mediaevalist 3

exception of The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beorhthelm’s Son,3 read,

understood and enjoyed by a large non-mediaevalist audience. Most people
seem to be happy without an ‘interpretatio mediaevalis’ – indeed, without
any interpretation at all, whether literary or otherwise.
Things are different with literary critics, i.e. those persons who deal
with literature professionally. With them the need for ‘explanation’ has
been great, all the more so since The Lord of the Rings in particular has
proven resistant to easy classification by means of the usual criteria and
critical categories. As a result, The Lord of the Rings has been the victim of
much (and often acerbic) critical abuse, which is more an expression of the
literary critics’ frustration and inability to come to terms with it than a sign
of any inherent flaws. It seemed for a long time that the literary toolkit was
simply not adequately equipped for dealing with such a work. Since the
1990s, however, critics such as Brian Rosebury (Tolkien: A Critical
Assessment, 1992; revised and re-published as Tolkien: A Cultural
Phenomenon, 2003) and Tom Shippey (J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the
Century, 2000) have successfully begun to explore the relationship of The
Lord of the Rings to the dominant literary modes of the first half of the 20th
century – notably that of modernism.4 Tolkien’s work, according to Shippey
and Rosebury, can be best understood, like modernism, as a reaction to the
prevailing cultural and economic situation. Such a re-evaluation of
Tolkien’s major literary work is, in my opinion, a promising approach and
will, hopefully, further the understanding of the peculiarities of The Lord of
the Rings so that it need no longer remain an erratic in the literary landscape

3
Beorhtnoth does not seem to fit in very well with the other titles. After all, it was
originally published not as a literary work, but in Essays and Studies (1953). It appeared
as ‘literature’ in Tolkien’s lifetime only in the American The Tolkien Reader (1966).
Yet in the original article Tolkien refers to it as ‘poem’ and in 1954 a radio production
of Beorhtnoth was performed on the BBC Third Programme.
4
See also the essays in the two volumes of Tolkien and Modernity 1 & 2 (edited by
Thomas Honegger and Frank Weinreich, 2006), Margaret Hiley’s study The Loss and
the Silence (2011), and the volume Tolkien among the Moderns, edited by Ralph Wood
(2015).
4 Thomas Honegger

of the 20th century.

It is not only the extraordinary literary characteristics of The Lord of
the Rings that have attracted the attention of the critics. Since the mid-60s at
the latest, we have had the situation that predominantly literary critical
disdain has gone hand in hand with overwhelming (popular) public acclaim,
which has found expression in numerous Tolkien societies and fan clubs.5
Confronted with the ‘Tolkien phenomenon’, both critics and admirers have
been looking for explanations and, maybe correctly, have begun to turn
towards the author himself in search for answers.

TOLKIEN THE MAN

The unexpected success of The Lord of the Rings generated a lasting

interest in the ‘man behind Middle-earth’ – not least since most of the
mythological framework, of which the narrative gave only tantalising
glimpses, remained for a long time inaccessible to the audience, so that
Tolkien was the only person who could grant access to the wider realms of
Arda. Although Tolkien proved to be a conscientious correspondent (see the
selection of letters edited by Humphrey Carpenter with the assistance of
Christopher Tolkien, which appeared in 1981 as The Letters of J.R.R.
Tolkien), the great majority of readers had to wait till Christopher Tolkien
published The Silmarillion in 1977 and thus provided the necessary
‘mythological’ background to The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien himself took a critical stance towards the contemporary
tendency to focus on the author and to neglect the work itself. He wrote in
one of his letters: “[...] I object to the contemporary trend in criticism, with
its excessive interest in the details of the lives of authors and artists. They
only distract attention from an author’s works [...]” (Carpenter 2000, 288).

5
For a comprehensive overview on Tolkien’s academic work, see Patrick Curry’s chapter
‘The Critical Response to Tolkien’s Fiction’ in Stuart D. Lee’s A Companion to J.R.R.
Tolkien (2014).
 Tolkien through the Eyes of a Mediaevalist 5

Consequently, he did not condone the publication of an authorised

biography during his lifetime. One of the first biographies on Tolkien,
Daniel Grotta-Kurska’s Architect of Middle-earth, appeared in 1976, and
one year later the ‘official’ biography by Humphrey Carpenter (J.R.R.
Tolkien: A Biography) was published. Carpenter had the support of the
Tolkien family and was given access to Tolkien’s papers and writings. His
biography is the most comprehensive study of Tolkien’s life and provides
fascinating insights into the author’s creative processes. Today, almost half
a century later, it still remains the unsurpassed and often mined standard
biography, though of course the publication of a selection of Tolkien’s
letters (1981), of the twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth (1983-
1996), and a number of other works such as The Legend of Sigurd and
Gudrún (2009), The Fall of Arthur (2013), A Secret Vice (2016) etc. has
given access to new material that would have to be assessed and
incorporated in a revised edition.6
Soon after the publication of the authorised biography, various
groups began to make use of and to modify the information provided by
Carpenter for their interpretations of Tolkien’s work. Humphrey Carpenter,
being the son of Harry James Carpenter (Warden of Keble from 1955
onwards and Bishop of Oxford till 1970), did take some pains to present
Tolkien’s Catholicism from a neutral point of view without denying the
central role of Tolkien’s religious faith. During the 1990s, a Catholic
‘reconquista’ of Tolkien began, which has found its climax so far in Joseph
Pearce’s publications Tolkien: Man and Myth. A literary life (1998) and
Tolkien: A Celebration. Collected writings on a literary legacy (1999).
Tolkien’s work, according to the more or less explicit argument of the

6
Raymond Edwards’ Tolkien (2014) could be seen as an ‘updated’ version of Carpenter’s
biography (1977), since Edwards includes Tolkien’s numerous posthumous
publications. Furthermore, Tolkien’s experiences before and during World War I and
their influence on his literary work have been researched by John Garth, whose Tolkien
and the Great War (2003) is among the best publications on Tolkien in the new
millennium.
6 Thomas Honegger

‘Catholic’ critics, can only be fully and properly understood by fellow

7
Catholics – or by people who are intimately familiar with Catholicism. The
very qualities and characteristics that make Tolkien’s work, on the one
hand, unique and, on the other, hard to fathom for most literary critics, have
their roots in his Catholic faith.
The overwhelming popular success of Peter Jackson’s film has
brought Tolkien once more and with special emphasis to the attention of
American (predominantly non-Catholic) Christians – with the result that the
market is being flooded with books of very mixed quality that explore the
‘spiritual’ dimension of The Lord of the Rings. These studies typically
stress the general Christian elements of Tolkien’s work and tune down his
specifically Catholic traits. Two examples may be mentioned. The first is a
book by Mark Eddy Smith with the title Tolkien’s Ordinary Virtues.
Exploring the Spiritual Themes of The Lord of the Rings. It provides a
‘pious’ reading of The Lord of the Rings in thirty chapters. Each chapter
focuses on a religious topic (humility, providence, sin, etc.), opening with a
passage from The Lord of the Rings and concluding with some moral
advice. The collection of essays edited by John G. West Jr. (Celebrating
Middle-earth. The Lord of the Rings as a Defense of Western Civilisation.)
offers better quality, though the individual contributions also concentrate on
topics relevant to religion such as ‘the Evil in Tolkien’ etc. Almost all
contributors are academics and the quality of the articles is accordingly
higher than that of the book by Mark Eddy Smith, whose main qualification
seems to be, according to the blurb, to have read The Lord of the Rings
more than a dozen times.
Furthermore, with the posthumous publication of more and more of
Tolkien’s academic works, starting with the scholarly study Finn and
Hengest (1982, edited by Alan Bliss), followed by a selection of his
scholarly essays under the title The Monsters and the Critics and Other

7
The probably best introduction to the Catholic background of Tolkien’s work is
Stratford Caldecott’s The Power of the Ring (2012).
 Tolkien through the Eyes of a Mediaevalist 7

Essays (1983, edited by Christopher Tolkien), we notice an increasing

8
interest in Tolkien the academic. This led to the publication of several
more of his academic works, such as Tolkien On Fairy-stories (2008, edited
by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas Anderson), Beowulf. A Translation and
Commentary together with Sellic Spell (2014, edited by Christopher
Tolkien), or A Secret Vice (2016, edited by Dimitra Fimi and Andrew
Higgins). Most recently, John M. Bowers investigated Tolkien’s work on
Chaucer in his Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer (2019).9
Our next and for us most prominent interpretative approach to
Tolkien, the ‘interpretatio mediaevalis’, must be seen parallel to and in
connection with both the aforementioned ‘interpretationes academicae et
catholicae vel Christianae’.

TOLKIEN THE MEDIAEVALIST

AND THE ‘INTERPRETATIO MEDIAEVALIS’

Tolkien achieved lasting and world-wide fame as the author of The Lord of
the Rings, but this came relatively late in life – he was, at the time of
publication in 1954-55, already 62 years old and ‘Tolkienmania’ began only
another ten years later with the (unauthorised) publication of the ACE
Books paperback edition in the United States. Tolkien saw himself
primarily as a philologist, a mediaevalist and a man of letters with a
somewhat peculiar hobby, rather than an author in the usual sense of the
word. After doing some work for the Oxford English Dictionary (1919-20),
he embarked on a distinguished academic career. He was first Reader in
English Language (1920-24) and then Professor of English Language
(1924-25) at the University of Leeds, later Rawlinson and Bosworth

8
Needless to say that Tom Shippey’s unsurpassed The Road to Middle-earth (1982) as
well as Humphrey Carpenter’s J.R.R. Tolkien. A Biography (1977) have also
contributed significantly to a deeper understanding of Tolkien’s scholarly persona.
9
For a comprehensive overview on Tolkien’s academic work, see my chapter ‘Academic
Writings’ in Stuart D. Lee’s A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien (2014).
8 Thomas Honegger

Professor of Anglo-Saxon (1925-45) and Merton Professor of English

Language and Literature (1945-59) at the University of Oxford. His
academic work determined the way he saw himself personally and pro-
fessionally. Tolkien stressed repeatedly the importance of his ‘professional’
study of mediaeval languages and literatures for his literary works; they
provided the indispensable ‘soil’ into which his ‘tree of tales’ would sink its
roots and find nourishment. The dependence on and connection with
mediaeval literature is most clearly seen in those works that imitate
mediaeval models, e.g. his poems in Songs for Philologists, or in works that
resume mediaeval themes, such as his radio-play The Homecoming of
Beorhtnoth, which is a continuation of and, at the same time, a commentary
on the Old English heroic poem The Battle of Maldon. Individual motifs
that derive from or are shared with mediaeval literature are abundant in
most of Tolkien’s other literary works. The theft of the cup from the
dragon-hoard and its disastrous consequences in The Hobbit, for example,
are a conscious echo of a similar passage in the Old English heroic poem
Beowulf. Such parallels are easily discernible even for non-mediaevalist
readers, provided they have read the relevant mediaeval poems in
translation.

The discovery of the mediaeval sources, parallels or analogues is more

difficult if and because, as so often, Tolkien adapted them skilfully or if the
influence they exerted is only indirect. A merely superficial knowledge of
mediaeval English (and I may add, Norse) languages and literatures is, in
such cases, no longer sufficient. The hour of the expert has come.
It was in 1979, two years after the publication of The Silmarillion and
Carpenter’s Tolkien-biography, that Jane Chance, formerly Professor at
Rice University Texas, now Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor
Emerita in English, published her study Tolkien’s Art: A Mythology for
England (revised edition 2001, University Press of Kentucky). It was, next
to Carpenter’s biography, one of the first serious in-depth academic studies
in which a scholar attempted to illustrate the indebtedness of Tolkien’s
 Tolkien through the Eyes of a Mediaevalist 9

literary works to the vernacular literature of mediaeval England. Tolkien’s

Art suffers, in my opinion, from interpretative weaknesses, numerous
factual mistakes and minor misconceptions (e.g. Sauron is called “a fallen
Vala” (Chance 2001, 151) and also Gandalf is “most likely a Vala” (Chance
10
2001, 147); Beowulf, after ruling the Geatas for 50 years, is still “a man of
fifty” (Chance 2001, 117) and Galadriel gives Sam “seeds of elanor”
(Chance 2001, 158), “Frodo is Bilbo’s nephew and heir” (Chance 2001,
151)11 as well as some truly ‘Freudian’ misprints such as “Gimli is Groin’s
[son/heir]” (Chance 2001, 151).12 This tradition of misremembering names
and plot-elements is continued in Chance’s most recent book, Tolkien, Self
and Other (2016). There, in the discussion of the Old English poem The
Battle of Maldon, the wrong guy gets beheaded (Chance 2016, 220
repeatedly confuses Beorhthelm/Byrhthelm with Beorhtnoth/Byrhtnoth), or
things get a bit mixed up in the dark bedroom in Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale
(Chance 2016, 148) and the miller’s wife gets ‘swived’ by one student too
many. These rather glaring mistakes occur next to a host of smaller
mistakes, such as the invention of a town named Buckville in the Shire
(Chance 2016, 159), or a river called Brandybuck River (Chance 2016,
170), or the claim that Aragorn had no son (Chance 2016, 113), etc.
I am not going to bore my readers with any further enumerations of
‘obvious’ factual mistakes, but in order to underpin my criticism I would
like to discuss briefly one example that illustrates the importance of
specialised ‘mediaevalist’ knowledge in order to avoid interpretative
pitfalls. It is, of course, ironic that this interpretative mistake occurs in
Chance’s Tolkien’s Art, a study by a mediaevalist, and it has not been

10
Both Sauron and Gandalf belong to the category of the Maiar, not the Valar.
11
Frodo and Bilbo are cousins, and not nephew and uncle! See Honegger 2020 for an in-
depth discussion of this problem.
12
Gimli’s father is Gloin, whereas Groin is Gimli’s grandfather – so technically speaking
Gimli could be called ‘Groin’s heir’, but it strikes me as odd that Groin and not Gloin is
mentioned.
10 Thomas Honegger

corrected for the new edition of 2001 – which gives me all the more reason
to do so now and, as I hope, save the honour of the mediaevalists. Chance,
in her discussion of Leaf by Niggle, calls Niggle and Parish “the angel and
the beast” (Chance 2001, 85). Such a crude and mistaken reduction of the
two characters is hardly worth comment, not least since Tom Shippey
(2003, 43) has proposed a convincing interpretation of Niggle and Parish as
the creative and the practical side of Tolkien respectively. Chance goes on
to interpret the voices overheard by Niggle in the darkness of the
workhouse as different aspects of God (Chance 2001, 97), i.e. the Old
Testament (vengeful) God versus the New Testament (forgiving) Christ.
Such an interpretation is not as obviously wrong as the one mentioned
before and may seem sound to the average reader. It is a well-known
literary technique to depict inner debates by means of personifying the
different ideas and attitudes. However, mediaeval theology (and probably
modern Catholic theology, too) and mediaeval literature would feel very
uneasy with multiple ‘split’ divine personalities. The Christian God
constitutes the trinity of God Father, God Son, and Holy Ghost, yet this
must not be taken as permission to see them as three independent
consciousnesses. The German translation of ‘Trinity’, i.e. ‘Dreieinigkeit’
(‘Three-in-one-ness’), expresses this idea much more clearly. God Father
does not debate with God Son or the Holy Ghost – they share one common
unified consciousness. These theological objections would not have arisen
with the interpretation of the voices as the ‘Daughters of God’ debating in
front of God Himself. The motif of the ‘Four Daughters of God’ (Justicia,
Misericordia, Veritas, and Pax) is well-known in mediaeval literature and,
in my opinion, the most likely source of inspiration for Tolkien’s ‘voices’.
These ‘Daughters of God’ act respectively as prosecutor and advocate for
13
the human soul in front of God’s seat of judgment. It is typically Justitia

13
See the debate between Justitia (‘Rytwysnes’) and Misericordia (‘Mercy’) in the Middle
English play The Castle of Perseverance (manuscript c. 1440). The relevant passages
are to be found in scene XXII (Eccles 95-98).
 Tolkien through the Eyes of a Mediaevalist 11

and Misericordia who come to blows; the one advocates the severe
punishment of the human soul for its sins, the other pleads forgiveness and
pity. Such a scenario fully and satisfactorily explains the situation as
depicted in Leaf by Niggle and does not have to rely on the rather heterodox
idea of multiple divine personalities.
Not long after Chance’s study pioneering but flawed Tolkien’s Art
(1979), we have the publication of Professor Tom Shippey’s masterful The
Road to Middle-earth (1st edition 1982, 2nd edition 1992, 3rd edition 2003),
which is not only an excellent example of the ‘interpretatio mediaevalis’ but
also one of the best Tolkien studies in general. It is not by chance that the
title of his monograph alludes to John Livingston Lowe’s study on the
sources of Coleridge’s inspirations for his poem Kubla Khan (The Road to
Xanadu, published 1927). Shippey, in the tradition of Lowe, shows with
great eloquence and erudition how the philological-mediaeval tradition
functioned as the well-spring for Tolkien’s inspiration on all levels, ranging
from minute details to literary motifs or large-scale structural models.
Shippey’s study brought home the importance of the ‘interpretatio
mediaevalis’ with great force and established the strong position of the
mediaeval approach within the field of Tolkien studies. Unfortunately, it
seems that Shippey’s erudition and excellence have left little of importance
to discover in this field. Yet even if we cannot expect new insights of
similar importance, there remains plenty to do within the established areas
and two ‘new generations’ of mediaevalists have been busy emulating
Shippey and ‘gleaning’ the fields he had reaped for the first time almost
four decades ago. Lastly, the archives may still hold in stock some
interesting material, as the recent publications of Tolkien’s Beowulf
translation and John Bower’s study on Tolkien’s work on Chaucer have
shown.
12 Thomas Honegger

LEVELS OF THE ‘INTERPRETATIO MEDIAEVALIS’

In the following I will present some of the most popular mediaeval

approaches and discuss their usefulness.

On the ‘lowest’ level we find individual parallels to and borrowings from

mediaeval literatures and languages. It is thanks to mediaevalists that we
know that the dwarves (and Gandalf) in The Hobbit are named after the
dwarfs in the ‘Dvergatal’ in the Edda, or that the ‘Golden Hall’ of the
Rohirrim, Meduseld, derives its name from the Old English term for ‘mead-
hall’, ‘meduseld’ (to be found in Beowulf l. 3065). Furthermore, a
mediaevalist will immediately realise that a person called Gríma, son of
Gálmód, must be a rather suspicious character since ‘grîma’ (sb. m.) means
14
in Old English ‘mask, helmet, ghost’, and ‘gâlmoth’ (adj.) as much as
‘wanton, licentious’. Examples on this ‘literal’ level could be multiplied
almost endlessly and are especially prominent among names of persons and
places. The functions of these ‘mediaeval’ names are, on the one hand, to
provide a link to the mediaeval legends and myths and to give to the
‘educated reader’ a sense of déjà vu. On the other hand, they hint at the
moral disposition of a protagonist or at his or her character according to the
principle ‘nomen est omen’.
Another level is reached with motifs that have been taken over and
adapted from mediaeval literature. Thus, the way Aragorn and his
companions gain access to Théoden only gradually is modelled upon the
depiction of Beowulf’s arrival in Denmark and his reception at Hrothgar’s
court. Tolkien could alternatively have invented a ‘court etiquette’ of his
own or looked for inspiration in another culture or era. The Rohirrim are, by
and large, Anglo-Saxons in temperament and culture. Yet Tolkien took
some liberties and adapted the historical model to his purposes, as the

14
Gríma corresponds, on the one hand, to the provocative counsellor Unferth in Beowulf.
See Rateliff (1988) for a discussion of Gríma and his mediaeval sources and analogues.
 Tolkien through the Eyes of a Mediaevalist 13

prominence of horses and cavalry shows.15 The advantages of adapting a

(most likely) historical interaction pattern lie in the feeling of authenticity it
evokes and in the (inter-)textual allusions it creates. In the following, I will
take a closer look at how Tolkien brought into being an intricate web of
(inter-)textual allusion, namely by means of adapting the Germanic ritual of
‘wassailing’ or drinking to someone’s health.16 The ritual of ‘presenting the
cup to the lord or king’ is known as part of the feast depicted in Beowulf (ll.
612-631). The mistress of the house, in this instance Wealhtheow, the
queen-consort of Hrothgar, offers a cup of wine first to the king and then to
the other members of the court and Beowulf. It is a ritual designed to
represent and to affirm the hierarchical structure of the court while
strengthening the cohesion between its members and shows the queen as an
independently acting person. The parallels between this Germanic ritual and
the drinking ritual in the chapter ‘The King of the Golden Hall’ are obvious:

The king rose, and at once Éowyn came forward bearing

wine. ‘Ferthu Théoden hál!’ she said. ‘Receive now this
cup and drink in happy hour. Health be with thee at thy
going and coming!’ Theoden drank from the cup, and
she then proffered it to the guests. As she stood before
Aragorn she paused suddenly and looked upon him, and
her eyes were shining. And he looked down upon her
fair face and smiled; but as he took the cup, his hand met
hers, and he knew that she trembled at the touch. ‘Hail
Aragorn son of Arathorn!’ she said. ‘Hail Lady of
Rohan!’ he answered, but his face now was troubled and
he did not smile. (LotR 545)

15
The historical Anglo-Saxons knew and valued horses, of course, but they dismounted
before battle and fought on foot. See the paragraph ‘The horse in Anglo-Saxon warfare’
in Harrison (1993, 12). For an in-depth discussion of the relationship between the
historical Anglo-Saxons and Tolkien’s Rohirrim, see the independently conceived and
simultaneously published studies by Drout (2011) and Honegger (2011).
16
See Honegger (1999) for an in-depth discussion of this motif.
14 Thomas Honegger

Tolkien obviously wrote this passage with the older model from Beowulf in
mind. There, it is not a young maiden that serves the wine (or in this case
mead), but Wealhtheow, king Hrothgar’s wife, mother of three children,
and queen of the Danes – a rather matronly figure.17 She dispenses not only
refreshments and gold, but also words of wisdom and advice (cf. lines
1159-91). Unfortunately, the passage from Beowulf which shows closest
parallels to Tolkien’s account tells us only about her offering a cup to
Hrothgar and the other guests but does not give the actual words that must
have accompanied the gesture. However, it is very probable that they would
have been something like ‘Wæs thu hal, ...’. The queen – or noble lady – as
the dispenser of drink is probably the original model for Tolkien’s depiction
of Éowyn, who also addresses first the king (Théoden, her uncle), and then
his guests. Not much potential for development in this context.

It is the figure of Rowena, however shadowy she appears, that provides a

submerged link to the tradition of young women used by a relative (in her
case Hengest, her father) to seduce and manipulate an older, powerful man
(i.e. Vortigern). Rowena appears in mediaeval accounts of the conquest and
18
settling of Britain by the Anglo-Saxon tribes. She is the daughter of
Hengest, one of the leaders of the Germanic tribes that began to pour into
Britain after the withdrawal of the last Roman legions in 410. Hengest and
his men are first, as mercenaries, in the service of Vortigern, a British leader
in the south of England. Hengest plots to take over the power and uses his
beautiful young daughter Rowena to extend his influence over Vortigern.
He has her dressed in rich clothes and presents her to Vortigern at a feast
where she kneels down and offers him a cup of wine with the words – and
here I follow Layamon (l. 7141): “Lauerd king wæs hæil. For thine kime

17
On Wealhtheow in general, see also the in-depth study by Damico (1984).
18
See Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regnum Britanniae (Latin, c. 1138) and the
vernacular versions/adaptations of Geoffrey’s chronic by Wace (Brut, Anglo-Norman,
c. 1155) and Layamon (Brut, Middle English, c. 1190-1215). Aurner, in her study of
Hengest, offers a comprehensive overview of the various ‘Wassail’-episodes.
 Tolkien through the Eyes of a Mediaevalist 15

ich æm uæin.”19 Of course, these words were originally not spoken in

Middle English but in proto-Old English, the language of the Germanic
invaders of the 5th century. Vortigern, a Celtic-speaking Briton, does not
understand proto-Old English and has it translated by one of his warriors.
This interpreter, according to Layamon, not only translates Rowena’s words
but also provides an explanatory commentary on her gestures and the
meaning of her greeting. It is customary with the Saxons and other
Germanic tribes to drink to a friend’s health by saying ‘leofue freond wæs
hail’,20 to down the wine, refill the cup and offer it to the friend, who then
21
answers ‘thrinc hail’ and empties the cup. The ritual concludes with the
two kissing three times. Vortigern is delighted with the prospect of kissing
Rowena, so they go through the ‘wassailing’22 ritual. As a consequence of
this first encounter, Vortigern falls in love with Rowena, marries her, and
Hengest as his father-in-law becomes the leading power behind the throne.
Mediaeval chroniclers present the episode at length because it explains the
(infamous) English drinking custom of ‘wassailing’.
Rowena is not the only young woman used by a relative to
manipulate a king. Salome is the most prominent example of this tradition,
maybe because of her claim to fame as the alleged inventor of the art of
striptease. Rowena, however, succeeds without such strenuous exercise, and
Éowyn is even further removed from consciously using her charms. Yet the
‘Beowulfian’ mode which has so far dominated the passage in Tolkien
undergoes a slight but significant change. When Éowyn addresses Aragorn
with ‘Hail Aragorn son of Arathorn!’, which could be interpreted as a
shortened rendering of the Old English ‘Wæs þu hal, Aragorn Arathornes
sunu!’, it is no longer solely as the female head of the royal household, but

19
Translation: ‘Lord king, may you be of good health! I am glad about your coming.’
20
Translation: ‘Dear friend, to your health!’
21
Translation: ‘[I] drink to your health.’
22
‘Wassail’ is a contraction of ‘wæs hæil’.
16 Thomas Honegger

also as a young, attractive maiden – as Aragorn has noticed a short while

23
before (LotR 537). What is more, she is obviously falling in love with him.
Thus, we have a ‘Rowena’ element coming in at this moment. The asexual
‘Beowulfian’ world in Lord of the Rings suffers the intrusion of an ever so
slight element of eroticism. No swapping of cups, no lascivious kissing for
Éowyn and Aragorn, though.24 The only bodily contact that takes place is
the (accidental?) touching of their hands which was preceded by the silent
message of her shining eyes and Aragorn’s innocuous answering smile,
which he abandons as soon as he notices Éowyn’s emotional state by the
touch of their hands. He has become aware that this ‘wassailing’ is no
longer of ‘Beowulfian’ nature, although Éowyn is certainly no Rowena-like
seductress, and the drinking ritual is, to many 20th-century readers,
reminiscent rather of the eucharist than of the sensuous ‘wassailing’
custom.
The importance of the incident lies in the fact that the Rowena-
Vortigern story serves as a hidden contrast to the passage in Tolkien. By
implicit comparison, Tolkien provides the model of a morally and ethically
responsible leader. Aragorn, unlike Vortigern, has no problems resisting the
sensuous temptation, which is not very prominent in Tolkien’s account
anyway. The real problem for Aragorn is how to reject Éowyn’s advances
as tactfully and humanly as possible25 – because a rejection is what is called
for. Thus, the emotion that poses the greatest danger to Aragorn is not lust,

23
The encounter between Aragorn and Éowyn had originally been designed to initiate a
love-story that would end with the marriage of the two, as becomes evident from
Tolkien’s notes and early drafts (cf. Tolkien 1989, 448).
24
Note, however, that the ‘stirrup cup’ on the occasion of Aragorn’s departure for the Path
of the Dead is a shared one (LotR 816) and he kisses her hand upon leaving (LotR 817).
25
Gawain, the eponymous hero of the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight, which was well known to Tolkien, faces a similar problem, as Burnley (1995,
30) points out: “The expressed problem ([lines] 1770-75) which faces Gawain is how to
reject the lady’s advances whilst offering no insult, retaining her esteem, and preserving
his faith to her husband.”
 Tolkien through the Eyes of a Mediaevalist 17

but pity. If he were to accept Éowyn’s offer of devotion and love, he would
do so out of pity.

We now turn from those instances where the mediaeval heritage has been
easy to discern and take a closer look at a less obvious ‘mediaeval’
influence, i.e. the problem of the perception of time in Middle-earth.

Sam, and with him the reader, is asking himself after the sojourn in Lórien
why the waxing moon suggests that they spent only a few days there. He
finally shares his bafflement with his companions:

‘It’s very strange,’ he murmured. ‘The Moon’s the same

in the Shire and in Wilderland, or it ought to be. But
either it’s out of its running, or I’m all wrong in my
reckoning. You’ll remember, Mr. Frodo, the Moon was
waning as we lay on the flet up in that tree: a week from
the full, I reckon. And we’d been a week on the way last
night, when up pops a New Moon as thin as a nail-
paring, as if we had never stayed no time in the Elvish
country. Well, I can remember three nights there for
certain, and I seem to remember several more, but I
would take my oath it was never a whole month.
Anyone would think that time did not count in there!’
(LotR 408)

Legolas then tries to explain this phenomenon:

‘Nay, time does not tarry ever,’ he said; ‘but change and
growth is not in all things and places alike. For the Elves
the world moves, and it moves both very swift and very
slow. Swift, because they themselves change little, and
all else fleets by: it is a grief to them. Slow, because they
do not count the running years, not for themselves. The
passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated in the long
long stream. Yet beneath the Sun all things must wear to
an end at last.’ […] ’ (LotR 408-409)
18 Thomas Honegger

And Aragorn concludes:

‘But so it is, Sam: in that land you lost your count. There
time flowed swiftly by us, as for the Elves. […].’
(LotR 409)

The differing perception of time by the different species is the starting point
for Verlyn Flieger’s fascinating study A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien’s
Road to Faërie (1997). Flieger investigates in detail the theoretical concepts
on which Tolkien bases the perception of time and space in Middle-earth
and illustrates his indebtedness to contemporary scientific theories and
ideas. The most significant book on this topic is obviously J.W. Dunne’s An
Experiment with Time (first edition 1927; revised and enlarged third edition
1934). Tolkien, like C.S. Lewis, owned a copy of the third edition, and
Dunne’s ideas must have been discussed among the Inklings (Flieger 47).
An Experiment with Time influenced other contemporary authors, too. Thus
the playwright John Balderstone has one of his protagonists summarise
Dunne’s ideas on time and space in his play Berkeley Square (1929) as
follows (quoted in Flieger 1997, 57):

Suppose you are in a boat, sailing down a winding

stream. You watch the banks as they pass you. You went
by a grove of maple trees upstream. But you can’t see
them now, so you saw them in the past, didn’t you?
You’re watching a field of clover now; it’s before your
eyes at this moment, in the present. But you don’t know
what’s around the bend in the stream there ahead of you;
there may be wonderful things, but you can’t see them
until you get around the bend in the future, can you?
Now remember, you’re in a boat. But I’m looking up in
the sky above you, in a plane. I’m looking down on it
all. I can see all at once the trees you saw upstream, the
field of clover that you see now, and what’s waiting for
you around the bend ahead! All at once! So the past,
present, and future of the man in the boat are all one to
 Tolkien through the Eyes of a Mediaevalist 19

the man in the plane. Doesn’t that show how all Time
must really be one? Real Time with a capital T is
nothing but an idea in the mind of God.

Balderstone has succeeded in rendering Dunne’s scientific jargon into

easily comprehensible language. He uses, instead of talking about
‘Observer 1’, ‘Observer 2’ or ‘ultimate observer’ etc., everyday imagery
and prefers to talk about a man in a boat (corresponding to Dunne’s
‘Observer 1’) and a man in a plane (corresponding to Dunne’s ‘ultimate
observer’). This way he manages to communicate Dunne’s concept of
‘qualified’ perception of time in a clear and convincing manner. Similar
differences in the perception of time seem to apply to the different races of
Middle-earth, as Legolas’ remarks suggest. Verlyn Flieger discusses the
ramifications of this question at length in her book, though they are of no
further relevance for our topic.
The question of how divine beings and Eru/Illúvatar Himself
perceive time, however, is highly relevant – and, interestingly, not dealt
with by Flieger. The chapter ‘The Music of the Ainur’ in The Silmarillion
describes how the creation of the cosmos and the world is outlined in broad
terms by the music of the Ainur. Those Ainur who decided to participate
actively in the creation of Arda, i.e. the Valar, have agreed to remain within
the boundaries of this world and to subject themselves to a life in time, even
if they do not age or decay. They also possess, due to their participation in
the Music of Creation, a knowledge of things and events to come – which
is, however, not complete. They are, to use Dunne’s terminology,
‘observers of a higher order’. Eru/Illúvatar, then, could be seen as the
‘ultimate observer’. Only he knows about the fate of the Children of
Illúvatar, i.e. the Elves and Men, and even if the Music of Creation has to
unfold ‘in time’, He alone perceives it all at once and in its entirety.

What, then, has this to do with the ‘interpretatio mediaevalis’? Nothing – at

least at first sight. Flieger has been able to explain satisfactorily the
phenomenon of the differing perceptions of time by researching the theories
20 Thomas Honegger

concerning time and space prevalent in the first three decades of the 20th
century and by placing Tolkien’s concept in the context of the
contemporary discussion. If a mediaevalist had taken on the same task,
however, then a different explanation would have been offered. A
mediaevalist would rely rather on Boethius than Dunne or Balderstone.
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 470-524) was a politician and
philosopher who fell from grace at the court of the Ostrogoth king
Theoderic, was imprisoned and later executed. During his time on ‘death
row’ he composed the De Consolatione Philosophiae, a philosophical
dialogue between the first-person narrator and Lady Philosophy. Boethius’
work was later translated into Old English by King Alfred the Great, into
Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer, and into early Modern English by
Queen Elizabeth I, and its influence on mediaeval thinking cannot be
overestimated. One of the central problems discussed in the dialogues is the
question of human free will versus divine providence.26 How is it possible
for a human being to choose freely if there exists an omniscient and all-
powerful God who knows the outcome of every action in advance? The
answer given by Lady Philosophy is as follows:

[...] since the state of God is ever that of eternal

presence, His knowledge, too, transcends all temporal
changes and abides in the immediacy of His presence. It
embraces all the infinite recesses of past and future and
views them in the immediacy of its knowing as though
they are happening in the present. [...] For it [i.e. God’s
knowledge] is far removed from matters below and
looks forth at all things as though from a lofty peak
above them. (Book V, §6, Watts 1999, 134)

Lady Philosophy is not, as yet, familiar with aeroplanes, but her “and looks
forth at all things as though from a lofty peak above them” expresses the

26
See especially Book V, §3-6.
 Tolkien through the Eyes of a Mediaevalist 21

same idea. Tolkien’s conception of time and space was certainly influenced
by Dunne’s theory. Yet Dunne in turn (unwittingly?) uses concepts that go
back to late antiquity and presents them in modern ‘scientific’ terminology
(‘ultimate observer’ versus ‘God’). It does not matter for the modern reader
whether we take Dunne or Boethius as our point of departure. Flieger is
able to explain Tolkien’s concept of time without mentioning Boethius even
once, and she must be credited with establishing Dunne’s theories as an
obvious influence on Tolkien – few people would have ever realised this if
Flieger had not investigated the publications of the 1920s.27 For this
achievement I would like to express my admiration.
Yet as a mediaevalist I cannot but point out that Dunne is ‘secon-
dary’, chronologically speaking as well as with regard to Tolkien, and that
the primary inspiration is most likely from Boethius’ De Consolatione
Philosophiae. Unfortunately, I have not been able to check the handwritten
notes in Tolkien’s copy of Dunne’s An Experiment with Time, but I can
very well imagine that we would find a scribbled reference such as ‘see
28
Boethius V.6’.

CONCLUSION

Are mediaevalists ‘better’ readers of Tolkien? My very personal answer is a

qualified ‘yes’. Mediaevalists see more and are able to understand and use
Tolkien’s own standards in order to assess his work, whereas many literary
critics are no longer even familiar with these standards, let alone being in
sympathy with them.

27
Alex Lewis and Elizabeth Curry, in their The Uncharted Realms of Tolkien, also aim at
the exploration of the literary and cultural context of Tolkien’s work.
28
For more information on Tolkien’s copies of Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae
and Dunne’s An Experiment with Time, see Oronzo Cilli’s Tolkien’s Library: An
Annotated Checklist (2019, 23 [no. 174] and 76 [no. 607], respectively).
22 Thomas Honegger

THOMAS HONEGGER holds a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich (Switzerland)

where he taught Old and Middle English. He is the author of From Phoenix to
Chauntecleer: Medieval English Animal Poetry (Francke, 1996) and Introducing
the Medieval Dragon (University of Wales Press, 2019) and has edited several
books with scholarly papers on the work of the late medievalist Prof. J.R.R.
Tolkien and several volumes with essays on Old and Middle English language and
literature. Apart from his publications on animals (real and imaginary) and Tolkien,
he has written about Chaucer, Shakespeare, and medieval romance. His
‘Habilitationsschrift’ (second Ph.D.) focused on the interaction between lovers in
medieval narrative fiction.
He has been, since 2002, Professor for English Medieval Studies at the
Friedrich-Schiller-University, Jena (Germany). Homepage:
https://www.iaa.uni-jena.de/institut/mitarbeiter_innen/honegger_+thomas

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