Talk:Middle-earth

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This article is a former featured article. Please see its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.

Middle-earth appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on August 10, 2004.

To-do list for Middle-earth:

edit · history · watch · refresh

history and culture sections are entirely in-universe (see WP:WAF); "Adaptations" section seems to be more relevant to Lord of the Rings article than here. overall. article needs to be much more focused on out-of-universe aspects: ie process of authorship, what tolkien drew from to create it, its legacy on other authors, what commentators have had to say about middle-earth, critical analysis etc, without this it would appear to be non-comprehensive. and too many external links! Insufficient citations and refs. the in-universe problem has not gone away. I look at the geography and history sections and think "uh-uh." Very much too long and over-detailed, and the distinction between describing the creation a fictional universe and details of that fictional universe itself is totally blurred. Finally, there is some tortured syntax. Good sentence in terms of perspective, bad in terms of syntax: "The world, not including associated celestial bodies, was identified by Tolkien as "Ambar" in several texts, but also identified as "Imbar", the Habitation, in later post-Lord of the Rings texts." Always keeping Tolkien in focus, as is done here, needs to happen throughout, while at the same time the prose quality needs to improve.

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Contents 1 Purpose of the section "The World" 2 More game adaptations 3 This article's featured status is being reviewed 4 Adding references 5 External links 6 Images of maps 7 Article title - Middle-earth (Tolkien)? 8 Opening paragraph

[edit] Purpose of the section "The World"

I do not see why we must have the section The world in the article. I think the section should be deleted / merged into other sections. It has not been changed much since it was created in July 2004 and therefore it does not fit to the concept of the rest of the article anymore. It seems to deal with two different topics which do not really fit to the title:

The first paragraph of the section describes the relation of the geography of Middle-earth to that of today's world, which would rather belong into the section geography. Anyhow I think the relation is presented wrongly. The article says that "Gondor might lie in the Mediterranean Italy and Greece" whereas the article Arda states that Tolkien said Minas Tirith corresponded to Vienna (In the map used in this article the distance between the Shire and Minas Tirith is approximately 900 miles, which equals the distance between England and Vienna)

The other three paragraphs deal with the writings of Tolkien. I think this part should be put into the section Books which lacks of prose text anyway.

I would like to delete the first pargraph and merge the rest into the section Books --Galadh 07:33, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More game adaptations

The Middle-Earth version of Risk is out, and there is also a card game version that could be added under adaptations section. PeregrineV 20:07, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This article's featured status is being reviewed

This article's featured status is being reviewed. See link at top of page, reproduced here: Wikipedia:Featured_article_review/Middle-earth. Carcharoth 09:09, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Reviewed and removed, it would seem. I'm sorry to see that, but I'm sympathetic. (Some of the concerns about the current article might have applied just as much to the version that did gain featured status, but there's also been an awful lot of bloat since then.)--Steuard 22:35, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adding references

I am now in the process of adding references to this article. Please bear with me for the next few hours as I tidy up after myself. Carcharoth 12:53, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External links

I removed a link to the Ardalambion website from the external links of this article because such a link is more appropriate at Languages of Arda (to which Languages of Middle-earth redirects), which is linked from the languages section of this article. Carcharoth 18:01, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I thought about that when I re-added it. I just saw how much work you're doing, and thought it was an accidental deletion : )

Great job, btw : ) - Jc37 18:11, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Images of maps

Concern was raised at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Middle-earth about the images used in this article. I've removed two speculative maps (probably based on descriptions in the texts, or on the early maps that were published in HoME): Image:Aman Valinor.jpg and Image:arda.png. I then put the three remaining 'main' maps in a gallery section of a "Maps" section. This section is intended to have discussion about the maps, and hopefully provide "fair use" justification for using these map images in the article, or even scans of the maps from the books. If a detailed enough discussion arose, the other two images above could be added back in.

• A scan of the map from The Hobbit would be nice.
• Should the map image still be used at the top to illustrate the article?
• Can someone move the images on Commons (likely to be deleted soon) over to Wikipedia?

Do people think this will this alleviate the concerns about image use in this article? Carcharoth 02:16, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

• moving images from commons to here will not change the copyright problems of the images. Gnangarra 13:45, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

No. But you can have fair use images on Wikipedia, but not on Commons. I think there is a fair use justification for these images. Carcharoth 10:06, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

As explained on the FARC you cant claim fair use on images that breach copyright themselves, which is the problem with these images. Gnangarra 10:20, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah. So a scan of the maps from the books could be argued for under fair use (if you were writing an article about the maps), but a redrawn derivative map breaches copyright? It is possible to have fair use of copyright material. Looking at WP:FU#Images, the closest example seems to be "Paintings and other works of visual art. For critical commentary..." - a scan of the maps would be suitable to illustrate critical commentary on the maps. It is difficult to talk about the history of the maps without having some sort of image to refer to. Carcharoth 10:47, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article title - Middle-earth (Tolkien)?

following up on a comment by Tony, copied here from Wikipedia:Featured_article_review/Middle-earth

I've edited the opening thus, ahem ...

WAS: Middle-earth is a term used by the author J. R. R. Tolkien to refer to the geographical setting of many of the tales of his legendarium,....

IS: Middle-earth is the geographical setting of many of the tales of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium,....

- Tony 02:53, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that edit. If you read the history of the etymology of the word, you will see that your phrasing of the opening sentence is an over-simplification. Simply saying that Middle-earth is a geographical setting for Tolkien's tales ignores the other uses of the word. The word middle-earth existed before Tolkien, and appears in Shakespeare among other places. In fact, the better way to phrase this is probably to say that 'Middle-earth' (upper-case 'M') is the place, and that it is named for the concept of 'middle-earth' (lower-case 'm'), namely, a middle-place amid the encircling seas, and between the cold of the North and the fires of the South, and between Heaven above and Hell below - ie. the abiding place of men (as seen in mythological and classical worldviews - see both Norse mythology and the Greek concept of oikoumene) as opposed to the unseen or far-away worlds of spirits and Gods. Possibly there is a case for having the article at Middle-earth (Tolkien), with Middle-earth redirecting there (as it is the overwhelming thing most people will want when they type in "Middle-earth" on any searches). There would also need to be a hatnote pointing people to Middle-earth (disambiguation) for the other meanings of the term. Carcharoth 20:24, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I think it's not quite correct to say that Tolkien named his setting "for the concept", but that he intended it to have exactly its historical meaning. Having said that, the phrase had pretty much fallen out of modern English and is preserved mainly in other Germanic languages as Midgard or something similar, which in consequence already has a distinctively named article. That is, someone wanting to know about the general idea of Middle-earth is likely to search for Midgard, while someone looking up the Tolkien use is going to search on Middle-earth. TCC (talk) (contribs) 21:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Please feel free to edit the opening sentence. I just want to move away from the opening sentence implying that that Middle-earth was a name Tolkien invented. The exact phrasing is difficult to pin down. Carcharoth 00:32, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I may be chiming in after the fact on this, but moving the article to Middle-earth (Tolkien) seems entirely unnecessary to me. As others have pointed out, Tolkien's world is essentially the only use of the term "middle-earth" in modern English. Making the historical context clear in the article itself I entirely support.--Steuard 22:31, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I was kind of planning for a future spinning off of an article about the word Middle-earth... :-) But I guess I'd better write that first. Carcharoth 10:54, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Opening paragraph

OK. How does this sound for the opening paragraph?

"Middle-earth is a historical term for the known, real world that the author J. R. R. Tolkien used in the tales of his legendarium, using it in the same sense to refer to the lands where the stories of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion take place. Within the overall context of the legendarium, Tolkien's Middle-earth is part of his created world of Arda, which itself is part of the wider creation called Eä."

I think that gets across the idea that the term Middle-earth existed before Tolkien, and that Tolkien was using it in a very specific sense, that of the mythological and classical worldview of the known world. Carcharoth 00:48, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

That's excellent. TCC (talk) (contribs) 01:27, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

It's better, but I still think there should be two articles. In the english-speaking world, if you say "Middle Earth" you probably mean Tolkiens Middle-Earth, but for scandinavians like me it's still confusing. I would prefer something like "This article is about a fictonal lands where the stories of author J. R. R. Tolkien take place. If you are looking for the historical use of the term Middle earth, see Midgard". --Regebro 12:26, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

This is the English Wikipedia, and should reflect the expectations of English speakers, not Scandanavians. And there are two articles. Midgard is linked in the very first sentence. TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:39, 30 November 2006 (UTC)