Tolkien's Modern Middle Ages (review)

This anthology, containing fourteen essays and twelve illustrations, is part of a series edited by Bonnie Wheeler, "The New Middle Ages." According to the statement of intent, this series is dedicated to "transdisciplinary studies of medieval cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women's history and gender analysis" (i). Despite the series' stated emphasis on gender studies, most of the essays in this anthology do not deal with gender or feminist methodologies, and nine of the thirteen contributors are men. This anthology grew from a series of events in 2003-2004, beginning with a Symposium organized at Bucknell University which led to a series of sessions at the 2004 International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo. The essays came from scholars presenting at these events with one exception, an essay from a symposium at the University of Vermont. As a result, most of the scholars are medievalists and most seem to work in literary studies, with a few in comparative mythology, classics and humanities, and comparative literature. Only one, Gergely Nagy, is identified as working with a contemporary theory (post structuralism). While the thirteen contributors range from doctoral students to scholars well-known for multiple publications on Tolkien and include artist Ted Nasmith who has illustrated Tolkien's work, the disciplinary field is fairly homogeneous.

In the "Introduction: Tolkien's Modern Medievalism" Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers summarize how the growing and global popularity of The Lord of the Rings has been supplemented by Peter Jackson's films. The editors note that scholarship on Tolkien's work has tended toward situating it primarily in the context of his profession as a medievalist. Recently, work has begun that considers his writing within the context of the modern period. Chance and Siewers's anthology is part of that project, and they intend for it to extend the work begun in the 1983 collection edited by Robert Giddings (J.R.R. Tolkien: This Far Land). The Giddings anthology focused on contemporary issues rather than medieval sources, and Chance and Siewers see their work as building on that focus and incorporating later developments in the field of "global and multicultural" scholarship (5). Examining how Tolkien re-constructed the past, the introduction argues that his work anticipated issues in the "future" (the present of the anthology), that is, the postmodern period.

According to the Introduction, the anthology's four sections are organized around ways in which Tolkien can be considered postmodern ("Recontextualizing the Medieval in Postmodern Middle-earth"); Tolkien's adaptations of 18th and 19th century Medievalisms ("Retreating to a Timeless Past: Middle-earth and Victorian Medievalism"); his incorporation and adaptation of "modern issues and ideologies" (5) ("Confronting Modern Ideologies in Middle-earth: War, Ecology, Race, and Gender"); and his influence on modern fantasy writers and artists ("Visualizing Medievalism: Middle-earth in Art and Film"). The questions are dealt with well in the first two sections, less so in the last two. Since there is no essay on Tolkien's effect on modern fantasy writers, I am not sure why the introduction promises that topic.

Chance and Siewers do not clearly define the term "postmodern" in their introduction, seeming to use it inconsistently to mean a chronological period, namely the period following World War II, a set of values in referring to Tolkien's ahistoricity as a reason for his appeal to readers from a wide range of political philosophies, or for rhetorical purposes (criticism of the modern). Citing Brian Rosebury's claim that Tolkien celebrated "values with no specific historic valence" (2), the editors link this meaning of postmodernism to liberalism and diversity, terms which have very specific (and varied) cultural and historical meanings. Other elements assumed to be part of "post modernity" in this anthology include racism and feminism. While individual contributors specify clear and applicable definitions of postmodernism in their essays (most notably the three theoretical essays that introduce the collection), the Introduction's lack of definition paired with...