The Atlas of Middle Earth 307
The Atlas of Middle Earth | |
author | Karen Wynn Fonstad |
pages | 210 |
publisher | Houghton Mifflin |
rating | 8 |
reviewer | Jon Katz |
ISBN | 0-618-12699-6 |
summary | The Geography of Middle-Earth |
If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it's my wonder and delight in the earth as it is," Tolkien told an interviewer, "particularly the natural earth." He also wanted to provide a new, Brit-centric mythology for the world, so he took the literal earth and changed it just enough to make it "faerie."
With the cinematic trilogy of his books under production -- three separate films are scheduled for release over the next two years -- Middle Earth is going mainstream. These films will probably be nearly as big as Star Wars, if they're half as good, touching mythological and creative nerves that revolve around what we like to call science fiction in its varied forms.
As is often the case with culture The Lord Of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion -- provided comfort, stimulation, and escape for a particular sub-set of the human species, especially young, enchanted brainiacs growing up apart from the mainstream and eager -- desperate, maybe -- for other worlds to explore.
If you want to enter Tolkien's world, the best way is to read The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the The Silmarillion. For hard-core Tolkien lovers who have already done that, I'd highly recommend -- there's plenty of time before the first movie in December -- The Atlas of Middle-Earth (Houghton Mifflin), by Karen Wynn Fonstad, a University of Wisconsin cartographer who has drafted unbelievably detailed maps of Middle Earth from the First Age through the Third, including thematic and other maps, guides, places and events (the mapping of the The Silarillion is astounding).
Tolkien created the details of Middle Earth for himself, for his own creativity and intellectual exercise. He was, Fonstad writes, envisioning his world much as our medieval cartographers viewed our own.
Fonstad's descriptions of the pain-staking process she used to create these hundreds of details maps are almost as interesting as the stories upon which they're based. The atlas is a composite of the physical surface with the imprint of the "Free Peoples." A number of basic map types are included -- the physical, including landforms, minerals, and climate; the political (spheres of influence); battles; migrations (closely tied with linguistics); the traveller's pathways and finally, situation maps -- towns and dwellings, all arranged roughly in sequence. Fonstad even includes detailed pathway tables -- the distance Frodo spent on his pony on dozens of trips, the length of marches, the treks of elves, the flights of refugees.
Fonstad concedes that an almost endless series of questions, assumptions and interpretations were necessary in creating these maps. But each line has been drawn with a reason behind it, she says. And she explains the reasoning.
Middle Earth was the creation of a world, and is deserving of its own geography. Fonstad's atlas is well and clearly written, even for the casual fan of Tolkien. And the hundreds of maps she created offers a new prism through which to look at these works. This is by no means a book for everybody, and even die-hard fans of the trilogy might ask why they need to know so much. The hard-core fanatic will know.
You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.
So we'll have a "Lord of the Rings" topic on /.? (Score:4, Interesting)
Fantasy, LOTR, and movies (Score:2, Interesting)
I went on to read some reviews of the trilogy and found one reviewer to say the first 'book' can be pretty hard to get through but after the Council it really picked up. And it did. I found the Two Towers volume to be quite good. 'Book Five' in Return of the King was also really good but again, in 'Book Six', I find myself struggling to finish. While I recognize the brillance of the story and it's ground breaking imagery I have a hard time getting through some of tedious dialog and story. I find myself eying the second book of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn on my desk. This won't be popular with most LOTR fans, but frankly I like some modern fantasy better. To this day nothing has gripped me like RR Martin's Song of Fire and Ice.
As to the LOTR movie it will be a huge success if the creators stick to the original image of the movie. If the water it down for children, which I'm afraid they will, I will be very disappointed. I want to see heads fly over Minas Tirith!
The Layman's Silmarillion (Score:3, Interesting)
This book seems like an easier to read version of the silmarillion
Any Tolkien fan will tell you that the of the five books mentioned above, the Silmarillion reads like a cross between the Bible and 1980's VCR instructions. It is heavy with volumes of mythology, unpronouncable names and maps thet Bryce couldn't render. This book seems like an easier to read version of that most enigmatic of JRR's books.
Think Ill go get it and use it as a companion so I can finally finish teh Silmarillion.
Middle Earth geography maps to Europe's (Score:2, Interesting)
It's obvious from the text that Hobbits live in the British Isles, but look at the map again. It doesn't stop there. The war against Mordor is a transparent retelling of the centuries of conflict between Europe and the Huns (initially), later the Ottoman Empire. It's the same "West (good) vs. East (bad)" myth that fueled the Crusades.
Mordor == Turkey
Orcs == Turks
Rohan = Hungary
Gondor = Austria
Minas Tirith == Vienna
Check out the language (character set) of the orcs & Mordor, and the everpresent stereotypes (filth, cruelty, even curved blades!). Notice how ME is bordered on the West by the sea (divine, the final retreat of the heroes i.e. Avalon) but on the East it's a complete blank. Even the shape of Mordor resembles Turkey (Anatolia, actually).
There are so many details to support this it would make a decent PhD dissertation. But I don't mean to judge Tolkien or invalidate his work, it's just that as an adult I can't help but place it in the larger historcial and social context. The British Empire had finally triumphed (at hideous cost, e.g. Gallipoli) over the Ottoman at the time of The Hobbit's publication ('37?) but was itself mortally wounded. Rising Arab and Indian nationalism were busily undermining colonial rule, and Sauron was indeed growing in power in Europe's midst. The apocalypse finally arrived in Europe with the same inescapable and terrible violence it did in Middle Earth.
I look at that map and I see Europe before WWII. It makes me sad, because contained withing one of my most beloved childhood stories is a racist view of the world that persists (in some ways) to this day.