1. Access Provided by University of Sussex at 12/09/12 10:20PM GMT

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Book Reviews
Works Cited
Curry, Patrick. Defending Middle-earth. Tolkien: Myth and Modernity. Lon-
don: HarperCollins, 1998.
Dickerson, Matthew T., and Jonathan Evans. Ents, Elves, and Eriador:
The Environmental Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien. Lexington, KY: Uni-
versity Press of Kentucky, 2006.
Tolkien and the Study of His Sources, edited by Jason Fisher. Jefferson,
North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. 2011. 240 pages. $40.00
(trade paperback). ISBN 978-0786464821.
J.R.R. Tolkien is that rare sort of writer who makes us intensely
curious about the texts that he liked most. Therefore it seems oddly
contradictory that the man who did so much to point his readers to
the sources of his own inspiration for The Lord of the Rings had a hearty
dislike of literary source criticism. In 1966 Tolkien compared a source
critic to “a man who having eaten anything, from a salad to a well-
planned dinner, uses an emetic, and sends the results for chemical
analysis.”1
A long-held opinion, Tolkien had expressed it in another
culinary metaphor more than three decades earlier. Quoting in his
essay “On Fairy Stories” a metaphor coined by George Webbe Dasent
from Popular Tales from the Norse Tolkien says “we must be satisfied with
the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox
out of which it has been boiled,” and then changes Dasent’s meaning
(Dasent was discussing philological analysis) when he glosses the meta-
phor: “By ‘the soup’ I mean the story as it is served up by the author,
and by ‘the bones’ its sources or material.” (OFS 47). Tolkien preferred
attention focused on the new work, not on its sources: “To my mind it
is the particular use in a particular situation of any motive,2
whether
invented, deliberately borrowed, or unconsciously remembered that is
the most interesting thing to consider” (Letters 418).
Given the evidence of Tolkien’s censorious view of source criticism,
a collection such as this volume might seem to start out at a moral dis-
advantage; and, indeed, Jason Fisher and his co-contributors in Tolkien
and the Study of His Sources appear, at first blush, to be overly apologetic
and deferential to Tolkien’s pronounced opinions. “If Tolkien wished
to proscribe our rooting around among ‘the bones of the ox’ out of
which his works were made,” Fisher cautions, “what right do we have
to gainsay him?” But this impression quickly dissipates when Fisher
follows his hesitant query with a refreshing declaration of his own: “I

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Book Reviews
believe scholars have every right . . . with all due respect to the author,
we can, and should proceed” (1). Then Fisher and his colleagues turn
a potential vulnerability into a strength by tackling the issue head on.
“This collection of essays is concerned with both the theory and prac-
tice of source criticism,” says Fisher, and, accordingly, the first forty-five
pages are devoted almost purely to theory, with an Introduction by
Tom Shippey and essays by E.L. Risden, and Fisher.
Shippey’s Introduction, “Why Source Criticism?” serves to intro-
duce the whole work. He surveys the contributions on a high level and
finds three veins of source criticism in the collection: essays on the cul-
tural background for Tolkien’s work, essays on Tolkien’s professional
interests as scholar and philologist, and essays on the global traditions
of narrative and story. It might be tempting to characterize Shippey’s
introduction simply as bestowing on this book an avuncular blessing
of legitimacy from the world’s foremost Tolkien scholar, but Shippey
always rewards close reading, and even his asides provoke thought,
such as, for example, when he describes Tolkien, professionally, as “a
controversialist all his life” (7). Here Shippey addresses, with valuable
insight, the reasons why Tolkien disliked source criticism, and yet in
concluding he supports Fisher’s prefatory declaration for the validity
of the pursuit, and tells us, in a gentle riposte to Tolkien’s culinary
metaphors that “you can learn a lot from seeing what a great cook has
in his kitchen” (15).
Risden’s essay, “Source Criticism: Background and Applications,”
focuses on the scope of source criticism as a method and points out
examples of its applicability, ranging from Biblical studies to Shake-
speare, and he distinguishes source criticism from biographical and
historical criticism. To the extent that Risden discusses Tolkien, he
generally reiterates information provided by Shippey in Appendix A
of The Road to Middle-Earth. Fisher’s essay, “Tolkien and Source Criti-
cism: Remarking and Remaking,” is one of the most spirited in the vol-
ume, focusing on how source criticism should be practiced in regard
to Tolkien, and the benefits that can be obtained from it. Even more
so than Shippey’s introduction, Fisher’s essay epitomizes the essential
spirit of this book.
The three theoretical essays that open the book provide a founda-
tion for the eight practical essays that follow, and so one of the best
aspects of this volume is the critical self-awareness of the contribut-
ing scholars. This reviewer does not possess the breadth of historical
and literary knowledge that would be required to evaluate in detail
the accuracy of the source scholarship of this eclectic group of con-
tributions, for the examined sources in this volume have a diversity
ranging from Gilgamesh to the history of the Byzantine Empire to John

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Book Reviews
­Buchan’s novel Midwinter. Nevertheless, these eight diverse essays can
be evaluated by other objective standards. One such objective mea-
sure is the extent to which the essays demonstrate Tolkien’s use of the
sources they examine, which should be a helpful analysis in a review
like this because, presumably, a general reader who picks up this book
will be motivated more by an interest in Tolkien than by a direct inter-
est in a particular source (which, if that were the dominant motiva-
tion, would likely lead to choosing a different book). Direct influence
stands implicit in this test: the argument and evidence that Tolkien not
only knew the source but that it also affected his thought and writing
in some manner must be strong. Measured by this analysis, the most in-
formative essays about Tolkien in this volume are Thomas Honegger’s
contribution on “The Rohirrim: Anglo-Saxons on Horseback”; John
D. Rateliff’s essay “She and Tolkien, Revisited,” documenting Tolkien’s
use of motifs from H. Rider Haggard’s novels She and Ayesha; Nicholas
Birns’ “The Stones and the Book: Tolkien, Mesopotamia, and Biblical
Mythopoeia,” analyzing Tolkien’s use of Biblical myth and Mesopota-
mian history; and Diana Pavlac Glyer and Josh B. Long’s chapter on
“Biography as Source: Niggles and Notions,” looking at Tolkien’s use
of his own life experiences in his writings.
Another such objective measure is the extent to which the es-
says provide a detailed and informative description of the source or
sources they examine. By this standard, the most useful essays in this
book are Miryam Librán-Moreno’s “Byzantium, New Rome!: Goths,
Langobards, and Byzantium in The Lord of the Rings,” a summary of
and commentary on certain aspects of the history of Constantinople
from the 4th to the 11th century, and Judy Ann Ford’s discussion of
“William Caxton’s The Golden Legend as a Source for Tolkien’s The Lord
of the Rings.”
A third objective measure is the persuasiveness of an essay in regard
to Tolkien’s use of a particular source, especially when the evidence
of the source’s influence on Tolkien is more tenuous and conjectural
than it is in the context of sources which we know Tolkien studied
closely. The prominent essays in the volume under this standard are
Kristine Larsen’s “Sea Birds and Morning Stars: Ceyx, Alcyone, and
the Many Metamorphoses of Eärendil and Elwing,” a fascinating and
imaginative exploration of Ovid and astronomy, and Mark T. Hooker’s
“Reading John Buchan in Search of Tolkien,” an exhaustive analysis of
motifs and ideas from three novels by John Buchan that Tolkien may
have adopted and adapted for use in his own novels.
While each of these diverse essays has its strengths, it must be
conceded that not every part of these essays will be helpful to read-
ers who do not know the examined sources well before starting in.

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Book Reviews
­Nevertheless, in their best parts, and there are many, all of these well
written, well researched essays not only show us the breadth and depth
of Tolkien’s thought and reading, but also they remind us many times
over of the extraordinary imaginative uses Tolkien made of the sources
that influenced his thought.
Paul Edmund Thomas
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Notes
1 I had never before encountered this jocular quip until reading it
on page 30 of the collection under review here, which alone makes
the book worth the price of admission: Fisher quotes from Daphne
Castell, “The Realms of Tolkien,” New Worlds Vol. 50, No. 168 (No-
vember, 1966) 146.
2 Tolkien means “motif” but prefers the English version of the word
to the French.
Picturing Tolkien: Essays on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Film Tril-
ogy, edited by Janice M. Bogstad and Philip E. Kaveny. Jefferson, North
Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, August 2011. 302
pp. $35.00 (trade paperback). ISBN 978-0786446360.
Picturing Tolkien is a collection of sixteen essays tackling Peter Jack-
son’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy from a ten-year perspective not possi-
ble for earlier attempts at assessing its merits and misfires. The Jackson
versus Tolkien debate may not be as heated now as it was in those early
days after the films rolled like a deep ocean tsunami over the con-
sciousness of Tolkien scholars and fans worldwide, but it has certainly
not abated. It is, instead, more measured and thoughtful.
A quick scan of the Table of Contents of Picturing Tolkien will reveal
a number of familiar names from the academic community, heavy-
weights all. You might be tempted to think, “Oh boy, here we go.”
You’d be wrong.
Instead of the long-expected evisceration of Jackson’s film trilogy,
what you’ll discover in these pages is a fascinating cross-section of opin-
ion—and expert knowledge—on this monumental visual retelling of
Tolkien’s Middle-earth saga. You may learn things you didn’t know.
You may also find that ten-year-old hindsight counts for a lot. You will
definitely find compelling arguments on both sides of the Great Peter
Jackson Divide. There are many voices in Picturing Tolkien, and it is well
worth the reader’s time to listen to them all.