4. Fëanor Conjures Wyrd
We begin in the text with our ‘story’, the first movement of our dance, which moves on an appropriate note of tragedy: the refusal of Yavanna’s request to Fëanor for the Silmarils. As we have been discussing, Fëanor possesses Germanic and heroic characteristics and has an exemplary function ad malum exemplum of all that Tolkien criticized within the heroic code of Northern courage. Beginning with Fëanor’s fateful decision, we witness the criticism that Tolkien expressed in his academic writing and correspondence as it is dramatized in the exemplary nature of the history of the Eldar (Chapter III, p. 41). Walter Haug draws our attention to this technique in the vernacular medieval German tradition:
The exemplary nature of history gives poetry a specific function, namely lêre (‘teaching’), since it lifts historical events from their actual linear sequence and sees them simply as a reflection of the changing relationship between God and his people. In the face of the absolute, history is reduced to a series of isolated incidents, a mere collection of exempla. (Haug 2006)
Fëanor, and the history of the Eldar, show us what it means to choose to pervert Eru’s gifts by excessive pride and possessiveness, and it also shows the changing nature of the relationship between the Elves and Ilúvatar as the punishment of wyrd, the ‘long defeat’, attempts to correct the original misdeed of Fëanor.
Here, the discussion backs up a bit to the Darkening of the Trees and the initial perversion and misuse of gifts, violation of proper gift-giving, and the subsequent activation of wyrd as a judicial balancing force.
Verlyn Flieger (2009, 151) for instance, notes that “[T]he contradiction resides in the simultaneous presence in his [Tolkien’s] invented world of two opposing principles, fate and free will, imagined as operating side by side, sometimes in conflict, sometimes independent.” And she goes on further to say “[T]he trouble lies not with free will, but with fate.” However, this may not necessarily be the case if we consider the role of Northern courage in the history of the Elves and their fate within Arda. In Tolkien’s Legendarium, Fate (in the second mode of wyrd, particularly Anglo-Saxon thought on wyrd), is inextricably woven together, ‘fused’ (BMC, 20), with the heroic imagination and the northern temperament of iron will. F. Anne Payne (1974, 34) writes of wyrd as
the weight man’s noblest efforts are anchored to; the heroic imagination, his highest form of perception and commitment, is all that gives him freedom in the face of the knowledge that what he strives for will, in the end, be seen as inadequate.
While the providence of Eru Ilúvatar’s music is already always present in Arda, wyrd is conjured within Arda by this refusal to Yavanna and further firmly established by the Kin-slaying and subsequent Doom of the Noldor until it is broken by Galadriel’s eucatastrophe on the cusp of the Fourth Age. Until that point, the Legendarium’s narrative engages in a discursive dance between wyrd and providence which subtly affects the Elvish-Germanic story and plot.
It is a dance to the Music of the Ainur on the dance floor of Arda.
Free will and freedom of choice are the first crucial elements in our Alfredian dynamic. In the Consolatio, the Prisoner confirms to Wisdom
It is as you say that God gives freedom to everyone to do whatever he wishes, good or evil, and you say that God knows everything before it happens; and you say that nothing happens unless God wishes or permits it, and you say that it must all come about as he has decided . (ADCP, V, p 32, i, , 383)
Fëanor exercises his Ilúvatar-given freedom of choice, yet that freedom of choice is motivated by his possessiveness. Verlyn Flieger (2009, 166-67) rightly points out that this is a crucial moment in the narrative in that Fëanor refuses Yavanna request for the Silmarils: “This thing I will not do of free will” (S, 83) but in Flieger’s view, the Elves do not have free will . Flieger’s doubt notwithstanding, her notation of the ‘event’ demands more attention
It seems wyrd in all senses of the word. Tolkien has again muddied the waters by suggesting that if Fëanor’s response had been different, that the difference might have affected his subsequent deeds. But now (my [Flieger’s] emphasis) his choice brings on the Doom of the Noldor. Free will can apparently invite fate. As noted earlier, doom is derived from Anglo-Saxon dòm. While its primary meaning is: “I. judgement, decree, ordinance, law,” it has also a rare usage listed as IV. “Will, free will, choice, option” (Bosworth-Toller). Thus, Fëanor’s impractical choice to deny Yavanna the Silmarils, and his consequent oath to pursue Morgoth bring on the choice of the Noldor to follow him, which leads to their Doom. Though that doom is spoken in the voice of Mandos, it is the Noldor who in effect doom themselves. (Flieger 2009, 167)
Keeping in mind Alfred’s translation, Tolkien’s waters do not seem muddied at all but rather highly sophisticated writing. It is in full agreement with the ‘Romano-Christianized Anglo-Saxon tradition’ especially as Ida Gordon (1979, 47n) phrased it “[W]yrd is often equated in Christian poetry and homily with the workings of God’s will, especially with reference with the Doom to come…” Because of Fëanor’s excessive possessiveness (Flieger 2002, 110; Shippey 2005, 273-76) is inherent in his character, he believes that the Silmarils are his by right:
Fëanor “seldom remembered now that the light within them was not his own” (S, 70). Coincidentally, in speaking of jewels in general, Wisdom admonishes Mōd: “In fact, the excellence of the beauty that is in the jewels is theirs, not yours [meaning mankind]” (ADCP, II, p vii, iv, 69).
In Tolkien’s Alfredian order, Ilúvatar is the supreme creator and gift-giver, the One, in which the inspiration, the light, the trees, etc. were given to Arda through the mediation of Yavanna, who sub-created the light. Fëanor, simply by his character-traits, is blind to the fact that he is merely a sub-sub-creator (although highly ‘gifted’ one in the cræft of talent). Once again, Wisdom drives the point home:
You can be grateful that you have had good use of my gifts. You cannot claim at all that you lost anything of your own. (ibid., II, P V, viii, , 39)
In Alfred’s Consolatio, Frakes reminds us that, “Mankind’s greed [or Fëanor’s possessiveness] is so predominant that Wisdom can no longer exercise control over his own servants and has even been drawn to false goods himself (18, 1-3) Since the goods have a divine origin, according to Alfred, this perversion of them by human greed is an attack on the natural, divine order of the cosmos” (Frakes 1988, 105). Fëanor’s refusal is an unwise use – a perversion of his gifts – both of his talent and of the material Silmarils. This, of course, has enormous consequences; consequences that drive our story. The most salient are the effects of the wyrd he has immediately activated and the chain of cause and effect which leads to the Doom and the Germanic narrative. What is at play here is his freedom of choice, and if chosen wrongly, the attention of Ilúvatar is brought down upon the chooser/actor in the form of wyrd:
Man, in his right to choose, to dislocate the texture of things because he lacks omniscience, performs acts which require the direct attention of God. This attention Alfred calls Wyrd, the work that God does every day (128.18-20) … Since, in the same passage, Alfred makes it clear that all other events in the universe are set by natural law from the beginning of time, the work of God can be drawn forth only by those beings free to disrupt the perfect pattern of things. Wyrd is the balance that keeps the free choices of men from rending the universe astray. The universe must operate in terms of an order of its own and if men’s choices threaten it deliberately evil, or merely humanly inadequate, Wyrd comes against them. (Payne 1974, 18)
The heroic nature of Fëanor makes him free to disrupt the “perfect pattern of things” and furthermore, there is no need for an obvious divine intervention here: Ilúvatar can simply rely on “the natures of Fëanor and his sons being what they are” (Kocher 1980, 26). Richard Purtill (1984, 124) notes that “Tolkien plainly means to say that Fëanor made the wrong choice, showing how it led to disaster for himself and for those who follow him, how the first evil choice led to murder and treachery and other crimes” – ad malum exemplum.
Wyrd is invoked for its judicial aspect to punish the violation of misuse of gifts and gift-giving by Fëanor’s error of choice. This is a seemingly malevolent aspect of wyrd, but it is not evil. Rather, since it corrects and punishes, it is aduersa fortuna and deemed good at a cosmic level of the divine plan (Frakes 1988, 98). To those who are unable to conceive the divine plan, however, wyrd may seem wrathful.
For example, what applies to Beowulf below also applies to Fëanor:
Wyrd is the force that eventually destroys the lives of the violators of unknowable universal order in the world of Beowulf. It is the agent in the most terrible experience of the day of death. It is the opponent of man in the strange area of the most intense perception and consciousness. Though it may hold off for a while, the individual in the end makes an error in choice and releases forces whose consequences at the moment of crises he controls no longer and Wyrd is victorious. Wyrd affects only those with the strength and energy to enter that space where order is at first contingent on their choices. When they fail as they inevitably do because they are human, Wyrd’s dreadful power compensates for their inadequacies. While it is completely accurate to say in epic and tragedy in general that the hero seeks his fate, it is totally erroneous to say he seeks his Wyrd. Wyrd is alien to the individual; it is the force which balances his errors, punishes him, at best tolerates him. Wyrd is always the Other. (Payne 1974, 15-16)
As Flieger has pointed out, wyrd comes into existence from the Elves themselves. Born in the discourse, more likely than not, between Fëanor and the Valar that disrupts Eru’s unknowable order. That is, the themes that even the Valar are not fully cognizant of in the Music of the Ainur. Ilúvatar’s “order” seems to be contingent on the strength and energy of Fëanor’s character, creations and actions in this matter as Fëanor himself has the courage to rebuke the Herald of Manwë: “… and it may be that Eru has set in me a fire greater than thou knowest” (S, 91). To paraphrase Frakes, Fëanor may be referring here to a plan of foreþonc (of which wyrd is subservient), that remains as a plan in God’s mind, along with prouidencia and thus not within the realm of materia. That is, however, until the plan is executed and it enters the material realm as wyrd yet still subservient to foreþonc, or God (Frakes 1988, 166).
Wyrd is then given a sort of consistency in the form of the Oath and call to everlasting darkness. It is explicitly stated after the Kinslaying, appropriately, by the Herald of Mandos and reified in the Prophecy of the North. That it may “hold off for a while” is evident in the proclamation of Mandos but it is not very long, as Tolkien tells us, before the first “fruits” are felt after the Great Burning of the ships “[T]his was the first fruits of the Kinslaying and the Doom of the Noldor” (S, 97). At this point and at many points thereafter in the narrative, the dance of wyrd certainly seems wrathful. It takes providence to lead wyrd, and to intervene when wyrd’s steps appear in danger of dancing outside the divine plan.
5. The Mode of Providence and its Interlacing Dance
In his 1954 edition of The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, Eugène Vinaver (Vinaver 1954, viii) astutely observed that Malory’s work
was an elaborate fabric woven out of a number of themes which alternated with one another like the threads of a tapestry: a fabric whose growth and development had been achieved not by a process of indiscriminate expansion, but by means of a consistent lengthening of each thread … [W]ith great consistency, though with varying degrees of success, he endeavoured to break up the complex structure of his sources and replace their slowly unfolding canvas of recurrent themes by a series of self-contained stories.
Tolkien, in his ‘heroic romance’ uses the interlacing technique to remind us of its connections to much more than is outside the confines of the self-contained story. The themes of Northern courage, wyrd, and providence dance in and out of the story and always remind us of the world in which their movements take place. These reminders are always “merely implicit” (Vinaver 1971, 85).
This technique of interlace, or what C.S. Lewis calls ‘polyphonic’ (1954, 97) and Tasso called ‘natural multiplicity’ (Davenport 2004, 271), weaves various story threads that “tangle and untangle, cross and recross, in accordance with a carefully prearranged plan of narrative coincidences and interdependencies” (Ryding 1971, 16).
In other words, it is “a device of interweaving a number of separate themes” (Vinaver 1971, 71). Vinaver (ibid., 76) cites C.S. Lewis (C.S. Lewis 1954, 98) to further explain that
The (improbable) adventure which we are following is liable at any moment to be interrupted by some quite different (improbable) adventures, there steals upon us unawares the conviction that adventures of this sort are going on all around us, that this vast forest (we are nearly always in a forest) this is the sort of thing that goes on all the time, that it was going on before we arrived and will continue after we have left.
Interlace is evident in the story of the Eldar Days, in particular the three ‘Great Tales’ which interlace improbable adventures among themselves and yet, as Vinaver suggests of Malory, are self-contained tales in and of themselves.
The three ‘Great Tales’ are Beren and Lúthien, The Children of Húrin, and The Fall of Gondolin. A reader may pick up anyone of these stories and read a self-contained tale, even if they have not read The Silmarillion, or any of Tolkien’s works for that matter. Nevertheless, the Great Tales all interlace with one another. For example, the meeting of Tuor with the Finarfins Gelmir and Arminas (FG, 152-55) interlaces with their meeting Túrin in Nargothrond (CH, 171-75) as does the espying of Túrin at the pool of Ivrin: “But they knew not that Nargothrond had fallen, and this was Túrin son of Húrin, the Blacksword” (FG, 179). The same episode, from Túrin’s point of view, is only narrated in the first paragraph of Chapter XII (CH, 182) and he does not notice them. Therefore, The Children of Húrin does not reciprocate the interlace of this particular episode. Another example is Mablung, when he states “More do I dread this errand of the King than the hunting of the Wolf” (ibid., 203) which interlaces with the hunt for the tormented wolf Carcharas in Beren and Lúthien: “That great wolf had run in madness through all the woods of the North, and death and devastation went with him. Mablung alone escaped to bear the news of his coming to Thingol” (BL, 139). These are but a sample, but one may find much, much more throughout Tolkien’s entire Legendarium. Indeed, the use of interlace in this fashion gives the feeling that “this is the sort of thing that goes on all the time, that it was going on before we arrived and will continue after we have left” which achieves “some depth in the treatment of characters and situation” (Davenport 2004, 273).
We may note that, in the ‘Great Tale’ The Fall of Gondolin, The Lord of Waters Ulmo has his own ‘divine plan’ in motion. No doubt under the auspices of the Great Authority, but Ulmo’s plan is explicit rather than implicit and self-contained within the tale. Yet it still operates under the same conditions as Ilúvatar’s providence mode. In the last version of the ‘Great Tale’, the Noldo Gelmir tells Tuor “Farewell! And think not that our meeting was by chance; for the Dweller in the Deep moves many things in this land still” (FG, 155, emphasis mine).
The movements of providence’s dance are usually, but certainly not always, provided by a clue referencing ‘chance’. Readers of The Lord of the Rings will recognize Tolkien’s “finger of God” and its use with technique of interlace. Richard West (2003, 86) notes that
… the technique of interlace can mirror the ebb and flow of events; it may also show purpose or pattern behind change. Tolkien has emphasized this by a motif threaded throughout the work. Gandalf says cryptically that Bilbo was meant to find the ring by someone other than its maker, and that Frodo also was meant to have it.
This technique of interlace shows itself very early in the Quenta Silmarillion. For example, when “on a time it chanced that Oromë rode eastward in his hunting” and found the Firstborn awakened so that “the Valar found at last, as it were by chance, those whom they had so long awaited” (S, 45-46). In the narrative of the Eldar, providence begins its dance steps very early on.
By using the motif ‘by chance’ Tolkien is in effect negating chance within the ordo of the Legendarium. Nothing happens ‘by chance’ (OE adv. wêas) in Arda. This, too, may be supported within the framework of the Alfredian Consolatio:
The unexpected result (unwenunga gebirede, 140, 10-11) of an act is similar to Aristotle’s rare/unusual event. That chance is not an efficient cause, but only incidental to an efficient cause, is present in Alfred’s denial that anything occurs outside of God’s ultimate control. And that such events are teleological is assumed in this subjection to God’s beneficent order. (Frakes 1988, 119)
It is only the epistemological gap (ibid., 120) (that the Valar share but to much less a degree) that prevents Elves and Men from fully understanding the divine ordo of Ilúvatar. Hence Tolkien’s second part of the motif ‘if chance is what you call it’. Wisdom, in the Alfredian text, denies that Aristotle’s farmer who happened to find gold buried in his field was caused by any chance whatsoever, rather it was providence who led the farmer to the riches as part of the divine plan:
Therefore it was not found by chance, but divine providence guided the one whom he wanted so that he hid the gold and again the one whom he wanted so that he found it. (ADCP V, p 31, ii, 379)
And it is so in the Legendarium: chance does not exist but simply that uncanny and unexplained events are ultimately, and cryptically, attributed to this mode of Authority.
Lastly, there are providence’s moves to lead and guide wyrd along the divine plan. Here we are speaking of ‘ill chance’. For example, when Túrin demands to be led to the hillock by the Crossings of Teiglin where Finduilas the Elf-maiden was recently buried, the captain of Brethil turns to his men and says
‘Too Late! This is a piteous chance. But see: here lies the Mormegil himself [Túrin, laying in grief upon the mound], the great captain of Nargothrond. By his sword we should have known him, as did the Orcs.’ (CH, 195)
This is one more dance-step of Túrin’s doom or wyrd. It was caused by a fateful decision of Túrin and its effect will be to cause Túrin to make another fateful decision. Nonetheless, it was not chance, piteous, ill or otherwise: it was the divine plan all along. In the Alfredian framework, states Frakes (1988, 120),
Only in the reduced sense ‘unexpected or inexplicable event’ (which is nonetheless governed by providence) does casus survive, and this only in the general Alfredian term wyrd: þe we þonne hatað wyrd, þonne se gesceadwisa God, þe ælces monnes ðearfe wat, hwæt wyrcð oððe geþafað þæs þe we ne wenað” (132, 20-22). Weas gebyrian is obliterated, and wyrd remains, as the often unexpected and epistemological unfathomable event, which nevertheless stems from the divine plan.
In Tolkien’s Legendarium, like Alfred’s Consolatio, chance is obliterated in the divine dance of Authority. If chance is what you call it.
6. Conclusion
The dance of Authority in Arda spans the entire Legendarium from The Silmarillion and the ‘Great Tales’ to (although not discussed here) The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It is a series of interactions, of causes and effects, between three modes of Authority. Firstly, fatum as the Music of the Ainur which binds all living things, except Men, to the confines of Arda; secondly, the wyrd invoked by the Germanic hero Fëanor’s freedom of choice to refuse Yavanna, which is seemingly malevolent to those it affects but in truth is another aspect of divine will. Wyrd acts within an Alfredian framework as an agent of judgement, punishment and correction; thirdly, providence as divine will which at crucial times will insert itself as “the finger of God.”
Tolkien wrote a series of self-contained stories that, with great consistency, interwove various themes, but by no means limited simply to the theme of divine Authority and its modes discussed here. His Legendarium does not lend itself to either a reduction to a single theme or to a mechanical division (Vinaver 2001, 545) but rather to a wide tapestry of interweaving narrative threads. The end result, as C. S. Lewis (1954, 98) put it, is a very “lifelike consistency” in that
all the adventures bear the stamp of the world that produced them, have the right flavor, make each other probable; in its apparent planlessness – they collide, and get mixed up with one another and drift apart, just as events in the real world; in its infinity – we can, so obviously, never get to the end of them, there are obviously more and more, round the next corner.
The stories have the right flavor of Northern courage due to Fëanor’s choice and collide and drift apart at various points in the narrative. The wyrd of the Noldor seems like a planless malevolent fate but is actually a correction in the overall divine plan. Providence at times turns on the floor. It is all a dance to the Music of the Ainur and choreographed by Eru Ilúvatar according to the divine plan.
Works Cited
Caldecott, Stratford. 2012. The Power of the Ring: The Spiritual Vision Behind The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. 2nd ed. New York: The Crossroad.
Davenport, Tony. 2004. Medieval Narrative: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs. 2017. edited by David W. Bercot. Peabody: Hendricksen Publishers Marketing. Original edition, 1998.
Dubs, Kathleen E. 2004. "Providence, Fate, and Chance: Boethian Philosophy in Lord of the Rings." In Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader, edited by Jane Chance, 133-142. Lexington: University of Kentucky press.
Flieger, Verlyn. 2002. Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World, Revised Edition. Kent: Kent State University Press.
---. 2009. "The Music and the Task: Fate and Free Will in Middle-earth." Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review 6: 151-181.
Frakes, Jerold C. 1988. The Fate of Fortune in the Early Middle Ages: The Boethian Tradition. Edited by Albert Zimmermann. Vol. 23 Studien un Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Frank, Roberta. 2010. "Germanic Legend in Old English Literature." In The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, edited by Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, 88-106. Cambridge: Cambridge University press. Original edition, 1991.
Freeh, Helen Lassiter. 2015. "On Fate, Providence, and Free Will in the Silmarillion." In Tolkien Among the Moderns, edited by Ralph C. Wood, 51-77. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Gallant, Richard Z. 2020. "The ‘Wyrdwrīteras’ of Elvish History: Northern Courage, Historical Bias, and Literary Artifact as Illustrative Narrative." Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoetic Literature 38 (2 (#136)): 25-44. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol38/iss2/2.
-— 2020. "Galadriel and Wyrd: Interlace, Exempla and the Passing of Northern Courage in the History of the Eldar." Journal of Tolkien Research 10 (2). Available at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol10/iss2/5.
Geary, Patrick J. 2012. Writing History: Identity, Conflict, and Memory in the Middle Ages. edited by Florin Curta and Cristina Spinei. Bucureşti-Brăila: Editura Academiei Române.
Gillett, Andrew. 2002. On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages. Edited by Julian D. Richards Elizabeth M. Tylor, Ross Balzaretti. Vol. 4. Studies in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Andrew Gillet. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers n.v.
Gordon, Ida, ed. 1979. The Seafarer. Edited by Marion Glasscoe and M. J. Swanton, Exeter Medieval English Texts and Studies. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
Greenfield, Stanley B. 1972. A Critical History of Old English Literature. New York: New York University Press.
Haug, Walter. 2006. Vernacular Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: The German tradition, 800-1300, in its European Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heather, Peter. 2009. Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe. London: Pan Publishers.
Honegger, Thomas. 2004. "Tolkiens moralischer Kosmos." Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 45: 239-259.
Hynes, Gerard. 2012. "Tolkien’s Boethius, Alfred’s Boethius." In The Return of the Ring: Proceedings of the Tolkien Society Conference 2012, edited by Lynn Forest-Hill, 131-140. Loughborough University: Luna Press.
Irvine, Susan and Malcom R. Godden, ed. 2012. The Old English Boethius: With Verse Prologues and Epilogues Associated with King Alfred. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Irving, Edward B. Jr. 1989. Rereading Beowulf. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Ker, W.B. 1904. The Dark Ages. Edited by Professor Saintsbury.Periods of European Literature. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Kocher, Paul H. 1980. A Reader’s Guide to the Silmarillion. London: Thames and Hudson.
Lewis, C. S. 1954. "Edmund Spenser." In Major British Writers, edited by G. B. Harrison, 91-181. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.
Payne, F. Anne. 1974. "Three Aspects of Wyrd in Beowulf." In Old English Studies in Honour of John C. Pope, edited by Jr. Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving, 15-35. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Phillpotts, Bertha S. 1991. "Wyrd and Providence in Anglo-Saxon Thought." In Interpretations of Beowulf, edited by R.D. Fulk. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Original edition, 1928.
Purtill, Richard L. 1984. J.R.R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality and Religion. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Ryding, William W. 1971. Structure in Medieval Narrative. The Hague: Mouton & Co.
Shippey, Tom. 2002. J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
---. 2005. The Road to Middle-Earth: Revised Edition. London: Harper Collins. 1982.
Simek, Rudolf. 2007. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Translated by Angela Hall. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Reprint, 2007. 1984.
Stanley, Eric Gerald 2000. Imagining the Anglo-Saxon Past: The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism and Anglo-Saxon Trial by Jury. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
Tolkien, J. R. R. 1999. The Silmarillion. edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: Harper Collins. Reprint, 1999. 1979.
---. 2006a. "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 5-48. London: Harper Collins. Original edition, 1983.
---. 2006b. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. edited by Humphrey Carpenter with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien. London: Harper Collins. 1981.
---. 2008. The Children of Húrin. edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: Harper Collins.
---. 2009. "Notes and Documents Fate and Free Will." In Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review, 183-188.
---. 2017. Beren and Lúthien. edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: Harper Collins.
---. 2018. The Fall of Gondolin. edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Trahern, Joseph B. Jr. 2010. "Fatalism and the Millenium." In The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, edited by Malcom Godden and Michael Lapidge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Treharne, Elaine, ed. 2006. Old and Middle English c. 890—c. 1400: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Malden: Blackwell.
Vinaver, Eugène, ed. 1954. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. London: Oxford University Press.
---. 1971. The Rise of Romance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
---. 2001. "Sir Thomas Malory." In Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History, edited by Roger Sherman Loomis, 541-552. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
von See, Klaus. 1971. Germanische Heldensage: Stoffe, Probleme, Methoden. Frankfurt: Athenäum Verlag.
Weber, Gerd Wolfgang. 1969. Wyrd: Studien zum Schicksalsbegriff der altenglischen und altnordischen Literatur. Bad Homburg v. d. H.: Verlag Gehlen.
West, Richard C. 2003. "The Interlace Structure of The Lord of the Rings." In A Tolkien Compass, edited by Jared Lobdell, 75-91. Chicago: Open Court.
Zimbardo, Rose A. 2004. "Moral Vision in The Lord of the Rings." In Understanding the Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism, edited by Rose A. Zimbardo and Niel D. Isaacs, 68-75. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE