Mapping Middle-earth: tracing environmental and political narratives in the literary geographies and cartographies of J.R.R Tolkien's Legendarium
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Date
30/06/2020Item status
Restricted AccessEmbargo end date
29/06/2021Author
Behrooz, Anahit
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Abstract
In 1954, shortly before the publication of The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
wrote to friend and author Naomi Mitchison, “I wisely started with a map, and
made the story fit” (Letters 177). This reciprocal relationship between map and
story is integral to understanding broader narratives about the interaction
between humans and their environment in Tolkien’s legendarium. Tolkien’s
corpus of maps acts as far more than paratextual material for the external
reader’s understanding of the narrative; rather, it indicates a subcreated
tradition of cartography that articulates particular power dynamics between the
map maker, the map reader, and what is being mapped, that are expressed
both through the maps and in the wider legendarium. Tolkien positions
cartography as an inherently political act that embodies a desire for totalising
understanding and control of its subject matter; this problematizing of external
control then enables a critique of harmful contemporary engagements with
land that intersect with but also move beyond cartography, namely
environmental damage, human-induced geological change, and the natural
and bodily costs of political violence and imperialism. Using historical,
ecocritical, and postcolonial frameworks, this thesis argues that Tolkien
employs particular generic characteristics such as medievalism, fantasy, and
the interplay between image and text, in order to highlight and at times even
correct his contemporary socio-political context and its destructive relationship
with the wider world, through both narrative and cartographic expression.