Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies

3. 
Tolkien´s Adaptations 
In the previous chapter, Tolkien needed mainly to understand as well as possible the 
original and to do everything he could to preserve the story in the same shape as it was so 
that he could maintain the artistic power. But to create poems that are the subject of the 
next chapter, he needs something new 
– his own imagination. It will be revealed fully in the 
chapter Four, but even now it is important. He focuses on what was written before and 
combines it in order to create his own version of stories that were retold and rewritten for 
centuries. Now and then, he even adds something completely new if he believes that this or 
that feature would be appropriate or even that it could have been included in some older 
version that is now lost. 
There are four units that will be discussed in this chapter. The Fall of Arthur, which is 
connected with the Arthurian legends, and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun that follows old 
poems from the north of Europe, are the longer and more important ones. The other two 
are rather short poems. The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son is a story that is 
inspired by the Old English poem, The Battle of Maldon. The last one, King Sheave, is about 
the man whom we knew from Beowulf or Widsith, which was an Old English poem too. In 
them
, Tolkie ´s imagination works almost fully and they probably could be included also in 
the last chapter. By leaving them here, a perfect interconnection between chapters 3 and 4 
is created. 
The origin of Arthurian legend reaches probably the 9
th
century when one of the 
oldest English chronicles, Annales Cambriae, was written. There was the name of certain 
Arthur mentioned for the first time. But the one who created - or at least recorded as the 
first one - the Arthurian legends in great complexity was Geoffrey of Monmouth, as a part of 

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his Historia Regum Britanniae. From then, many other versions appeared to this day. As 
Tolkie ´s The Fall of Arthur was published only a few months ago, it became one of the latest 
contributions to this unit. Tolkien himself obviously knew many of those previous versions 
and he composed his story from their storyline features, sometimes enriching them by more 
detailed description or by explaining actions of some characters. He managed to compose 
four cantos and a half, but he stopped there and so the poem remained unfinished. 
Nevertheless, he worked hard on some of the cantos he wrote. For example Canto III has 
more than five more or less different versions. Together, there are about 120 pages of 
drafting (The Fall of Arthur 171), while the finished poem itself has only 40 pages. As 
Christopher Tolkien already analyzed all these drafts and found out where exactly was 
Tolkien inspired by which previous author or version
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, for this paper it is enough to name his 
major influences and leave the precise details on the curiosity of a reader. The first main 
i flue e is Geoffre of Mo
outh´s ork. The se o d is The Alliterative Morte Arthure, 
with an unknown author and dating to some year around 1400. The third is so called 
Stanzaic Morte Arthur (or The Mort Artu) which comes from the French, more chivalric 
tradition. The fourth and last main influence is 
Tho as Malor ´s ersio , Le Morte d'Arthur, 
more precisely with its part called Tale of the Death of Arthur (The Fall of Arthur 104). As 
well as 
all of his ai i flue es, Tolkie ´s ork is also ritte i alliterati e erse. By 
considering all of the names or works so far mentioned, it is obvious which part of Arthurian 
legends Tolkien tried to retell. The last days of King Arthur and what lead to such an end is 
basically all he managed to write. But even though his poem is rather short, in contrast with 
thousands of lines of both Morte Arthur, "... it was read and approved by E. V. Gordon, and 
by R. W. Chambers, Professor of English at London University, who considered it to be great 
7
He did so i the essa „The Poem In Arthurian Tradition

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stuff - really heroic, quite apart from its value as showing how the Beowulf metre can be 
used in modern English" (Carpenter 151). Furthermore, it is important because of some new 
features
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that were thus 
added ot o l to Tolkie ´s ersio , ut to the hole fa il of 
Arthurian Tradition stories.
Tolkien was once commenting on which books he read or did not read as a boy and 
this is what he said: 
I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or fight pirates, and Treasure Island 
left me cool. Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows . . . , and strange 
languages, and glimpses of an archaic mode of life, and, above all, forests in such 
stories. But the land of Merlin and Arthur was better than these, and best of all the 
a eless North of “igurd of Völsu gs, and the prince of all dragons. Such lands were 
pre-eminently desirable (The Monsters and the Critics 41). 
It is obvious from this article that what he enjoyed as a boy he also focused on in his later 
ears. He e tered the la d of Merli a d Arthur only in four and a half cantos, but his 
voyage to the 
a eless North extends over 140 pages and consists of two long poems,