Tolkien FAQ - Part 2 Continued from last issue Was the northwest of Middle-earth meant to actually be Europe? Yes, but a qualified yes. There is no question that Tolkien had northwestern Europe in mind when he described the terrain, weather, flora, and landscapes of Middle-earth. This was no doubt partially because NW Europe was his home and therefore most familiar to him and partially because of his love for the "Northern tradition". As he said himself: "The North-west of Europe, where I (and most of my ancestors) have lived, has my affection, as a man's home should. I love its atmosphere, and know more of its histories and languages than I do of other parts; ..." (Letters 376 (#294)). Thus, the environment of Middle-earth will seem familiar to dwellers of that region of Europe (was Middle-earth another planet?). However, the geographies simply don't match. This was the result not so much of a deliberate decision on Tolkien's part to have things so but rather a side-effect of the history of the composition: the question did not occur to him until the story was too far advanced and the map too fixed to allow much alteration: ... if it were 'history', it would be difficult to fit the lands and events (or 'cultures') into such evidence as we possess, archaeological or geological, concerning the nearer or remoter part of what is now called Europe; though the Shire, for instance, is expressly stated to have been in this region [FR, 11]. I could have fitted things in with greater versimilitude, if the story had not become too far developed, before the question ever occurred to me. I doubt if there would have been much gain; ... Letters, 283 (#211) ... As for the shape of the world of the Third Age, I am afraid that was devised 'dramatically' rather than geologically, or paleontologically. I do sometimes wish that I had made some sort of agreement between the imaginations or theories of the geologists and my map a little more possible. But that would only have made more trouble with human history. Letters, 224 (#169) The remark that there probably would not "have been much gain" is characteristic and perhaps indicates Tolkien's own approach, which would seem to have been to focus on the environmental familiarity at the "local" level (in the sense that any particular scene might have come from somewhere in Europe) and to simply overlook the lack of "global" identity. On the other hand, he made some attempt to address the difficulty in the quote from the Prologue (FR, 11), where it was said: "Those days, the Third Age of Middle-earth, are now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed...". The conclusion is that it is a matter for each individual reader as to how important is the lack of geographical fit and where one comes down on the continuum between "Middle-earth was northwestern Europe" and "Middle-earth might as well have been northwestern Europe" (or, as Tolkien might have said, "Middle-earth 'imaginatively' was northwestern Europe"). [Thus, recent attempts to force the M-e map to fit the map of the Eurasian land mass, such as in Tolkien: The Illustrated Encyclopedia by David Day, should be discounted.] In one letter he provided indications to help in visualizing the circumstances of various locales, but this does not help in resolving the above matter, since again northwestern Europe was used for comparison rather than equation: The action of the story takes place in the North-west of 'Middle- earth', equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean. ... If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy. Letters, 375-376 (#294) References: FR, 11 (Prologue); Letters, 376 (#294), 239 (#183), 283 (#211), 224 (#169). Contributors: WDBL, Carl F. Hostetter ------------------------------------------------------------------ Was the Shire meant to be England? In this case, the balance between "actually was" and "was based upon" is entirely tipped towards the latter. There is no hint that the Shire was in any sense supposed to be the country now called England in an ancient state. On the other hand, there is plainly a very strong resemblance between the Shire and the rural England of about a century ago. More precisely, the Shire plainly could not be England in any literal sense: England is an island, and even changes in "the shape of all lands" (FR, 11) is insufficient to explain such a discrepancy (especially since even the westernmost part of the Shire was some 200 miles from the Sea). Nevertheless, the Shire was more exactly based on England than any other part of Middle-earth was based on any part of our world: the climate, place-names, flora and fauna, terrain, food, customs, and the inhabitants themselves, were all English. In effect the Shire was an idealised version of the rural England of Tolkien's childhood. Some of his comments on the matter were: [The Shire] is in fact more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of the Diamond Jubilee ... -- Letters, 230 (#178) But, of course, if we drop the 'fiction' of long ago, 'The Shire' is based on rural England and not any other country in the world... [Later in the same letter he implied that the Shire was "an imaginary mirror" of England.] -- Letters, 250 (#190) There is no special reference to England in the 'Shire' - except of course that as an Englishman brought up in an 'almost rural' village of Warwickshire on the edge of the prosperous bourgeoisie of Birmingham (about the time of the Diamond Jubilee!) I take my models like anyone else - from such 'life' as I know. -- Letters, 235 (#181) See also RtMe 31-33 for a fascinating suggestion that certain components of Tolkien's early philological studies may have contributed to his later conception of the Shire. Shippey has also suggested that Tolkien's motivation in changing Gandalf's supper request in ch 1 of the Hobbit from "cold chicken and tomatoes" in the first edition to "cold chicken and pickles" in the revised edition was linguistic: that to Tolkien's extraordinarily sensitive ear "tomato" sounded out of place in a country that was a mirror of English, since tomato only entered the language in the sixteenth century and moreover originally came from some Caribbean language. Likewise, tobacco, used in The Hobbit, was changed to "pipeweed", and "potatoes" were usually spoken of only by Sam, who called them "taters" (RtMe, 53-54; Annotated Hobbit, 19). Finally, great care must be taken not to confound the idea of the Shire's having been based on England with a concept found in Tolkien's earliest writings, that Tol Eress‰a (Elvenhome) eventually became England. This appeared during his early work on the Book of Lost Tales (which eventually evolved into the Silm). Very probably it had been supplanted even before he stopped work on the Lost Tales (1920) (BoLT I, 22-27). In any case, it had long since been abandoned by the time LotR was begun in 1937, and plays no part in the 'history' of Middle-earth as presented in LotR, Silm, the Hobbit, etc. References: FR, 11 (Prologue); Letters, 230 (#178), 235 (#181), 250 (#190); RtMe, 31-33 (2, "Survivals in the West"), 53-54 (3, "Creative anachronisms"); BoLT I, 22-27 (I, "Commentary on The Cottage of Lost Play"); Annotated Hobbit, 19 (ch 1, note 7). Contributor: WDBL, Wayne Hammond Jr, Bill Taylor ------------------------------------------------------------------ What were the changes made to The Hobbit after LotR was written, and what motivated them? In the original 1937 edition of the Hobbit Gollum was genuinely willing to bet his ring on the riddle game, the deal being that Bilbo would receive a "present" if he won. Gollum in fact was dismayed when he couldn't keep his promise because the ring was missing. He showed Bilbo the way out as an alternative, and they parted courteously. As the writing of LotR progressed the nature of the Ring changed. No longer a "convenient magical device", it had become an irresistible power object, and Gollum's behaviour now seemed inexplicable, indeed, impossible. In the rough drafts of the "Shadow of the Past" chapter Gandalf was made to perform much squirming in an attempt to make it appear credible, not wholly successfully. Tolkien resolved the difficulty by re-writing the chapter into its present form, in which Gollum had no intention whatsoever of giving up the Ring but rather would show Bilbo the way out if he lost. Also, Gollum was made far more wretched, as befitted one enslaved and tormented by the Ruling Ring. At the same time, however, Bilbo's claim to the Ring was seriously undercut. (Care must be taken when noting this last point. There are two issues involved, well summarised in the Prologue: "The Authorities, it is true, differ whether this last question was a mere 'question' and not a 'riddle' ... but all agree that, after accepting it and trying to guess the answer, Gollum was bound by his promise" (FR, 21). Thus, it was Bilbo's winning of the game that was questionable. Given that he had in fact won, albeit on a technicality, he was fully entitled to the prize, which, in the old version, was the ring. In the new version, however, he had no claim to the Ring at all, whether he had won or not, because the Ring was not the stake of the game. ) The textual situation thus reached was that there now existed two versions of the episode. Tolkien deftly made this circumstance part of the story by suggesting that the first time around Bilbo was lying (under the influence of the Ring) to strengthen his claim. (Bilbo had written this version in his diary, which was "translated" by Tolkien and published as "The Hobbit"; hence the error in the early editions, later "corrected".) This new sequence of events inside the story is laid out clearly in "Of the Finding of the Ring" (Prologue) and is taken for granted thereafter for the rest of the story (e.g. in "The Shadow of the Past" and at the Council of Elrond). The Hobbit as now presented fits the new scenario remarkably well, even though Tolkien, for quite sound literary reasons, left this entire matter of Bilbo's dishonesty out (it was an entirely irrelevant complication which would have thrown everything out of balance). The present attempt to step back and view the entire picture is made more involved by the fact that there were two separate pieces of dishonesty perpetrated by Bilbo. The first, made explicit, was that when he initially told his story to Gandalf and the Dwarves he left the ring out entirely - this no doubt was what inspired Gandalf to give Bilbo the "queer look from under his bushy eyebrows" (H, 99). Later, (after the spider episode) he revealed that he had the Ring, and it must have been at this point that he invented the rigmarole about "winning a present" (an incredible action, given the circumstances). There is, however, no hint in the text of this second piece of dishonesty (as noted above, it would have been a grave literary mistake). Readers are therefore given no indication that when "Balin ... insisted on having the Gollum story ... told all over again, with the ring in its proper place" (H, 163) that Bilbo didn't respond with the "true" story, exactly as described in Ch V. In this regard, "Of the Finding of the Ring" in the Prologue is a necessary prelude to LotR. References: Hobbit, 99 (Ch VI), 163 (Ch VIII), "Riddles in the Dark" (Ch V); Annotated Hobbit, 104 (Ch VI, note 2), 176 (Ch VIII, note 11), 325-327 (Appendix A: the original version is given here); FR, "Of the Finding of the Ring" (Prologue); Biography, 203 (V, 2); RtMe, 59-60 (3, "The Ring as 'Equaliser'"); The Return of the Shadow (HoMe VI), 75, 79-81, 84-87 (First Phase, III), 261-265 (Second Phase, XV). Contributor: WDBL, Wayne Hammond Jr ------------------------------------------------------------------ Was there a change of tone between Book I and the rest of LotR? Yes. Originally, the world of the Hobbit was not the same as the world of the Silm (Tolkien threw in a few names from it, like Gondolin and Elrond, for effect, but there was no explicit connection). Thus, when he began LotR, he thought he was writing a sequel to the Hobbit, and the tone of the early chapters, especially Ch 1, reflect this (it has the same "children's story" ambience as the Hobbit). With the coming of the Black Riders and Gandalf's discussion of Middle-earth history and the Ring a change began towards a loftier tone and a darker mood, though much less serious elements remained (e.g. Tom Bombadil). After the Council of Elrond LotR was overtly a sequel to the Silm. Oddly, Tolkien added new details but never changed the overall tone of Book I. He later claimed that the change in tone was intentional, that it was meant to reflect the changing perceptions of the Hobbits as they became educated about the Wide World. This was certainly not his intention as he was writing. On the other hand, the tone of "The Scouring of the Shire" is very different from that of "A Long-expected Party", possibly indicating the altered perspective of the observers. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Why did Tolkien fail to publish the Silm during the eighteen years which followed the publication of LotR? No definitive answer is possible, but a several serious obstacles can be listed. They included: Technical difficulties. Tolkien's unmethodical habits of revision had made the manuscripts chaotic; it seemed impossible to make everything consistent. Characters introduced in LotR had to be worked in. Beyond these detailed questions, he contemplated many alterations, even to fundamental features of his mythology. The problem of depth. In LotR, his references to the older legends of the First Age helped produce the strong sense of historical reality. In the Silm, which told the legends themselves, this method wouldn't be available. The problem of presentation. LotR had been basically novelistic, presenting the story sequentially from one character or another's point of view. But the Silm was and was meant to be a bundle of tales which had more in common with the ancient legends he studied than with LotR. He feared that if he presented it as an annotated study of ancient manuscripts that probably many readers would have difficulty enjoying the tales as stories. No Hobbits. He feared (correctly) that many people expected another Lord of the Rings, which the Silm could never be. To be continued - o -