Talk:Middle-earth

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Former featured article Middle-earth is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
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  • 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

[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)

The only thing I can contribute about the images, is that the huge SVG file absolutely brings my computer to a crawl. SVG and vector formats have obvious advantages, but the rendering power required for that image kills any scalability benefit. (I'm running a P4 with 1 GB RAM, for reference, no performance problems.)

Well, you must be having some kind of performance issue. I'm running an old 1GHz Athlon Thunderbird with 256 MB of RAM and have no problems at all with these SVG images. TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:18, 30 May 2007 (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)

[edit] Reference for Middle English word

Is there a reference for Tolkien's derivation of the term from the Middle English middel-erde, rather than his merely using a direct translation of the Old English middangeard?

It seems particularly strange to insist on the Norse-derived "erde", when English has always had "earth" (ending in a dental fricative): "eorð" in Old English, and the modern form at least since Chaucer. --Saforrest 04:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

He did use middangeard but apparently "Middle-earth" strictly derives from a different word. From the Midgard article:

The name middangeard occurs half a dozen times in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, and is the same word as Midgard in Old Norse. The term is equivalent in meaning to the Greek term Oikoumene, as referring to the known and inhabited world. The concept of Midgard occurs many times in Middle English, The association with earth (OE eorðe) in Middle English middellærd, middelerde is by popular etymology; the continuation of geard "enclosure" is yard. An early example of this transformation is from the Ormulum:

þatt ure Drihhtin wollde / ben borenn i þiss middellærd
that our Lord wanted / be born in this middle-earth.
The usage of "Middle-earth" as a name for a setting was popularized by Old English scholar J. R. R. Tolkien in his The Lord of the Rings and other fantasy works; he was originally inspired by the references to middangeard and Éarendel in the Old English poem Crist.

So if there was a confusion of words, Tolkien may have not realized it. Also see Talk:Midgard. (I only learned about this myself through here). Uthanc 00:53, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Innacurate link

Ive deleted one of the links because it did not lead to what it was supposed to. le Dan 01:15, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge from Morwen Steelsheen

The Morwen Steelsheen article lacks any references and seems useless to stand on its own. As far as I know the character only exists in relation to the subject of this article and therefore should only be piece of it. I propose a merge. Alan.ca 12:46, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

  • Oppose. This article is about the setting, not the characters. It would be better to merge it into Thengel. In general, Tolkien wrote so little about most of the earlier kings of Rohan other than Eorl the Young and Helm Hammerhand that it might be a good idea to merge most of them together as well. TCC (talk) (contribs) 21:43, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose per TCC. She's also Théoden's mother... Merging stuff (properly) is something the Middle-earth Wikiproject is/will be working on... Uthanc 11:11, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose per TCC. The two articles don't really have anything in common. It would make much more sense to merge with Thengel. Splamo 14:51, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose Merge per the several comments above, particlularly that this page is not a list of characters. - jc37 12:12, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A real world map

See http://peterbird.name/pictures/Middle-Earth.jpg (the map) and http://peterbird.name/ homepage plus/or http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/06/03/ map plus external comment

What the person has done here is drop the water level by some meters (a bit like during an ice age) exposing dogger bank etc as walkable land masses - he then compares with features from several ages of middle earth - as the article suggests - tolkien did use a european like topology for his work, but nowhere is is suggested that he made exact parallels. from the article:"the geographies do not match, and he did not consciously make them match when he was writing".
In some places (misty mountains,gondor,mordor)- the matches are very good - in others (iberia) there doesn't seem to be a good correspondence, also the urals become the iron hills, and Rhun becomes central asia.
However I thought the map was interesting to be considered for inclusions (perhaps as a foot note or see also)
Anyway take a look and decide amongst yourself if it would make an interesting footnote.
Otherwise I hope you found it interesting.87.102.5.137 10:19, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Etymology

I'm not sure if it's relevant, but I know Joseph Jacobs uses "Middle Earth" in Childe Rowland in his 1890 English Fairy Tales.--Pharos 18:04, 21 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Inaccuracies

From reading the section "animals also appear, such as the Eagles, Huan the Great Hound from Valinor, the Balrog and the wolf-like Wargs. The Eagles were created by Ilúvatar along with the Ents, and the Balrogs were bred by Morgoth, but in general these animals' origins and nature are unclear. Some of them might have been Maiar in animal form, or perhaps even the offspring of Maiar and normal animals. The giant spiders such as Shelob were descended from normal spiders and Ungoliant, who is possibly an Ainu."

Balrogs were not bred by Morgoth, they were just corrupted by him early on.

It it mentioned in canon that the 'giant spiders' were only descended from Ungoliant and not from 'normal spiders'.

le Dan (talk) 15:49, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

There are a HUGE number of inaccuracies in the article. The opening sentence, claiming that most of Tolkien's stories are set in Middle-earth, is completely wrong. Unfortunately, the entire Middle-earth section has been reworked extensively under the influence of one of the great manglers of Tolkien's legendarium, Conrad Dunkerson (now a Wikipedia admin), and I gave up trying to fix the problems he introduced years ago. When he attributed David Day's "ages of the sun" expression to me and people believed his claim that it was my own "original research", I knew there was no point in continuing the debate. This whole series of articles violates Wikipedia's "original research" principle in numerous ways.

THE BOOK OF LOST TALES is not set in Middle-earth, for example, but is rather based in a fictional prehistoric England. There was no conception of "Middle-earth" or anything like it when Tolkien wrote THE BOOK OF LOST TALES. These articles, however, misrepresent Tolkien's work as if it were a continuous stream of evolutionary developments rather than successive starts and restarts that he later wove together retroactively in concept.

Other examples of inaccuracies include: equating Arda with the Earth (Tolkien equated Arda with the Solar System); Endor is the Elvish for "Middle-earth" (actually, it means only "middle land"); Nargothrond was only a fortress (in fact, it was the capitol city of Finrod's kingdom); Halflings were only half the size of Men (Tolkien associated the meaning more specifically with the height of Numenorean or Dunedain men).

The article is also incomplete in its adaptations section. Although I would not recommend any attempt to exhaustively list stage play productions, there have been many -- some for commercial projects and most for school projects. The "Other Works" section fails to mention the implied references to Middle-earth (or elements that were incorporated into Middle-earth) in Tolkien's other books (such as Roverandom and Smith of Wootton Major).Michael Martinez (talk) 18:55, 10 June 2008 (UTC)