Geography in Tolkien (Disagreement with Professor Olsen)

Tungol

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In the last few episodes of Exploring the Lord of the Rings and The History of Middle-earth series, Professor Olsen has discussed Frodo's first dream several times. In Exploring, he commented that he found that the geography was "the least important thing about this dream". In fact, he made several comments to this effect.

Now, I agree with Professor Olsen that in this instance the symbolic element does take primary importance in interpreting the dream. However, I found his comments on geography to be missing something important.

Tolkien included a passage in the prologue that describes the elf-towers in the Tower Hills, despite that fact that it has no direct bearing on the plot: why? I think he did it because it would allow astute readers to investigate and identify the tower in Frodo's dream. This is something Tokien does a lot. He builds amazingly detailed backstories to the geography of Middle-earth, and often refers to it tangentially. This is part of what gives Tolkien nerds such enjoyment of the stories, because of their apparent historical and cultural depth, and the geography plays such a large role in this.

Michael Drout has a great lecture (link here) where he praises Tolkien's use of ruins (and other broken references), describing this as part of the "hanging-together" (zusammenhang) of his world.

Personally, I find it interesting to think about the actual tower in Frodo's dream, and how it may have been built by certain elves in the Tower Hills long ago. And I find that enjoyment of this can co-exist with the symbolic element that the tower plays in the dream. It doesn't have to be either or.

Actually, I would argue that in general Tolkien is rarely purely symbolic, and that he's very good at grounding his mythic ideas in actual instances in his universe. He doesn't engage in "lazy" symbolism. For example, think of how detailed the character of Tom Bombadil character is, instead of just being a generic stand-in for a nature spirit.

To sum up, I just felt that Professor Olsen kind of gave short shrift to the geography of the tower here, and our natural desire to identify what it is. This is a desire that Tolkien actively encourages and cultivates, and I don't think that we should fail to appreciate instances like this.
 
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He builds amazingly detailed backstories to the geography of Middle-earth, and often refers to it tangentially.

That theme sparked a thought about my own experience as a science fiction writer. No matter the genre, it's vital for the writer to work out the details, and then to leave out about 95% of it.

I have learned from this class not to dismiss details in LOTRO so easily. Those ruins of walls along the Great East Road aren't just decorations the builders dropped in; they were part of the fortifications between Arthedain and Cardolan during the civil wars. Even the symbols carved into the stone give us archaeological clues about who built them and why. I suspect that a great deal of what we see on our archeological adventures really are things that the game builders intended. As I learn these bits of knowledge about Tolkien lore that I have overlooked during nearly 50 years of reading his stuff, the quality of LOTRO rises from amusing to amazing!

And so it is with Tolkien himself, and his work. I can't imagine him casually dropping an elven tower into a story unless he had a whole back story for it lodged somewhere in his imagination. And, again drawing on my own experience, I suspect that only a small fraction of the world that lived in Tolkien's imagination ever made it into print.
 
I can't imagine him casually dropping an elven tower into a story unless he had a whole back story for it lodged somewhere in his imagination. And, again drawing on my own experience, I suspect that only a small fraction of the world that lived in Tolkien's imagination ever made it into print.
This is very true, but it is also important to note that the story, and the presumed backstory that supports it, changed, dramatically at times, throughout the writing of each published piece - and even moreso for the stories not published during Tolkien's lifetime. This is most obvious in the books (and Prof. Olsen's lectures) on The History of Middle Earth.
An extreme example is the story of Galadriel. Her evolution was discussed at length in the -- if I remember correctly -- class on The Treason of Isengard. When Tolkien began TLOTR, Galadriel was an incidental character in the legendarium. She was upgraded several times, until her part in both the Elder Days and the Third Age became absolutely central. The backstory changed massively.
It is also notable that Tolkien was always reluctant to change any text that he had already written. More often, the text would remain with very little alteration, but the context and the meaning of those same words would be altered, sometimes almost out of recognition. Sometimes this was to keep it in synch with the changing backstory. Sometimes the backstory changed to keep in synch with the text. Sometimes neither really happened, and references or allusions became isolated from "established canon" (which was often only in his head and/or unpublished writings). It's all very complex!
If you haven't gone through any of the History of Middle Earth lectures, I recommend them highly. I've read none of those books (I did read "Unfinished Tales") but I have thoroughly enjoyed the discussions and they have opened up huge insights into Tolkien's creative process for me.
Oh, one more relevant point: Tolkien always claimed that it was necessary to develop the geography first, and build the story around the map, but Prof. Olsen makes a very good case arguing that he didn't actually DO this himself! The text often preceded the maps, or required them to be massively updated. An idea would pop into his head, and he would run with it, and clean up the geography later to match.
 
Good point. Perhaps I should have said, " I can't imagine him casually dropping an elven tower into a story unless, at least at some time in the past, he had had a whole back story for it lodged somewhere in his imagination."

I've done that, too. Once upon a time, I was trimming a story to fit Analog's novella length and chopped out an entire sub-plot, but left in a brief reference to it with "Why were there so many girl babies on Mars?" But what the heck, Stanley Schmidt bought it and I got paid for it, so it's by definition good! :)
 
I suspect this is pretty much universal for sub-creators of all kinds. I'm just reading "Reckless Daughter, a portrait of Joni Mitchell" by David Yaffe and there are parallels to it in her songs, too.
 
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