Book Description

J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings has garnered cultural and academic interest since it first came into print in 1954. Tolkien scholarship has developed into a burgeoning area of study in English literature, pioneered by the likes of Flieger and Shippey. The scholarly work of these two has provided the base for Tolkien studies that has been continued by Cawsey and Eden to name just two. From politics and ecology to gender studies, The Lord of the Rings has sparked discussion about every facet of Middle-earth's legendarium and modern critical approaches to Tolkien's work. In this work, I offer an in-depth analysis of the meaning and function of music among various races in The Lord of the Rings and seek to demonstrate that the centrality of music in this story, while often overlooked, is of overwhelming importance. An underdeveloped area of this connection is the reason why music plays a critical role in the development of race relations, access to memory, and knowledge transmission in Middle-earth. I demonstrate that music - not just verse, but music - is built into the very fabric of the Middle-earth cosmos. In seeking to further my claim, I look to Boethius, whose treatise on music, De Institutione Musica, places music at the harmonious centre of the universe. Building on Shippey's analysis of philology, Eden's brief remarks on music, and Boethius' accounts of music centring the cosmos, I demonstrate that the music, songs, lyric poetry, and vocal manifestations used by Hobbits, Elves, Men, Ents, and Wizards create an encompassing racial commonality that unites the races of Middle-earth in understanding and expressing memory, history, and knowledge transmission.