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> he spent his whole life studying pre-modern societies Tolkien was not a historian, but a philologist — professionally, he was a scholar of comparative and hi
by atombender 2y ago
> he spent his whole life studying pre-modern societies
Tolkien was not a historian, but a philologist — professionally, he was a scholar of comparative and historical linguistics — and I think it's a stretch to say that he "studied pre-modern societies" outside the context of their languages.
The Lord of the Rings is essentially a re-imagining of pre-historic Britain, and the setting isn't so much informed by history as by mythology. LotR isn't "medieval", which is probably one of the greatest misunderstandings about the book, and one that lead to an unfortunate excess of faux-medieval sword-and-sorcery fantasy literature.
- Attrecomet 2y agoExcept it very obviously IS a medieval world. Not our Middle Ages, but a world that works very closely like how we understand Middle Ages to work. It's feudal, he understands Anglo-Saxon warfare to an amount surprising in an author of trivial literature, and he very obviously DID make a huge effort to make many details correct either in the "how we understand the past" way or to frame them in a way that is understandable for the people who read Beowulf and similar myths.
- IIsi50MHz 2y agoVague memories here, but I think Tolkien is said to have built his stories primarily as background for his constructed languages, because he believed that a language cannot be created in isolation without seeming hopelessly artificial and shallow.