{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5625", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 5625, "subject": "traveling north: imagined geography", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2010-06-06T13:17:53+00:00", "last": "2010-06-06T13:35:07+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "<4C0BA001.3070408@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2010-06-06T13:17:53+00:00", "subject": "(urth) traveling north: imagined geography", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That's really interesting. I've been pondering the imagined geography of \nMiddle-earth my entire life, and it's always seemed to me that it is a \nre-imagination of the early medieval world projected forward from an \nideal past which itself was projected backward from an early medieval \nworld distilled from reading way too much medieval literature. It \nrepresents several orders of idealization, in other words. (John Crowley \nkind of addresses this literary process in his novella Great Work of \nTime.) For example, if there were Irish legends of Western isles of \nafterlife, then there were origins to that fact. Since those origins do \nnot lie in a geographical past, they must lie in an imaginary past---and \nby \"imaginary\" I don't mean \"not real\" but rather very real: \"more real \nthan real.\" What did the old bards actually imagine? Tolkien thus \nsupplanted the historical roots of the romance with his imagined \nromantic origins of the romance. And while the Orcs and Easterlings \nplainly express the insecurity (fear of absorption of the West by the \nEast) of Orientalism (perhaps African/Arab and Arab/Asian, \nrespectively), the relationship is not a simple one; Tolkien didn't \nsimply say, Hey, I need some scary Mongols and Saracens. Rather, he \nsaid, What's scary about what Europeans feared about the Mongols and \nTurks and Saracens? Where did it come from? How to make \"sense\" of it? \nAnd of course his Orientalism was not a medieval one in the first place, \nbut a 20th century one. his Orcs are more central than the Easterlings; \nwho are less \"processed\" and less interesting. (I don't think we ever \neven \"see\" them; they literally lurk at the far edges of an imagined \nmap.) Regarding what I mean by \"sense\": Take as an example the influence \nof Blake on the description of goblins in The Hobbit, which contains \nlanguage very similar to \"satanic mills.\" ------------------------------ \nMessage: 2 Date: Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:09:55 -0500 From: Jeff Wilson \n To: The Urth Mailing List \nSubject: Re: (urth) traveling north Message-ID: \n<4C0AD943.7070304 at io.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; \nformat=flowed" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "My point remains that around this time (1936 or so) he placed the\nsetting we know as Middle Earth in the literal past, slightly\noverlapping the historic era, with bloodlines continuing to this day\nallowing retrogression from our time to that. Things accumulated and by\nthe 70s he was reported saying it was in an imaginary world rather than\nan historical one." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I cut that loose a bit early. I just now reviewed a BBC interview from \n71 and he says:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "T: Oh yes, they're the same word. Most people have made this mistake of thinking Middle-earth is a particular kind of Earth or is another planet of the science fiction sort but it's just an old fashioned word for this world we live in, as imagined surrounded by the Ocean.\n\nG: It seemed to me that Middle-earth was in a sense as you say this world we live in but at a different era.\n\nT: No ... at a different stage of imagination, yes." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "http://web.archive.org/web/20040911093705/www.geocities.com/misctolkien/TolkieninterviewBBC1971.txt" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "-- Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com IEEE Student Chapter Blog at < \nhttp://ieeetamut.org > ------------------------------" } ] }, { "message_id": "<75bf2ad1cd62c3eca0e0dc3d16056f27.squirrel@brunians.org>", "from": { "name": "brunians at brunians.org", "address": "brunians at brunians.org" }, "date": "2010-06-06T13:35:07+00:00", "subject": "(urth) traveling north: imagined geography", "in_reply_to": "<4C0BA001.3070408@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It's rooted in Tolkien's thoughts on deep history.\n\n." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That's really interesting. I've been pondering the imagined geography of\nMiddle-earth my entire life, and it's always seemed to me that it is a\nre-imagination of the early medieval world projected forward from an\nideal past which itself was projected backward from an early medieval\nworld distilled from reading way too much medieval literature. It\nrepresents several orders of idealization, in other words. (John Crowley\nkind of addresses this literary process in his novella Great Work of\nTime.) For example, if there were Irish legends of Western isles of\nafterlife, then there were origins to that fact. Since those origins do\nnot lie in a geographical past, they must lie in an imaginary past---and\nby \"imaginary\" I don't mean \"not real\" but rather very real: \"more real\nthan real.\" What did the old bards actually imagine? Tolkien thus\nsupplanted the historical roots of the romance with his imagined\nromantic origins of the romance. And while the Orcs and Easterlings\nplainly express the insecurity (fear of absorption of the West by the\nEast) of Orientalism (perhaps African/Arab and Arab/Asian,\nrespectively), the relationship is not a simple one; Tolkien didn't\nsimply say, Hey, I need some scary Mongols and Saracens. Rather, he\nsaid, What's scary about what Europeans feared about the Mongols and\nTurks and Saracens? Where did it come from? How to make \"sense\" of it?\nAnd of course his Orientalism was not a medieval one in the first place,\nbut a 20th century one. his Orcs are more central than the Easterlings;\nwho are less \"processed\" and less interesting. (I don't think we ever\neven \"see\" them; they literally lurk at the far edges of an imagined\nmap.) Regarding what I mean by \"sense\": Take as an example the influence\nof Blake on the description of goblins in The Hobbit, which contains\nlanguage very similar to \"satanic mills.\" ------------------------------\nMessage: 2 Date: Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:09:55 -0500 From: Jeff Wilson\n To: The Urth Mailing List \nSubject: Re: (urth) traveling north Message-ID:\n<4C0AD943.7070304 at io.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1;\nformat=flowed" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "My point remains that around this time (1936 or so) he placed the\nsetting we know as Middle Earth in the literal past, slightly\noverlapping the historic era, with bloodlines continuing to this day\nallowing retrogression from our time to that. Things accumulated and\nby\nthe 70s he was reported saying it was in an imaginary world rather\nthan\nan historical one." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I cut that loose a bit early. I just now reviewed a BBC interview from\n71 and he says:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "T: Oh yes, they're the same word. Most people have made this mistake\nof thinking Middle-earth is a particular kind of Earth or is another\nplanet of the science fiction sort but it's just an old fashioned word\nfor this world we live in, as imagined surrounded by the Ocean.\n\nG: It seemed to me that Middle-earth was in a sense as you say this\nworld we live in but at a different era.\n\nT: No ... at a different stage of imagination, yes." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "http://web.archive.org/web/20040911093705/www.geocities.com/misctolkien/TolkieninterviewBBC1971.txt" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "-- Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com IEEE Student Chapter Blog at <\nhttp://ieeetamut.org > ------------------------------\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] } ] }