8/17/2023 0 Comments Middle earth map rivendellThis paper aims to highlight the curious gap between the importance of the map of Middle-earth and its lack of integration into the secondary world through examinations both of Tolkien's own writings, and of fan cartography. But the younger Tolkien's maps in The Lord of the Rings made maps an iconic-even cliched-component of the fantasy genre, on a par with elves, ancient swords, and dark lords (Ekman 2013, Jones 2006). Frank Baum's Oz books, and illustrated editions of the Bible. Maps had long been a common addition to stories about journeys in far-off places-in the accounts of travelers like William Dampier or James Cook (and Jonathan Swift's parody thereof in Gulliver's Travels), in works describing invented lands such as Treasure Island and L. A similar map has accompanied every subsequent edition, and official maps have been published as stand-alone products (Tolkien and Baynes 1970, Sibley 2003). A fold-out map of northwestern Middle-earth, expanding on the elder Tolkien's map of Wildlerland in The Hobbit, was included in the 1954 first edition of The Fellowship of the Ring. These questions about cartography in Middle-earth are given greater significance by the salience, for readers of the books and for the development of the larger genre of fantasy literature, of the maps drawn by the author and his son Christopher. What did they look like? Who drew them? How did the peoples of Middle-earth translate their world onto the cartographic page? Yet we are told very little about these maps in Middle-earth. This makes Middle-earth notably different from most pre-modern societies in our world, where maps were rare and poorly understood by the average person (Harley and Woodward 1987, Wood 1993). 370).įrom a handful of references such as these, we know that cartography existed in Middle-earth, and indeed that it was considered a perfectly ordinary and sensible thing to look at a map to find one's way. Some decades later, Bilbo's distant cousin Pippin laments his failure to have fully consulted the maps available in Rivendell before the Fellowship departed on its long journey (Tolkien 1965a, p. In Chapter 1 of The Hobbit, we learn of our protagonist Bilbo Baggins that "He loved maps, and in his hall there hung a large one of the Country Round with all his favourite walks marked on it in red ink" (Tolkien 1966, p.
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