Professional medieval scholars tend to be polarized in their attitude toward J. R. R. Tolkien and the recent resurgence in popularity of The Lord of the Rings. Some scholars view the media hype about Tolkien and the medieval flavor of his fiction with deep suspicion; they rightly deplore the assumption made by too many that the fantasy created by a twentieth-century Oxford professor depicts authentic medieval society. Other scholars embrace the widespread appeal of Middle-earth as a compelling means to introduce students to the Middle Ages which inspired Tolkien. Many of the latter grew up reading The Lord of the Rings; their initial fascination with Tolkien's world developed into their passion for medieval culture. Given the divisive influence of Tolkien among medieval scholars, it is remarkable that The Keys of Middle-earth: Discovering Medieval Literature through the Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien mollifies readers from either disposition.
The authors, Stuart D. Lee and Elizabeth Solopova, describe their book as a collection of excerpts from Old English, Middle English, and Old Norse texts with thematic, linguistic, and generic similarities to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. However, Lee and Solopova are quick to assure that they do not intend to imply that the medieval texts included in their book were the direct sources for Tolkien's fiction. Instead Lee and Solopova describe their goals: "To many, this world [of medieval literature] remains forever hidden, held secret within academic research libraries and universities. And to some, who have been exposed to this world full of strange stories of men and women living long ago, told in even stranger languages, this world is both bewildering and daunting. Yet this is the arena in which Tolkien's imagination roamed, a world to which he devoted most of his life. The Keys of Middle-earth, therefore, is aimed at unlocking that world" (4). Thus The Keys of Middle-earth can be described as a medieval source-book, not as a book of Tolkien's sources.
True to their goal, the bulk of The Keys of Middle-earth is devoted to introductory material. Lee and Solopova both have doctorates in medieval literature, edit medieval texts, and teach medieval literature. Their ability to introduce the complexities of medieval languages, texts and manuscripts, and vernacular poetics in accessible prose free of scholarly jargon is admirable and is a good model for any instructor of undergraduates or non-specialists. With lucid ease they discuss the problems of determining the author, date, and place of composition for many medieval texts in the general introduction and later more specifically with regard to each text. The introductory section concludes with five essays outlining thematic and technical parallels between medieval literature and Tolkien's fiction, namely the theme of the quest, genre of epic, use of runes, alliterative verse, and importance of names. These essays share the virtues of being both concise and nuanced.
Lee and Solopova justify their focus on texts in Old English, Middle English, and Old Norse as those being the most pertinent to Tolkien's scholarly interests and those with the most parallels to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Their methodology follows a consistent organization: each section begins with a summary of the events referred to in Tolkien's books and an introduction to the medieval text, including its language and the history of its manuscript transmission. Next Lee and Solopova analyze relationships between Tolkien's work and the medieval text. Then the medieval text is presented in its original language with a translation in modern English on the facing page (54). These translations are original to this book. I particularly appreciate that they maintain poetic lines in their translations of the medieval poetry. Students tend to forget they are reading a poem when translations are presented as prose. The editions of the texts with facing page translations alone would make this book a valuable resource for students.
The introductory commentaries on the Old English, Middle English, and Old Norse literature highlight their thematic, generic, linguistic, and aesthetic parallels with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. While many of the parallels were first noted and discussed by Tom Shippey and others, Lee and Solopova offer particularly intriguing discussions of the fight at Balin's Tomb at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring with The Fight at Finnsburg and the "Cynewulf and Cyneheard" episode. Another original contribution is their analysis of the similarities between Tolkien's description of the mumakil or war elephants of the Haradrim in The Return of the King and AElfric's description of elephants in his Homily on the Maccabees.
The Old Norse excerpts are from the Voluspa and Vafthruthnismal, two poems in the Elder or Poetic Edda. The Old English texts include AElfric's description of elephants in his Homily on the Maccabees; the gnomic Solomon and Saturn II and Maxims II; the heroic Beowulf, The Fight at Finnsburgh, Battle of Maldon, and "Cynewulf and Cyneheard" episode in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; and the elegaic poems The Ruin, The Wanderer, and The Seafarer. The texts of the Old English poems are based on those in Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records although punctuation has been altered to correspond with the translations. The "Cynewulf and Cyneheard" episode follows Janet Bately's edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the excerpt from AElfric's Homily on the Maccabees is from Lee's own edition AElfric's Homilies on Judith, Esther, and the Maccabees found at users.ox.ac.uk/~stuart/kings/. Middle English texts include Sir Orfeo, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Pearl. The excerpt of Sir Orfeo is based on the text in the fourteenth-century Auchinleck mansucript (National Library, Edinburgh, Advocates 19.2.1). Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl follow standard critical editions.
The original translations are valuable in and of themselves; they attempt a transparent rendition of the lineation of the original and balance the difficulty of rendering notoriously troublesome compound words into idiomatic modern English. Having the translations facing the original text is one of the strengths of the book. So much of Tolkien's fascination and inspiration from medieval literature stemmed from linguistic questions, questions which are meaningless without reference to the original language. The biggest weakness of the book is that none but the shortest Old English poems are presented in their entirety. Of course publishing costs favor excerpts rather than whole texts, yet many fruitful comparisons can be made among the entire texts of Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Orfeo, Pearl and Tolkien's fiction. If this book is used as a class text, it would need to be supplemented in this respect.
In their notes on the medieval texts, Lee and Solopova discuss "major interpretative decisions, emendations of manuscript readings and deviations from standard editorial practice" (55). In addition, the notes provide selective commentary on linguistic and textual points of interest and difficulty while referring to critical editions, contemporary scholarship, and manuscript facsimiles for more detailed analysis. Throughout the introductory material, commentary, and textual notes, Lee and Solopova provide carefully selected bibliographic suggestions for further study both in medieval scholarship and Tolkien studies.
Throughout the book Lee and Solopova highlight Tolkien's academic scholarship including even his unfinished projects. Lee and Solopova believe that "Tolkien's critical analysis of medieval literature is found in his academic work, but his own fiction also often represents his response to its conventions and the way of thinking" (16). They draw the readers' attention to Tolkien's appreciation of both the technical and literary aspects of medieval texts in his scholarship by referencing his published essays and unpublished notes in the Bodleian library. In addition, Tolkien's literary insights of medieval texts are highlighted in quotations from Tolkien's letters and Christopher Tolkien's comments on the composition of his father's work in the multi-volume Making of Middle-earth series.
Either as a student's text or as an instructor's resource, The Keys of Middle-earth provides an excellent introduction to a number of important medieval texts complete with a judicious, but not overwhelming, awareness of recent scholarship within a compelling context of a modern literary phenomenon--the imaginative world of J. R. R. Tolkien.