4 ms·
Tolkien would have had at least a pretty good instinct for the feel of the post-Roman world as he was heavily exposed to primary sources... and lived in the tur
by jccooper 3y ago
Tolkien would have had at least a pretty good instinct for the feel of the post-Roman world as he was heavily exposed to primary sources... and lived in the turn-of-the-century English countryside, which would have still felt recognizably pre-modern.
Many subsequent authors will have only seen modern or American or no countryside at all and get their impressions of "the middle ages" from a mostly-fictional cultural pastiche of Tolkien (who was really writing a Late Antique world), Dungeons and Dragons, Monty Python, etc. so it's no surprise their worlds are rather implausible.
- veddox 3y ago> who was really writing a Late Antique world I agree with all the rest of your comment, but I think this point is only partly correct. Gondor can be interpreted as Byzantinian (late Antiquity), but Rohan is rather Anglo-Saxon (early Middle Ages), and the Shire actually quite modern (18th-19th century England). Numenor of course is Atlantean (romanticised classical Antiquity), the Druadain are Stone/Bronze Age, and the Elves - are the Elves.
- hydrok9 3y agosomeone else pointed out that “Rohan” was a noble house of Celtic Brittany, were horse lords, and traced ancestry to a “Meriadoc.”