The Chronicle: Colloquy Live Transcript

Frodo Lives! And So Does Tolkien Scholarship

Thursday, June 3, at noon, U.S. Eastern time

A half-century after the publication of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, the epic tale of a heroic quest in a quasi-medieval world is more popular than ever, fueled in part by a blockbuster film adaptation. Now scholars of Tolkien are seeking respect for their work in academe. Can their quest succeed?

A transcript of the chat follows.

Scott McLemee (Moderator):
As an author -- and, more and more, as a worldwide cultural presence -- J.R.R. Tolkien is a contradictory figure. An almost perfect embodiment of the old-fashioned and rather unworldly don, his imagination nonetheless connects with a mass audience. A few years ago, an English bookstore pronounced him "author of the century," based on a survey of readers. And certainly for many people, that label works as more than an indicator of popularity: they read him as an allegorist of the world wars, ideological conflicts, and/or ecological destructiveness of the twentieth century. In the foreword to Lord of the Rings, however, Tolkien expressed a "cordial dislike" for allegory "in all its manifestations." His sensibility was utterly at odds with the literary modernism of his day. It's hard to imagine Virginia Woolf and J.R.R. Tolkien reading, let alone liking, one another's books. But in borrowing and reconfiguring elements of older mythologies and cultural traditions, Tolkien sometimes seems less an anti-modernist antiquarian than a sort of postmodernist, creating an alternative world from the fragments of other texts. A relatively small community of scholars (many of them Anglo-Saxonists or medievalists) have been working on Tolkien for years now. In an article in this week's Chronicle,, I tried to sketch some of the problems they confront -- whether at the level of what they choose to research, or in the even more difficult matter of having their work recognized as serious. But there is plenty more to say on either topic. Fortunately, our guest today is perhaps uniquely qualified to address such matters. Michael M.C. Drout is one of the co-editors of the new journal Tolkien Studies, published by West Virginia University Press, the table of contents of which is now available at www.tolkienstudies.com). His edition of Beowolf and the Critics, Tolkien's classic essay, was published in 2002 by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. It would take a while to list Mr. Drout's publications as a specialist in tenth-century Anglo-Saxon literature -- so we'll just nod in that direction, to indicate that his interests are by no means confined to Middle-earth. But before opening this afternoon's discussion, it might be worth mentioning a remarkable review-essay and bibliography on Tolkien scholarship that Mr. Drout (with two colleagues) published in the Fall 2000 issue of Envoi, a journal of medieval literary studies. As an overview of the field, it is indispensible. A copy is available online, in PDF, at http://members.aol.com/JamesIMcNelis/9_2/Drout_9_2.pdf

Comment from Scott McLemee:
A number of questions have come in -- several of which Mr. Drout has already answered. More questions are welcome now. So are comments.

Question from Scott McLemee:
One of the really huge oversights of my article is that it didn't discuss the work of Tom Shippey, whose book The Road to Middle Earth you described in Envoi as one of the essential works of Tolkien scholarship. Would you please talk a little about his importance?

Michael D.C. Drout:
Tom really is the best, for a variety of reasons. He is a major scholar of medieval lit in his own right, so when he's analyzing Tolkien's scholarship, he's got the insider knowledge to understand where JRRT was coming from. Shippey's thesis that the cruces of medieval literature were inspiration for Tolkien has been borne out by the background material in the History of Middle-earth, and I think this thesis guided him in some incredibly productive directions. In some ways Tom was also the first to blend "inside" and "outside" discussion of Tolkien: he'd taken the time to really learn how Tolkien's world works, what the rules are, what the history is, etc.; but he also connected up Tolkien's work with medieval literature, 20th century politics and history, Christianity, and so forth. There had been other decent books before Road to Middle-earth (Paul Kocher's was probably the best, and Robert Foster's Guide is really useful), but these were, for teh most part, focus on the "inside." There were also books like the Isaacs and Zimbardo collections of criticism, but these often focused on the "outside" without a lot of understanding of the workings of Tolkien's languages, histories, and geography.

Question from Catherine Rogers, Savannah State University:
How are Tolkein scholars in general reacting to the Peter Jackson film adaptations?

Michael D.C. Drout:
Tolkien scholars seem to me far less happy with the films than either the general population or Tolkien fans. Probably the biggest reason is that many of us don't feel that the Hollywoodizations of some of the major plot points of the films were necessary: where Jackson respected his source and his audience, the films are unusual and powerful. Where he fell back on Hollywood cliche they are predictable and hollow. Some examples include the characters of Faramir and Denethor, and of course Saruman, all of whom are among the most complex, conflicted characters in the books. Scholars (including me), just can't figure out why we needed to go to central casting cliches, when the real thing was much more exciting. An audience that can follow a 9 hours of complex plot can surely figure out that Denethor could be more than a drooling maniac. But then again, no one is giving me 300 million dollars to make movies. I think that over all scholars are pleased about the new attention to the works and the new enthusiasm from students. The films make excellent teaching tools because you can discuss why Jackson deviated from the books when he did. And the cultural popularity of the films has made publishers more willing to embark on Tolkien projects -- which in turn has led to some very good books coming out. Also, one hopes, the cultural studies people will now be willing to look at Tolkien; that would be good for the field.

Question from Lyn, no academic affiliation:
Robert Foster's Guide to Middle-earth has introduced a few assumptions that have become "received truths" by some Tolkien fans. In particular, I can cite his statement that Barrow-wights "entrapped people to use in sacrifice," which I've seen in numerous references without identification of his work as the source. I read about the Tolkien encyclopedia you are working on. With 1,000 entries from various scholars, how will you ensure that all the information is accurate and precise?

Michael D.C. Drout:
There are a few problems like this in Foster, though overall the Guide is very useful at pulling together all the material that comes from "inside" Tolkien's world. The Encylopedia has somewhat different aims: we're at least as interesteed in the "outside" as the inside: what was the medieval source for the Balrog? What is the critical history? What works of art, music, etc. adapt Tolkien or were inspired by him? Therefore I think we're a little less likely to turn interpretation into fact (which is what Foster does in that Barrow-wight passage), but probably likely to make a whole set of different errors. We've got a solid editorial board to help fact-check entries (Tom Shippey, Verlyn Flieger, Douglas A. Anderson, Marjorie Burns), and I've got a huge database of Tolkien material to cross-reference, but there are going to be errors. I'd like to find some way to 'open source' the problem, but I'm not sure how this would work (and the publisher wouldn't like it). I'm constructing an "Errata" web page for Beowulf and the Critics (nothing major yet, thank goodness), that will be continuously updated, and I think that's a real possibility for the JRRTE.

Question from Mike, North Central State College:
It's fairly easy to find scholarship on Tolkien citing Norse and Finnish aspects, and the Welsh connection to Sindarin is well known; however, how Celtic is _Lord of the Rings_? P. Jackson's version seems fairly Celtic; is his interpretation too liberal?

Michael D.C. Drout:
This is a somewhat vexed question because Tolkien made a number of disparaging comments about "Old Celtic Tales" and clearly wasn't very interested in Old Irish or Irish material. That said, Tolkien _knew_ a lot of medieval Irish literature. But I think most critics don't find significant Celtic influence in LotR, so if you see it in the movies, it's probably Jackson's doing.

Question from Shivesh Kumar, University of California, Los Angeles:
In Tolkien criticism, how do you reconcile and address the potential for allegory in Tolkien's stories? In particular, comparisons between the One Ring and nuclear weapons, or possibly even the motivations of individual characters in the Lord of the Rings symbolizing the forces that caused the major world wars?

Michael D.C. Drout:
This is a difficult question because of the literary theoretical problems involved. Tolkien himself said that the book was not an allegory, and critics have taken that to mean that there are no parallels between World War II (in particular) and LotR. Tolkien himself deconstructed the allegorical interpretation, noting that it didn't quite fit: if Saruman = Russia, for example, then he wouldn't have been destroyed but would have gotten his own rings (nuclear weapons), etc. But, as Tom Shippey has argued, even if there isn't an allegory (which Tolkien defined as having every single part of one story match up one for one with another), there is applicability. It's hard not to read LotR as a meditation on the events of the 20th century: the problems of technological power, the danger and lure of appeasement, the politics of domination. I personally think that the Lord of the Rings is shaped much more by WWI than by WWII, but that's another topic entirely.

Question from Shivesh Kumar, University of California, Los Angeles:
Do you think that the renewed interest in Tolkien will spur increased enrollment in philological studies? Will there be a revival of students of Old English, Old Norse, etc.?

Michael D.C. Drout:
I've seen a huge jump in enrollments in Old English and medieval literature courses in the past couple years, and I don't think it's all due to my sparkling personality. If we had a good teaching text for philology (as opposed to linguistics, which is slightly different in focus), I think we'd get enrollments and interest there. I've cobbled things together to teach philology, but we could really use a short, appealing text (maybe I should write one; or maybe somebody reading this will). Old Norse is a tougher sell at most schools, since there isn't that obvious link to English studies, history of the English language, etc., that OE has.

Question from Andrew Mytelka, Chronicle of Higher Education:
How should Tolkien be added to a university curriculum? Would it be better to develop a course devoted to Tolkien and other writers of the "fantasy" genre, or should Tolkien simply be added to existing courses on early English literature, on the heroic quest, or in philology and linguistics?

Michael D.C. Drout:
I've tried a couple of these approaches. One of the problems is that Tolkien is so long. If you're not assuming that every student has read LotR, then you're talking about a fairly big chunk of the semester: say, 1 week for Hobbit, two for Fellowship, one for Two Towers, one for Return of the King. Then maybe even one or two for Silmarillion if you do excerpts. That leaves out the short works, and it leaves out reading Beowulf or SGGK as source material. My best success has been in a fantasy course where we do 1/2 of a semester on Tolkien and 1/2 a semester on Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books. A great course (following Tom Shippey's suggestions) would be a 20th century lit course that taught Tolkien, George Orwell, Willian Golding, and T. H. White. You could also read some source material, say, Beowulf and some Malory. These are among the most popular and influential authors of the 20th C, but they're more taught in high school, and without context, than they should be. I'd also love to see Lord of the Rings taught in a WWI context, with, say, A Farewell to Arms, All Quiet on the Western Front, Randall Jarrell and other WWI poets. But when you suggest to colleagues that they add Tolkien this way, you have the zero sum canon problem that he bumps someone else out. And given how long LotR is, a lot of other stuff ends up being bumped, which starts the whole canon turf battle that is so frustrating.

Question from Eldridge Brown, Howard Community College:

1. What is the Nature of Tom Bombadil and of Goldberry?

2. Is the Glorfindel met in Fellowship of the ring by Strider, and the hobbits and that attends the Council of Elrond, the same Glorfindel that died fighting the Balrog in the Silmarrillion? IE is he re-incarnated to fight on like Gandalf was?

3. Why is is thatTuor (a Mortal Man) and Idril (his Elven love) were so special that he is granted passage West, when Aragorn and Arwen are denied this blessing? For that matter, Why are barren and Luthien Tinuviel also barred passage West? Did not these folk fight at least as hard and possibly even suffer more?

Michael D.C. Drout:
Tom Bombadil and Goldberry are never adequately explained within LotR. I think Shippey puts it best when he says that Tom is the "spirit of the Oxfordshire countryside." In one of the drafts for Fellowship, Tolkien calls Tom "ab origine," suggesting that he doesn't, perhaps, fit into the development/creation schema that everyone else fits in. I think that Tom was developed independently of Middle-earth (he appeared in a series of poems from the 1920's and 30's) and Tolkien just stuck him in. Tolkien eventually came around to the idea that Glorfindel was re-incarnated and was the same who died fighting the Balrog in Gondolin. But I think at first he was just re-using a name. In fact, all elves were reincarnated (this is all discussed in the essays in the History of Middle-earth book Morgoth's Ring), but nearly stayed in the Halls of Mandos for long periods of time. Finrod was reincarnated and went back to the Undying Lands, but Glorfindel is the only one elf that seems to have come back to Middle-earth. Beren is brought back from the dead, which breaks that rule, so part of the bargain the Luthien makes is that he gets to live but she gives up her right to go to the West. Arwen makes the same choice: Aragorn doesn't have a option of going west. Tuor, I think, disappears at sea and no one really knows what becomes of him, though it's speculated that he goes West. Overall I think Tolkien very deliberately made this a reflection of Catholic theology: no one _deserves_ paradise, but some a given it for reasons that the Powers decide.

Scott McLemee (Moderator):
We've had quite a few questions about the films come in. I'd like to encourage readers with questions on the original, literary incarnation to submit questions -- and also comments, whether about Tolkien, the field of scholarship around him, or anything we've covered so far.

Question from Michael Arnone, The Chronicle of Higher Education:
How canonical are all the films treated in Tolkien circles? Are the films considered viable for academic study, or only the books and other written material?

Michael D.C. Drout:
It's probably too early to say, but anecdotally I think the films are entering into academia, but through popular culture and film studies departments rather than through English. Just a couple of days ago I had an email from a film studies prof who is planning on teaching Jackson and wanted to read around in Tolkien criticism. Certainly the films work well as a teaching tool, since you can compare the books and films and try to figure out why Jackson changed what he changed.

Question from Scott McLemee:
Aside from the question of Tolkien's place in literary history, there is the problem of the Tolkien canon itself, so to speak. During an interview, you mentioned that the publication of the multivolume History of Middle Earth -- a set of tales left unpublished at the time of the author's death, now running to a dozen volumes -- really threw scholars into some confusion during the 1980s. Would you discuss that a bit more? Is there anything like a consensus among readers (academic or otherwise) about how important this material is?

Michael D.C. Drout:
When it became clear that there would be a volume per year published for about twelve years, it seemed like scholarship dropped off as everyone just tried to absorb the enormous quantity of material. There's a real question if the History of Middle-earth is good in itself or only useful as source material. To some degree this is what people said about the Silmarillion, but it's now part of the Tolkien canon, so perhaps the same thing will happen with History of Middle-earth. I think this is unlikely, though, because the way Christopher Tolkien edited the material makes it very useful for scholars but very difficult for readers to just read and enjoy. That said, there are absolutely beautiful passages scattered throughout, particularly in the Book of Lost Tales I and II. And the alliterative verse in Lays of Beleriand is very good.

Question from Chris Roy, Marshfield High School:
Have the recent LOTR films helped or hurt academia's view toward Tolkien scholarship?

Michael D.C. Drout:
There's been the paradoxical effect that the films have somehow legitimated Tolkien as a popular culture phenomenon. When it was just the books, despite their immense popularity, I think Tolkien's popularity was (incorrectly) seen as being limited to certain subcultures. Now with the films you get people like Rushdie weighing in (pretty weakly, in my view) on Tolkien, which elevates the proflie of Tolkien's work, even if it's being criticized. When we can point to someone like Tom Shippey, and show how is analysis is head and shoulders above that of Rushdie, that can only help the field, I think.

Question from Katrelya Angus, Pitzer College:
Have scholars found the films beneficial in ways other than a teaching tool? For example, I find putting faces on the characters has helped me tremendously in my understanding of Tolkien - particularly Sir Ian McKellen's magnificent portrayal of Gandalf. While I do agree that Denethor was short-changed in the film, and that his death scene in the book was far more dramatic than it was written in the movie, I find the movie Denethor far more than simply a man who is reduced to madness - I find him much more like King Lear, who is losing control of his kingdom as well as of himself. The importan issue, I find, is Denethor's love - and loss - of his power. Denethor in the movie is a tragic hero - once the mighty ruler of Gondor; now a man who is deluded and blinded by power and who has even sent his son off to "certain death."

Michael D.C. Drout:
That question makes me very happy, because I just published an article linking Denethor, King Lear, and the Lord of the Nazgul, so I'm glad to know I'm not crazy making that connection. But I think the Denthor in the film is too one-dimensional: in the books, he still cares deeply about Gondor (though he's gotten confused between Gondor as entity and Gondor as his personal property). Remember that it is the _despair_ of knowing that the Black Ships are coming that finally drives him over the edge. He's sure that Sauron has the Ring (in fact, when you go over the dates, Denethor goes insane when Sauron gets Frodo's mail coat and Sam's sword, so we can assume that Sauron showed these to Denthor). Partly, I think, I'm biased because literary scholars prefer that the power of the scene be in _words_, and in the films so much can be moved to the visual: the portrayal developed by the actor.

Question from Lydia Petersson, Mary Baldwin College:
I gather from Scott's article and from most of the previous questions that much of the work on Tolkien has been rooted in medieval studies and/or philology. Is that impression correct? Is much work being done from a rhetorical perspective?

Michael D.C. Drout:
The best scholarship has been in source study and philology, but we've mined that vein pretty deeply and it is time, in my view, for rhetorical, audience-based, and other approaches to take the lead. I'd like these to be grounded in source study and philology (i.e., it would be hard to convince me that a rhetorical analysis of, say, Eowyn's speech with the Lord of the Nazgul shouldn't take into account that she is from a pseduo-Anglo-Saxon culture, and thus Tolkien would have a reason for her to use a word like "blench."), but it would be great if the circle of scholarship would expand. The article is alluded to before is entitled "Tolkien's Prose Style and its Literary and Rhetorical Effects," and I didn't find much on rhetoric when I was writing it.

Question from Marijane, Texas university:
Other than philologists, who will be able to publish in the new journal?

Michael D.C. Drout:
We'd actually like to have lots of non-philologists publishing. I would be thrilled get articles on Tolkien in a WWI context or Tolkien through the lens of postmodern theory. We're interested in publishing really good Film Studies analysis of the Jackson films, and we'd love for Cultural Studies people to get involved. One of the strengths of Tolkien scholarship has been its grounding in philology, language analysis and source study, and I don't think those approaches are going away (in fact, they're necessary at some level for understanding the texts), but it's really important for us to expand the types of approaches taken to Tolkien. Our only major limitation is that we're avoiding articles that are focused on Tolkien and the Inklings, since the journal Mythlore is already better at publishing those.

Comment from Janet Croft, University of Oklahoma:
A comment, then. I am delighted to see a new journal which will not look "like it's not being done seriously." As you said, having a paper published with a piece of fan art inserted in the middle makes your work a bit harder for colleagues to take seriously! I'm lucky to be a librarian and not under quite the same pressure as a person in literature studies or linguistics -- I'd like to hear more from people in these areas.

Question from Katrelya, Pitzer College:
I think readers can see some allegory, or rather some similarities between LOTR and life. For example, I see strong similarities between Gandalf and Jesus that simply cannot go unnoticed. What I find even more astonishing is Legolas' reaction to Gandalf's resurrection - the converted skeptic. How do other scholars find the similarities between Gandalf and Jesus?

Michael D.C. Drout:
There's a very strong strand of Christian criticism, led by Joseph Pearce and Brad Birzer, that takes this approach. I'm less convinced, not because there aren't similarities all the way through LotR, and knowing about Roman Catholic theology can help explain them, but because a lot of the other Christian critics tend iin my view to over-read the material. Tolkien thought for something to count as allegory it had to match up one for one. You can't get Gandalf or Aragorn or Frodo to match up to Jesus one to one in all instances: they all have elements (as you've noted), but they also have differences, and these are important, too.

Question from Don Kenner, Librarian:
Was Tolkien a believer in "Distributism"? It was very popular with Catholics (esp. in Britain) in the early 20th century, but I've seen no reference to JRR embracing it. He seems to have been a back-to-the-land Catholic, suspicious of big industry, and respectful of the papal encyclicals on the rights of labor, so it seems entirely possible.

Michael D.C. Drout:
I don't know the answer for this, but now you've given me something to check into for the JRRT Encyclopedia. Tolkien did hate factories and the 'destruction' (in his view) of the English countryside, but he also had a paradoxical relationship with technology: he bought a car very early when it was a real luxury, he was fascinated with the tape recorder, etc. There are some unpublished notes where he notes that he despised both Bolshevism and 'Big Business on the trans-Atlantic model," so all of what you write above would be consistent, but I just don't know.

Question from Andrew Sloca:
We know that Tolkien's original purpose for writing The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy was to create a quasi-history for England, much in the vein of Beowulf. If this is the case, why does he make it so fantastical by including races like Orcs or the immortal Elves? It is true that he "eliminates" them in a manner of speaking by destroying the Orcs at the fall of Sauron and removing the Elves to the "Grey Havens", but there is no real explanation for their use or the use of the Dwarven race to cite another. Question 2: Do you feel offended that the Chronicle of Higher Education slights Tolkien, a known linguist, by stating that noone submit a question in an imaginary language like Elvish seeing that Tolkien himself took great pains to create this language? --PS: As a former student of yours, I'm pleased to see that you haven't changed a bit.

Michael D.C. Drout:
I don't agree that his original purpose in writing H and LotR was to make a quasi-history for England. That may be how the Silmarillion started, and certainly is the case for a complex set of frame narratives in The Book of Lost Tales. But Hobbit was originally separate from most of that material, except for what bits got dragged in almost by accident and not central to the narrative. Tolkien thought that elves and orcs (the source for which is Beowulf) and other creatures were part of the medieval English imagination and therefore had to be part of the literature. I don't think that he was writing the kind of "historical fiction" that would have to tie up the loose end of "where are the elves now?" (although he does do this with the Numenor story and the change in the shape of the world after the downfall). As for submitting a question in Elvish, I wouldn't be able to answer it without recourse to looking up a lot of words in the back of the Silmarillion or in the etymologies, so it wouldn't be useful. I wasn't offended by the Chronicle making that little joke, though it does illustrate the problem for Tolkien studies: no one would make that joke about, say, Joyce and not submitting the question in Finnegans Wake form. Hope you are doing well, Andrew.

Scott McLemee (Moderator):
Fair enough! But Joyce readers are probably much less prone to mimicking the Wake than Tolkien readers are to learning Elvish. At least I hope so. (The tendency of Ezra Pound scholars to resemble Ezra Pound is, admittedly, somewhat troubling.)

Question from John Squire, no academic affiliation.:
Are those who resist giving Tolkien Studies an academic "legitimacy" worried that by doing so, they will open the floodgates to a host of other "Fantasy Author" Studies? Is it Tolkien they disregard so, or the entire fantasy fiction industry his works seem to have generated? It's always seemed to me his books are of a far higher literary quality than his imitators'.

Michael D.C. Drout:
The "literary quality" question is the real stumbling block. I am convinced that most people who don't want to let Tolkien in to the canon are turned off by his sentence-level writing. Tolkien wrote archaically, but it was deliberate and well-informed archaism, unlike some of his imitators, who often don't understand the destinction between "you" and "thee," much less why Tolkien used the unusual vocabulary and syntax that he used. I'm afraid that there are a fair number of 20th century specialists who say things like "Tolkien's dreadful style" but then can't articulate a theory of style that says why it's dreadful: Judith Shulevitz's little NYTimes piece a few years back, for example, seemed to suggest that Tolkien's style was bad because he used the word "hasten." But Tolkien scholars are also to blame for not articulating why Tolkien's style is well-crafted while, say, Stephen Donaldson's or Terry Brooks' is not.

Question from Toby, U.S. House of Representatives:
There have been many Tolkien imitators, but none have attracted significant scholarship. What is it about Tolkien's work that makes it uniquely worthy of scholarship? As a related question, is it fair to say that without Tolkien's posthumously published works, there would be little if any Tolkien scholarship? Thank you.

Michael D.C. Drout:
To my mind only Ursula Le Guin deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Tolkien (in terms of fantasy literature), although Robert Holdstock has the same kind of Tolkienian integrity of vision, also. There is high-quality scholarship on Le Guin (I think the scholarship on her fantasy is slightly better than the scholarship on her science fiction, but that's probably a matter of taste), but you're right that there isn't the kind of quantity and quality of scholarship even on Le Guin. The problem is that Tolkien casts a long shadow in so many different directions, that I think much of fantasy literature is laboring under a very strong anxiety of influence. I don't agree that without the posthumously published work there would be little scholarship. There were good pieces published even before the Silmarillion (Kocher, for example, and the Isaacs and Zimbardo collection), and both Shippey (Road to Middle-earth) and Flieger (Splintered Light), to my mind the two best books ever on Tolkien, published before History of Middle-earth had come out.

Question from Everett Hamner, University of Iowa (everett-hamner@uiowa.edu):
If you were a grad student today with an interest in Tolkien, the fantastic, and also science fiction, among other things, how might you attempt to frame these interests so as to be most attractive on the job market in several years? I noticed an earlier question resulted in some suggestions for studying Tolkien alongside other writers; what areas would you suggest are most fallow for further research in these areas?

Michael D.C. Drout:
Maybe it's possible to get a Ph.D. specializing in Tolkien or fantasy and get a job, but it would be really risky. The "standard" track has been to be a medievalist, like Tom Shippey or Jane Chance or Verlyn Flieger or me. That's almost becoming a cliche, since so many medievalists of my generation are medievalists because we read Tolkien first. I think that Cultural Studies approaches might be very useful, and putting Tolkien into a 20th century literary context would also work: Lord of the Rings and Lolita were published the same year, for example, and it might be possible to be a specialist in 1950's literature, or immediate post-war literature and work with Tolkien and others of his contemporaries. There's also the obvious, but under-studied, connection of Tolkien and Auden; there's the meta-critical approach to a study of the discipline of Anglo-Saxon (though I have a hunch there will be a bunch of books on this relatively soon). I'd probably be more useful in suggesting a via negativa: I'm not sure being a specialist in the Inklings or on Christian literature (Tolkien, Lewis, Chesterton) would have wide appeal to hiring committees even though there is very good work being done in these areas right now. Science fiction, it seems to me, is getting more mainstream, and someone who specialized in science fiction that covered a variety of centuries (i.e., Jules Verne and other old sci-fi) as well as fantasy might be appealing. Also, comparitive lit with the magical realists (Calvino, Ecco, Garcia-Marquez) would be a good Ph.D.

Question from Scott Evans, fan and independant scholar:
Is there a fear that Tolkien will be taught in high schools by teachers that truly do not understand his sources or the work itself?

Michael D.C. Drout:
I haven't encountered anyone who is worried about this. The real "fear" that I've seen among teachers is that their students are going to know LotR better than they do, and that can be intimidating to some. I think there's less worry about distortion of LotR because the very length of the work makes it unlikely that someone is going to teach it and be able to cram it into some kind of pigeonhole: and that's to me the greatest fear for all works of literature that aren't taught well. But the kind of teacher who is going to teach the whole LotR almost certainly has enthusiasm and love for the material and will therefore, I hope, be interested in sources and in trying to understand the work.

Question from Scott McLemee:
Tolkien's popularity has always bothered some people -- and for all the talk about "opening the canon" it seems pretty clear that there is resistance in literary studies to thinking of him as a serious author, let alone someone meriting close attention. You've addressed that in terms of the necessity of making sure that Tolkien Studies is, in effect, twice as exacting as it other journals might be in accepting papers. But I wonder if you have any sense that, given the situation in English now, Tolkien scholars might have a sort of trump up their sleeves. After all, if you offer a class on Tolkien, they will come.....And it sounds as if the success of the films has had some effect on student enthusiasm for medieval literature and history. Do you see that as likely to translate -- over the long term -- into a kind of institutional legitimacy that the profession seems unwilling to recognize now?

Michael D.C. Drout:
Tolkien scholars do have the trump of student enthusiasm, which puts us in a good position in a competitive environment -- though it can also engender jealousy. I think this can help translate into insitutional legitimacy, but Tolkien scholars are still going to have to do their part by entering into the main stream of literary conversations -- even as we might attempt to shift that main stream towards problems we find interesting. Expanded answer: I think Tolkien scholars can benefit from the popularity, but it's a two-edged sword. Just because something is popular, of course, doesn't mean it's good. And while the literary canon has opened to popular culture in some ways, we don't want to put all of our eggs in that basket: what if something comes along that is more popular than Tolkien but isn't as good? I don't want to concede the entire argument of aesthetic worth and replace it with popularity, because for one, I don't believe that's correct, and two, it would be a very weak foundation to build upon.

Question from Jim Deane, Emporia State University:
Most academics will at least acknowledge the legitimacy of the study of literary works. Administrators are not always so open minded; have you found yourself defending your work to administrators, and if so have Jackson's movie adaptations helped or hindered your quest for respect?

Michael D.C. Drout:
Luckily our Provost at Wheaton is an English professor and a specialist in Renaissance who sees parallels between Spenser and Tolkien, so I've had no problems. One of the other benefits of being a medievalist who also teaches Tolkien is that I haven't had to convince my colleagues that I'm not fluffy: they see an article in Modern Philology or JEGP and don't worry that I'm all about fuzzy Hobbit feet and pipe weed. The Jackson films will be both good and bad, I think. The academy award helps a little bit to elevate the films beyond, say, Conan the Barbarian, but there will always be people, like a prof I knew in Missouri, who will say "why teach the in class what they can read on the beach in the summer." It seems to me that as a profession we don't have a particularly good answer to that challenge, as a whole, not just in regard to Tolkien.

Comment from Howard Davis, University of Vermont:
Years ago, during one of the earlier waves of Tolkien enchantment, I taught Tolkien courses (on the West coast) and was struck by the variety of students who seemed drawn to the literature. I attribute this to the epic/quest nature of the stories, and think more should be made on the connection between Tolkien's "Essay on Faerie Stories" and LOTR.

Question from Katrelya, Pitzer College:
Wouldn't it also be wise to consider just teaching a Tolkien class - much in the same way Shakespeare has been taught? Tolkien is, in my opinion, as great a writer as Shakespeare, and as he was a scholar himself, wouldn't his work be more suited to the literature classroom than Shakespeare's? I would like to see him on an equal level as Shakespeare, and Tolkien classes taught just as Shakespeare (literature) classes have been taught . We study Shakespeare for whole semesters doing nothing but Shakespeare; why can't we do that with Tolkien?

Michael D.C. Drout:
The short answer is that it's probably politically problematic to do that in a contemporary English department. We can teach a whole semester or two on Shakespeare or Chaucer or Milton because they are acknowledge as great writers and because they are so influential over such a long period of time (the tradition). But to bring Tolkien up to that level would create real practical difficulties. That said, I think that Tolkien would work really well as a stand-alone class and I'd love to teach him that way.

Question from Scott Kleinman, California State University, Northridge:
As a philologist trained under a curriculum largely designed by Tolkien, I'm interested in the question of how Tolkien's work can spark greater student interest in philology, Old English, Old Norse, etc. One thing I have noticed in the large linguistic apparatus in the materials published by Christopher Tolkien (_The Book of Lost Tales_ and subsequent volumes) is that the development of the Elvish languages contains nearly every philolgical phenomenon I studied as an undergraduate. Can these materials have a pedagogical function? But this leads to another question: What role do you think these posthumous publications can have in Tolkien studies? What sorts of theoretical or practical issues do they raise?

Michael D.C. Drout:
Second part first: The two biggest issues that the posthumous material rasies are: how much of it is JRRT and how much Christopher? Since the manuscripts aren't available, we just don't know, and there are some critics (not me, though), who think it should all be ignored or considered the work of someone else. The other question: since so few members of the audience read the History of M-e, why should critics, who might be working on audience-based or other approaches, use them? I think that it's very important for approaches that go "outside" Tolkien's texts (pace Derrida) that they also get their ducks in a row "inside" the texts. I wouldn't reject an article for TS and ignored the H of M-e material, but I'd send it back to the author with suggestions for reconsideration if there was something relevant. As for philology, I think philology needs to come up with a simple student teaching text (maybe we should write one, Scott), that would allow students to learn it. Then you could use Elvish linguistics to teach. The problem is, it seems to me, that you're going to have a huge hurdle of convincing people to allow you to teach some of the elvish material when there are real-world languages that do all of the things that Tolkien makes elvish do. That said, in elvish it's often much neater and easier to see the transformations, etc.

Question from Jim Deane, Emporia State University:
Do scholars of Tolkien's languages interact significantly with scholars of other languages (ancient or modern)? Or, do scholars of language accept Tolkien's languages as a legitimate field of study?

Michael D.C. Drout:
There is a small ground of very, very smart people who study 'invented languages" (not just Tolkien, but Esperanto, Klingon, and more), but I think they are considered outside the mainstream of linguistics. I once spoke to a linguist who said that every invented language, no matter how complex, was "impoverished" compared to real languages. To me it seems like it would be a scientifically interesting project to look at the comparisons between invented languages, pidgins and other 'impoverished' languages, but I'm not really a linguist..

Scott McLemee (Moderator):
It looks like a reader has commented on some things raised earlier in this wide-ranging discussion. So we'll turn to that, then wind down for the afternoon....

Comment from Janet Croft, University of Oklahoma:
Speaking to the questions raised by Chris Roy, Katrrelya Angus, and Michael Arnone about Tolkien scholarship in the wake of the films, I think it will open the field up in many ways. I have been seeing abstracts addressing the films as part of the epic tradition in filmmaking, as an influence on the fan writing community (fan writing being a hot topic in pop culture studies recently), as a feminist-influenced rewriting of Tolkien, and so on. And even, as Mike asked earlier, about Celtic influences on Tolkien and Jackson. But I think the changes Jackson made are also influencing people to take another look at what Tolkien himself did, and why he did it that way -- for example, the way he told two separate stories instead of intercutting them as Jackson did in Two Towers. While, as Michael Drout pointed out, most scholars are not satisfied with the films as adaptations, they are certainly a stimulus to further research on Tolkien himself as apart from the films.

Question from Scott McLemee:
We've had an interesting round of discussion today. Thanks to everyone who wrote in with questions and remarks. And especially to Mr. Drout for taking the time to participate. Scholars often complain that they spend years working on a monograph that only a handful of people will ever read. At least you don't have that problem....

Michael D.C. Drout:
Thanks, Scott. It's been a great deal of fun, with a lot of insightful questions. I'd just like to encourage people to look at some of the really good work that's out there and will be coming out in the next few years. Of course Tolkien Studies and the JRRT Encyclopedia from Routledge, but also Rob Eagleston's book from Continuum, which is coming out next year, Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull's guides to Lord of the Rings, Jane Chance's edited collections, Tom Shippey's revision of History of Middle-earth. For some reason a lot of people tend to think that there is no good Tolkien scholarship. Having reviewed the past 20 years of work, I can say that is not true. Take a look, and enjoy.