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/lit/ - Literature

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4423793 No.4423793[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

Is Middle-Earth in Earth's distant past?
Or is it in Earth's distant future?

>> No.4423799

What if it's a fictional world inspired by the way we have lived in ours

>> No.4423800

minas tirith is constantinople, mordor is the caliphate

>> No.4423801

dwarves are jews

>> No.4423804

>>4423800
> orcs = mongols

makes perfect sense.

>> No.4423815

mediterranean literally translates to middle earth

>> No.4423893

Its in the center of the earth you dipshit, IE the middle, just like that julius vore movie.

>> No.4423897

>>4423804
no, muslims
gondor is the byzantine empire and arnor is the fallen western roman empire
the shire is britain and rohan is france or germany

>> No.4423920

>>4423804
>>4423897
Every time. It's like you guys don't even read.

>> No.4423923

No, it's just ww1

>> No.4423940

>>4423793
Distant past. Didn't you even read the opening line?
>A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

>> No.4423947

It's explicitly in the distant path.

>> No.4423953

What if it's a fictional world.

Seriously /lit/..

/b/ 2.0

>> No.4423972

>>4423815
No, it translates to "in/of the center of the land."

>> No.4424044

It's below us, in the hollow earth, at an unknown point in time.

>> No.4424109
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4424109

If OP wanted a serious answer, I'd say Earth's distant future.

It makes sense, considering that every magical/abnormal aspect of Middle Earth can be explained by dysfunctional technology.

>> No.4424116

No, because it's a fictional universe with a completely made-up fucking background. If you've read any Tolkien, and not just watched the movies, you would know that. And if you had read anything more than LOTR, you would know that drawing analogies between civilizations is high school-tier bullshit

>> No.4424129

>>4424109
Now you're reaching Alan Moore levels of bullshit, anon.

>> No.4425961

http://boingboing.net/2013/12/30/genderswitched-bilbo-makes-the.html

>> No.4425990

>>4423897
No.

Gondor is Gondor.

Arnor is Arnor.

The Shire is the shire.

Rohan is Rohan.

>> No.4426005

>>4424109


Really. LOTR is fallout? The ring is an irradiated stealth boy?

I knew orcs were supermutants.

>> No.4426039

>>4425961
>look at the comments
>no pun on the name Bilbo as "Bimbo"

intothetrashitgoes.jpg

>> No.4426066

>Tolkien wrote many times that Middle-earth is located on our Earth.[1] He described it as an imaginary period in Earth's past, not only in The Lord of the Rings,[2] but also in several letters.[3] He put the end of the Third Age at about 6,000 years before his own time,[4] and the environs of the Shire in what is now northwestern Europe (Hobbiton for example was set at the same latitude as Oxford),[5] though in replies to letters he would also describe elements of the stories as a "... secondary or sub-creational reality" or "Secondary belief".[6] During an interview in January 1971, when asked whether the stories take place in a different era, he stated, "No ... at a different stage of imagination, yes."

>> No.4426102

>>4423793

middle earth is in middle earth

>> No.4426118

>>4426005
Fallout takes place in an alternate timeline, anon. Point of divergence was sometime during the 1940's/1950's.

>> No.4426151

>>4424116
It's supposed to be prehistoric Earth, but the cultural analogues everyone sees are baseless, except Shire=England. Tolkien said right now we're in the Sixth Age IIRC.

>> No.4426202

>>4426066
>>4426151
Just what these fellows said.
Have ever read anything about Tolkien world besides Hobbit or LotR Trilogy? After elves left and 4th age began men started ruling over Arda and world slowly changed to the world we know. BTW Harad is Africa and Land of Sun is Americas

>> No.4426221

>>4423953
ok but did the fictional world exist in the past or in the future

>> No.4426263

>>4425990
If you fucking deny The LotR not being true than fucking Bible isnt true either.

>> No.4426386

>>4423897
Rohan is every nation or person who has ever come to aid one side in the main conflict and been a deciding but not central factor.
Ever hear the phrase, "the cavalry to the rescue?"

>> No.4426403

>>4426151
>>4426202
It's true that the cultural analogues are mostly BS. However, I think there are comparisons that can be made - I think as long as you don't fall into the trap of equating things one-to-one, and say that Gondor represents Byzantium, or that, I don't know, the elves are the French, or whatever. I think in particular that Rohan does have a lot of cultural similarities to what you might call prehistoric English cultures, and I think a lot of that is intentional for Tolkien. And we can certainly say that the book has a lot to do with World War I, for instance, as long as we don't say that Sauron is literally Wilhelm I (because that's dumb as fuck). But any extremely close and literal reading of it, yes, any reading of that kind of is certainly mistaken.

>> No.4426464

>>4426403
The only symbols that can be derived from Middle-Earth is that Morgoth/Orcs = industrialization and Elves/Shire = living with nature.

>> No.4426472

>>4426464
This post wasn't really meant as a reply to >>4426403

>> No.4426503

>>4426464
I think we want to talk about the figural, rather than the symbolic, and we want to talk about similarities and relevance in terms of themes, not in terms of analogies. So I agree, and I would even question whether the things you mention can truly be called symbols.

>> No.4426507
File: 702 KB, 1013x1015, middle-earth[1].jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4426507

>> No.4426512

Why is Hobbit so bad compared to the main book

>> No.4426514

>Tolkien said that he thought the time between the end of the Third Age and the 20th century AD was about 6,000 years, and that in 1958 it should have been around the end of the Fifth Age if the Fourth and Fifth Ages were about the same length as the Second and Third Ages. He said, however, in a letter written in 1958 that he believed the Ages had quickened and that it was about the end of the Sixth Age/beginning of the Seventh.

>> No.4426515

>>4426512
Because it's a children's bedtime story parodying heroic narratives, and wasn't conceived as a part of some sort of larger, more epic narrative?

>> No.4426517

>>4426464

This is just a clumsy way of looking at it. "The only symbols"? What the fuck? Surely it's better to say that the various constructions of Middle-earth are informed by real-world historical cultures and events without necessarily saying that they "represent" anything at all. Tolkien was fond of saying that LotR was not an allegory, it's not a parable basically where everything actually stands for something other than what it is. But if you can't agree that the concepts surrounding Gondor are strongly influenced by those surrounding Byzantium (the many-walled great city of the east, the degraded remnant of a once-great empire of men that spanned east and west alike, now being invaded across the water by an ethnoreligious Other state from still further east - oh if only god's anointed knight were here to save us (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirant_lo_Blanch - the counterfactual "salvation of Byzantium" narrative is quite ancient)) - without saying anything about whether Gondor "represents" Byzantium - you are, in my opinion, a huge cockhat.

>> No.4426522

>>4426512
>Why is Hobbit so bad
Nyet

>> No.4426528

>>4426512

The Hobbit rules, it's basically a story about the reader of fantasies having to meet the characters about whom he fantasizes and realizing that they are all assholes, except it totally predates fantasies as the genre we know.

>> No.4426541

>>4426528
No ei toi nyt tee siit varsinaisesti hyvää, selitit vaan mikä kirjan meta-idea oli.

>> No.4426554

>>4426541

>Well now, do not second penis really good, but you explained what the book was the idea of the meta.

haha google translating agglutinative languages erryday

>> No.4426560

>>4423793

Tolkien has said that it's some fictional part of Earth's past.