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Middle-Earth Revised, Again - Page 2

© Michael Martinez

That is not an easy question to answer. The answer depends on who is doing the considering and what the scope of the research is concerned with. The question above was posed to me after I had said, "People just don't seem to understand that there are clear and definite divisions between the various mythologies." Well, anyone who wants to take exception with that statement will certainly find plenty of support for doing so. And that just underscores the first point I made: "People just don't seem to understand". Which, by implication, means I think I do understand...something. Of course I think that. And so everyone who disagrees with me thinks of their own knowledge. It's the rest of the readership out there, vaguely wraithlike in their undefined demographic, who self-admittedly don't have a clue and are earnestly seeking good solid information. The problem is that there really is no good solid information. Not on Middle-earth. Or darned little of it. What exactly is Middle-earth anyway? If you were to have asked Tolkien, he would have told you that "Middle-earth is just archaic English for [irreproducable characters] the inhabited world of men. It lay then as it does. In fact, just as it does, round and inescapable." (Letter 152), or "the inhabited lands of men 'between the seas'" (Letter 165), "the abiding place of Men, the objectively real world, in use specifically opposed to imaginary worlds (Fairyland) or unseen worlds (as Heaven and Hell)" (Letter 183). And as useful as those explanations are, they provide no real help in understanding or visualizing Middle-earth the way Tolkien understood and saw it. You can't really see it the way he did. In any event, Middle-earth proved to be an extremely fluid vision for Tolkien, unfolding more quickly than he could describe it. He heard the Music from afar and beheld the Vision, but he could not Create what he perceived. He could only sub-create a description of it, and in that he achieved far less than he desired. If we accept, as a starting point, that Middle-earth is defined only by the books Tolkien himself published in his lifetime, we find ourselves concerned only with four titles: The Hobbit (Second Edition of 1950), The Lord of the Rings (First Edition of 1954-5), The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and The Road Goes Ever On. In 1969, Pauline Baynes published a map of Middle-earth for which Tolkien provided her special information. It was the Baynes map which marked the first appearance of Lond Daer Ened, for example.

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