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.
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.