What time is it?

[Childlike Empress]

Oh, so around the middle ages? That's simple enough. Whoa that was a long time ago

No, no. That would be long before the Middle Ages. Homer wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey centuries before Christ (if not longer) and Beowulf can be traced back thousands of years before that. The Middle Ages are a very recent part of our history, recent enough to have books actually printed then still in existence (I myself have seen one in person). There's no way LotR happened so recently.
I've always assumed that it was in prehistory, say ten or twelve thousand years ago.