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.
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.