Beowulf and the Critics. By J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Michael D. C. Drout. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002. Pp. xx + 461. $38; £33.

"For it is of their nature," wrote J. R. R. Tolkien of Beowulf scholars in his famous 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," "that the jabberwocks of historical and antiquarian research burble in the tulgy wood of conjecture, flitting from one tum-tum tree to another. Noble animals, whose burbling is on occasion good to hear; but though their eyes of flame may sometimes prove searchlights, their range is short" (1958 ed., p. 4).


Alf Siewers
Bucknell University