The Lord of The Rings and the Discourse of Europe

 Disclaimer: This is a first draft, sources to be added.

There probably isn‘t a book a love more than the Lord of The Rings. I have probably read it ten times ever since my mom dropped it into my lap at the age of twelve. At the same time, as it is considered the foundational work of modern fantasy, the book has been analysed left and right. Tolkien's world is built around his scholarship of ancient mythology, including Norse and Welsh legend .  There has also been a lot written about the work as a commentary on modernisation, from the Shire's role as a place of agro-romanticism to the trauma of disappearing woods and Saruman's "mind of metal".

But what has also strikes me is how much the story corresponds to deeply embedded elements of  Western discourse. The Lord of the Rings is a strongly European and in that sense "Western" book with centuries-old representations of mental maps and historical anxieties. In a rapidly changing world, it is worth tor recap and consider these representations.

Image credit: Liam Truong, Unsplash.com

Mindless orcs and heroic men - The idea of the „West“ under threat from the „East“

The mental map of the Lord of the Rings is in essence a West-East dychotomy: Danger and invasion threaten from the East- the West is endangered.  The journey into danger is towards the East. Mordor is in the East. The Wainriders and Haradrim and "evil men" are all from "The East".  The depiction of Orcs and Trolls as barbaric and devoid of strong individual characteristics mirrors the portrayal of the East as other in the history of European thought - Huns, Mongols, Ottomans, Russians (and Germans during WW 1 and 2) were all portrayed in "Orc-like" ways. In some ways it is a function a function of European geography, which leaves the European (sub-)continent is open to the plains of Eurasia in its East.  In other ways, it is deeply embedded in Europe's culture and history and has been the subject of extensive discursive research (for academic buffs, read Orientalism by Edward Said and Uses of the Other Iver Neumann).

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The perceived ancient glories of Rome and Christendom

There is also a strong analogy in European history of the formerly glorious "split" Empire. Gondor, as we learn, is merely the remnant of the former grand Empire of the heirs of Numénor. The Northern kingdom, Arnor, was destroyed by Sauron centuries before the events of the book. Gondor, the Southern kingdom, is on the retreat - its former capital Minas Ithil has been taken by the enemy and is renamed Minas Morgul. Ithilien, the Eastern shores of the Anduin, have been overrun. The takeover of Gondor's Eastern provinces by Sauron, turning Minas Ithil to Minas Morgul, is reminiscent of the Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine Empire or of the Arab Muslim conquest of the formerly Christian-Zoroastrian Near East. This invented history contains strong echoes of events that have framed the European collective psyche: the split of Rome and the split of the Christian Church into two halves, the demise of the Western Roman Empire through invasion, the gradual decline of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire through the Islamic conquest of Arabs.

Until the European discovery of the Americas, the great geopolitical dramas of Europe were influenced by the experience of "loosing ground" for Christendom and attempting to "regain" it. Christianity was replaced as the dominant religion in North Africa, Anatolia and the Levante by Islam, but memories or imagine memories remained of its grandneess and the role for instance of Jerusalem as a holy place to be "reconquered" led to multiple crusades.

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Sanctuaries of lost knowledge - Rivendell, Lothlorien and Monasteries

The world of the Lord of the Rings is full of lost or forgotten knowledge. Much of it is told through the perspective of Frodo and his hobbit friends, who (much like the reader) only catch glimpses of the grand history within which the events of the book take place and who. Knowledge of history remains with the Elves who remember the story of the Silmarils, the fall of Morgoth, the first wars with Sauron and the forging of the rings. Much like monasteries in the medieval world, Rivendell or Lothlorien are places where this ancient knowledge is kept and transmitted - not in writing but through song. The ageless elves and their culture serve as a conduit to the past of Middle Earth, their existence and near-mythical status to contemporaries (such as the Rohirrim) however make that knowledge both secret and potentially dangerous.

Mental maps as a way to access Tolkien's world

Tolkien was using mental maps and historical narratives available to him, the mental maps and historical narratives that were the foundation for generations of scholarship in Europe. Any work of literature is created in front of a cultural background, a canvass of collective experiences and stories that become part of a society's way of feeling. Chinese history for instance is marked by the interactions between Imperial central control and nomadic peoples of the steppes. But what this analysis teaches us is that the themes of the Lord of the Rings must be understood within a specific European cultural context.