The term “medievalism” is sufficiently broad to describe the practices of a great number of different trends related to the Middle Ages in scholarship and popular culture, but also maddeningly vague for those who seek in it a clear definition. As both Tom Shippey and Nils Holger Petersen have pointed out in their contributions to this volume, it may be more accurate to speak of “medievalisms” because of the multiple forms through which interest in the Middle Ages tends to manifest itself. This is particularly true with regard to the divide separating historically based “high culture” studies of the medieval period and productions of “popular culture” inspired by it; the latter tend to focus less on the historical period known as the Middle Ages than on received ideas about it. J. R. R. Tolkien's publications as a specialist of medieval literature, for example, are quite different from his use of these sources as inspiration for his fictional Lord of the Rings series. Tolkien's knowledge of and engagement with Anglo-Saxon language, literature, and culture is not always replicated by his admirers, many of whom accept his work as “medieval,” much as the “medieval” worlds represented in Second Life “islands” are more likely to have drawn their inspiration from Peter Jackson's cinematic adaptation of Tolkien's fiction than from either Tolkien's work or extant sources from the eighth century.