Browsing the Compleat Middle-Earth Library - Page 3
© Michael Martinez
That is the most confusing aspect to the series, I think. Many people develop the mistaken idea that all of the stories are directly connected to Middle-earth, and they are not. In fact, none of the early material is part of the Middle-earth canon. There was no Middle-earth at the time, and Tolkien did not retrofit them into Middle-earth. He abandoned them, a fact Christopher makes clear in volume after volume. His father gave up on certain ideas and themes and moved on to new projects time and again through the years. But he kept reusing other ideas and themes.
The study of Middle-earth is therefore its own intricate and enveloping discipline. There is a great deal of material concerning Tolkien's Middle-earth -- both derived from Tolkien himself and from commentators -- that would require a lifetime to explore and absorb. Christopher documented the process by which his father advanced to the stage of creating Middle-earth, and he documented much but not all of the process of the creation itself. The twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth easily offer enough material for a full year of study in any literary curriculum.
The languages of Middle-earth and their predecessors offer another area of study, and the Tolkien linguistic community is thriving, if not threatening to engulf all of his readership. Tolkien linguists have even gone so far as to propose extensions to some of his languages. Their work has evolved into true philological research as they attempt to reconstruct the processes by which Tolkien devised and added words to his various languages.
The study of Middle-earth's imaginary history is my personal favorite and specialty. In fact, Tolkien probably wrote more about the history and cultures of Middle-earth, including their philosophies and motivations, than about any other aspect of Middle-earth. Nearly every linguistic essay and note, if not all of them, offers insight into the peoples and events of Middle-earth. Tolkien firmly believed that words did not exist alone. A word possessed a history, and if you understood the history of the word you learned something about the history and character of the people who developed and used that word. The study of history and language were almost one and the same thing for Tolkien.
The construction of Middle-earth itself presents another opportunity for study. That is, Middle-earth can be documented cartographically and sociologically. The lay of the land, the changes in geography, the ethnic diversity and evolution of the various peoples, and the interaction between peoples and geography are all sufficiently explained by Tolkien that one could easily write a book on the subject (and the various atlases of Middle-earth do not do it justice).
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