Crossover for the win! LOL.
What d'you suppose happened to Mordor?
- Thread starter Deckerd
- Start date
Crossover for the win! LOL.
It's worth bringing up because Tolkien did not intend to write lightly about genocide. Even if the term was not yet invented when he started the novel, he could grasp the idea. Yet a man who I gather despised Nazi-style racism still wrote this. You get into problems like this with fantasy because wishful thinking misleads you. And unlike SF, there's no criterion of bad science to serve as a corrective.
Fantasy can't be realistic about the outer world, but it can be realistic, i.e., honest, about our wishful thinking.
That doesn't jibe with Shire=Oxford.
OK fine, I just refuse to believe the Shire=Oxford part
Didn't Tolkien use a lot of European/British places as inspiration overall? Not to mention the languages.
And the France-as-the coastline of ME (after the fall of Beleriand of course) isn't an exact match or anything. Just vaguely similar.
I don't think they're direct transpositions in the way you're suggesting. They're all just mythological ciphers inevitably drawing heavily on various past real-life cultures to give them a firmer rooting.
Having said that, while they aren't direct parallels, any writer is influenced indirectly by what's around him. You're certainly right that lots of stuff from the Shire could be considered to be inspired by Oxford. For instance, there's a Wytham Woods which has been suggested as partial inspiration for the Old Forest, and it's been suggested that one particularly old gnarled tree in the Botanic Gardens inspired the Ents. And Bucklebury is IRL a just little way down the road, just over the border of Oxfordshire with Berkshire, and there's a large private estate and forest there too. But lots of other locations in Tolkein's life could also be (and have been suggested as) inspiration for these places instead. I don't think we'll ever really know.
Or Vanyar?
...owned by Frank McCourt!
Dude, don't compare Mordor to Los Angeles. That's unfair to Mordor.
The liberation of the men of Nurn by Aragon II is from the canonical sources. As for Mordor, the men of Nurn were permitted to settle in that land as farmers.
(I sense that Tolkien was losing enthusiasm for the project of writing the TLotR and wanted to end the series. I feel especially that the last book is rushed, and that the attention to detail which existed in the earlier books is missing from this last book. I, also, believe that there are better written books in the fantasy genre; however, I do recognize the immense importance and influence that this series has played in the development and growth of the genre.
According to Tolkien, the orcs by themselves weren't evil. They were tools used by powerful man to further their agendas. The author, a former soldier, once wrote that he and others were orcs in the Great War.)
(I sense that Tolkien was losing enthusiasm for the project of writing the TLotR and wanted to end the series. I feel especially that the last book is rushed, and that the attention to detail which existed in the earlier books is missing from this last book. I, also, believe that there are better written books in the fantasy genre; however, I do recognize the immense importance and influence that this series has played in the development and growth of the genre.
According to Tolkien, the orcs by themselves weren't evil. They were tools used by powerful man to further their agendas. The author, a former soldier, once wrote that he and others were orcs in the Great War.)
I have no idea what happened to Mordor, maybe somebody should give them a ring and find out.
yeah, Aragon's in Spain. Catherine came from there.
The Last Ringbearer
Salon article:
http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer/
Link to semi-legal download
http://ymarkov.livejournal.com/270570.html
Since the author can't sell it outside of Russia, he's okay with English translations being allowed for free.
I started it, got several chapters in and lost steam. I do want to re-visit it, but I had trouble reading it on my iPhone. (Not sure if I could get my wife's Kindle away from her for long enough to read it).
I have no idea what happened to Mordor, maybe somebody should give them a ring and find out.
Uh-oh.I have no idea what happened to Mordor, maybe somebody should give them a ring and find out.
Looks like somebody is going into Shining mode.
RodRom RodRom RodRom
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