Tolkien based the West off of Europe, the Shire off Britain, and Mordor off a combination of Germany at the time, and the Middle East. Orcs are the Muslims.
Spez: just occurred to me LOTR is one of the most nationalist books I didn't realize was even nationalist lol
Yeah looking at the map now it's laughably obvious! I'm no Tolkien scholar, and maybe someone could help me out here... But I think I recall he had some thing about English people lacking a foundational myth, and to some extent he was trying to make one?
Sometimes I wonder if he was trying to rejuvenate an English / European common ancestral memory of invasion and solidarity, for generations yet unborn. Other times I think he was working out war trauma.
That may be very well true, true, I'm no Tolkien scholar, but I can't think of any other foundational British myth pre-LOTR. I'm sure there is but they al probably pale in comparison to LOTR.
How much of LOTR is about fighting off muslims???? I never thought about it when first reading the books as a boy, but in retrospect....
Tolkien based the West off of Europe, the Shire off Britain, and Mordor off a combination of Germany at the time, and the Middle East. Orcs are the Muslims.
Spez: just occurred to me LOTR is one of the most nationalist books I didn't realize was even nationalist lol
Yeah looking at the map now it's laughably obvious! I'm no Tolkien scholar, and maybe someone could help me out here... But I think I recall he had some thing about English people lacking a foundational myth, and to some extent he was trying to make one?
Sometimes I wonder if he was trying to rejuvenate an English / European common ancestral memory of invasion and solidarity, for generations yet unborn. Other times I think he was working out war trauma.
That may be very well true, true, I'm no Tolkien scholar, but I can't think of any other foundational British myth pre-LOTR. I'm sure there is but they al probably pale in comparison to LOTR.
Nevermind that... have you read the last book in the Chronicles of Narnia series, The Last Battle? Very unambiguously Christianity vs Islam.