History Becomes Myth and Myth Preserves History

At first glance, the difference between history and myth seems obvious: history is true, and myth is fiction. When J. R. R. Tolkien claims that Middle-earth is real and that the events he writes really did happen in our world, many would call it ridiculous. However, our own “real” history, once one goes back a few centuries, can only be encountered in fragments, since it survives through retellings, interpretations, and the occasional piece of writing that shapes our understanding of that time. Stories like Beowulf show this clearly, a story about a hero killing a fictional monster can also be read as trauma literature, inspired by the slaughters that took place in mead halls between rival factions vying for influence and power. Such stories are therefore grounded in truth rather than pure fiction, and they reveal the culture of the civilization at that time. Rather than treating myth and history as opposites, it is better to say that myth is history that has receded into the distant past, while still preserving historical truths.

Tolkien uses this idea, that history turns into myth given enough time, into the way Middle-earth is presented as our own world in the distant past. In Letter 151 he writes:

“Middle-earth is just archaic English for ἡοἰκονμένη, the inhabited world of men. It lay then as it does. In fact just as it does, round and inescapable. That is partly the point. The new situation, established at the beginning of the Third Age, leads on eventually and inevitably to ordinary History.”

Middle-earth should be understood as a history so distant that it has become legendary, yet still remains relevant to the present. This is why Tolkien also states that “The essentials of that abiding place are all there (at any rate for inhabitants of N.W. Europe), so naturally it feels familiar, even if a little glorified by the enchantment of distance in time.” The values that shape North Western Europe are already present in the story and have carried through to the modern day, which is why the world feels familiar to those readers.

    This raises the question of why it matters that ancient history survives into the present at all. Even when shrouded in myth, the core values of a people and their civilization can endure in stories long after historical detail has been lost. Sam voices this idea on the stairs of Cirith Ungol, when he realizes that the old tales from ancient days are not simply stories, but that he and Frodo are living inside that same history.

“No, sir, of course not. Beren now, he never thought he was going to get that Silmaril from the Iron Crown in Thangorodrim, and yet he did, and that was a worse place and a blacker danger than ours. But that's a long tale, of course, and goes on past the happiness and into grief and beyond it... and the Silmaril went on and came to Earendil. And why, sir, I never thought of that before! We've got — you've got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady gave you! Why, to think of it, we're in the same tale still! It's going on. Don't the great tales never end?” (The Two Towers)

While Aragorn’s father is killed by orcs when Aragorn is only two, Elrond becomes a father to him and teaches him about Númenor, connecting him back to those ancient days. The Fall of Númenor is already many thousands of years in the past, yet through ancestry Aragorn is able to draw on that heritage for identity, authority, and a connection to an ancient world he has never seen. However, the legacy of Númenor is not a golden one. At their height, the Númenóreans were corrupted and sailed against the Valar, which ultimately led to their destruction. This shows that one’s roots do not need to be morally pure in order to remain meaningful.

    The sense of decline throughout Tolkien’s work reflects a loss of origins, as people become increasingly cut off from their past. Gondor, while still a significant power, is only a shadow of what Númenor once was. The island was destroyed, and even those who were not corrupted were forced to flee to Middle-earth. Although the Dúnedain preserved their culture for many generations, they are still doomed to slowly fade away. This aligns with Tolkien’s concept of the “Long Defeat,” in which the persistence of evil and the march of time will always doom the world, except in fleeting moments of unlikely victory or Eucatastrophe. This decline, however, makes it all the more important for humans to stand by their morals and continue fighting against the rising tide, in order to prolong the battle. Accepting near-impossible odds and fighting all the same, the Dúnedain, in the form of the Grey Company, along with many of the other Free Peoples of Middle-earth, give their lives in hope of victory because of the millennia-long stories of who they are and what they hope to protect.

    If myth is fiction and therefore irrelevant, then maps of the world according to thirteenth-century Europe would also have to be considered false. They look nothing like modern geography, and they include places a modern reader would call fictional, such as the Tower of Babel and the Garden of Eden. Yet they were still true for the people who used them. By combining geography with story, such maps told people about their own history and culture rather than simply helping them navigate. They maintained a connection to the ancient past and strengthened cultural roots against the erosive forces of time. Tolkien works in much the same way in The Lord of the Rings. Through myth, ancestry, and memory, Tolkien shows that the past does not vanish, it survives in the values later generations carry forward.

-EN

Thinking Like a Hobbit: History or Myth?

Many readers approach The Lord of the Rings like any other fantasy novel. They view it as a shallow good-versus-evil story told in a world filled with magic and monsters. In most pop culture we are exposed to, like Star Wars, the story takes place in a “galaxy far far away”. But to read Tolkien in this way is to completely misunderstand the world in which he sets his epic. Middle-earth is not an analogy for our world. It is, in the framing of the legendarium, our world in its infancy.

This is important to keep in mind while reading, because only in this framework can we truly understand the actions of the characters presented in the story. In a secondary world, the history of characters is only backstory that we don’t need to worry about too much. However, in a primary world, our world, history is a great spiritual and genetic inheritance of the characters. Their perception of history is the driving force of their actions. This history is the faded echo of a more magical age of our world that, for us readers, is long forgotten. Tolkien uses this to showcase different approaches to one’s own history through the lenses of the four races.

Elves in Middle-earth are quite unique in that they are not just long-lived humans, but instead are completely immortal, which is an interesting factor to consider when examining how they confront their own history. Their perception of history is not just a campfire story or a poem recited through the ages, but instead a scar of past experiences. When Legolas describes the passage of time to the other members of the Fellowship, he describes it as follows: "For the Elves the world moves, and it moves both very swift and very slow. Swift, because they themselves change little, and all else fleets by: it is a grief to them." This grief is the driving factor of the Elves throughout the book. They have witnessed the corruption of paradise, the shattering of the lands of Beleriand, and the slow fading of their own power. They literally remember when the Earth was flat and the Valar walked among them. This is why the present feels dim to them as they reminisce over a greater age.

Men are similar but have a key distinction: they are mortal. Yes, they did fall out of glory with the fall of Númenor and are bound in exile, looking back at the former glory of their kin, but none of them lived it. This is why, unlike the Elves, they fight harder to restore the glory to their kin. Consider Boromir, who tried to take the Ring from Frodo to restore the glory of Gondor. If Elves are burdened by the length of their memory, then men are burdened by its height. Boromir wasn’t inherently bad or evil, but instead lusted for the Ring because of the generational pressure to restore the lost valor of Númenor. Men spend the story looking backward, hoping one day to fall back into glory.

Dwarf history is not written in books. It is written in the memory of the events of Khazad-dûm. Their perception of the past is explicit and gory. They do not look back at glory days of magic, but instead speak of a specific, named terror that drove them from their home (the Balrog). As Gandalf warns, "they delved too greedily and too deep, and disturbed that from which they fled, Durin's Bane." This history of loss makes the dwarves throughout the story look selfish, stubborn, and secretive. They all remember the betrayal at the hands of the elves, and their grudges last long. Gimli’s initial distrust of the elves is a testament to grudges long forgotten by most. But for the dwarves, they have learned to trust only their own kind.

With this in mind, how exactly are we supposed to approach The Lord of the Rings as a history book? Should we anguish like the elves, longing for a long-forgotten age of magic and wonder? Or maybe, like the men, should we live our lives looking backwards to this lost valor, fighting every day to restore it? Or should we live grudgingly like the dwarves? (I might, because I would be mad too if the ruins of Minas Tirith are never discovered.) But with these options that Tolkien presents, none of them look too appealing. That is why we look to the most relatable of the races: the hobbits.

Despite me already having a lot in common with the hobbits—considering that I love food, plants, and peace and quiet—Tolkien shows us how we should be approaching his story as a history.

The hobbits are the key to this entire riddle. In a world drowning in an epic tale, the hobbits are the ones who forgot. Their records, we are told, "began only after the settlement of the Shire." Their history consists of genealogy and local gossip. But this shortsightedness is not a weakness; it is a great strength. Often when reading The Lord of the Rings, I find in myself the same wonder and amazement as Frodo and the other hobbits discovering such an amazing world. The key to reading Tolkien as a history lies here. We should not anguish over a world lost, despair in the present, or hold a grudge. Instead, we should read this as a history.

-AMM

History and Myth: A Difference in Degree

What’s always puzzled me since I started this class was how Tolkien could call his legendarium “history”. Yes, he sets it in a timeline with our world (modern day being called the seventh age while the events of LOTR take place in the third) but to use that as a justification for it being history sounds absurd. And yet, he writes in his letters that “Mine is not an ‘imaginary’ world, but an imaginary historical moment on ‘Middle-earth’”, a Middle-earth which he believes is “the abiding place of Men, the objectively real world” (Letter 183).  Tolkien, in designing his mythology for England, clearly sees it as critical that, just as the Odyssey is based in a real sea, LOTR is set in a “real” world, that is, as real as you can get with thousands of years of separation. However, he still believes that his world is historical, that the entire story is an imaginary historical moment. This seems in direct contrast to his goal of creating a mythology, and it’s in that contrast that we find Tolkien’s unique definition for what is truly “history”. 

In The Notion Club Papers, night 65, the reader is treated to a discussion on history and mythology, with it being said that as one goes back, real history becomes more mythical. This is followed, on the next page, by the challenge of what real history is, namely that it requires a person of the past to tell their story from a flawed memory, then relay that to the next generation (227-28). History, then, is inherently flawed, requiring trust in a biased source’s memory, which then gets told to another person, then another, then another as these stories are passed down. We view the past through a biased lens, relying on our memory when, if you asked me, I couldn’t even tell you what I ate for dinner four days ago! From this exchange, it seems like what Tolkien is trying to establish is that history, as we see it, should be studied knowing it’s false in some regards, that one person in the chain of retellings could have easily added in a fictitious detail based on how they were feeling at the time they told it, or their perspective on the event.

Compounded over hundreds of years (thousands in the context of LOTR) and it has to be wondered how much of what we consider historical fact is truly fact, and how much is simply “from the profundity of the emotions and perceptions that begot them, and from the multiplication of them in many minds” (Notion Club, 228). From this, it seems to me that Tolkien viewed historical events and mythology to differ in degree, not kind. Take Beowulf for example, a story of a town powerless to attacks from the monster, Grendel. It seems clear to any reader that Grendel himself is a work of fiction, and yet the feeling that Grendel brings, one of helplessness and fear of attack, rings true for the people who wrote Beowulf. They lived in a society fraught with internal and external strife, and constant fear. In this way, the emotion of Beowulf preserves a sort of emotional history. Over time, with each new iteration, the emotions of the person telling the story change it, and what was once seen as an unstoppable enemy becomes an invulnerable monster. Given this perspective, if you still want to hold that history and myth are distinct, you must ask the question of at what point a story becomes too outlandish. To me, and I would imagine Tolkien as well, any answer to this question would be far too arbitrary to be taken seriously. History, then, begins to look a lot like myth.

And yet this raises several uncomfortable implications: are we to consider every tale from history as myth? Should a historian a thousand years uncover a copy of Fourth Wing or A Court of Thorns and Roses and take it to be history changed iteratively over time? Obviously, this seems absurd, but where is the distinction? Tolkien seems to have an answer: the roots of true mythology lie "in human Being; and coming down the scale, in the springs of History and in the designs of Geography — I mean, well, in the pattern of our world as it uniquely is, and of the events in it as seen from a distance" (Notion Club, 227). In other words, what separates myth-as-history from pure fiction is whether the story has roots in something real and unchanging. Fourth Wing is set in no place you can visit. The Odyssey is a different matter entirely; today, right now, you can sail the Mediterranean and traverse the same waters Odysseus was said to have crossed. The sea is still there. That geographic continuity is what makes it harder to simply dismiss. Our perspectives and emotions change constantly, distorting the same piece of information over and over again, but if there’s something constant, unchanging, that remains throughout, it gives the story truth, enough to imagine that at one point, maybe the story was true. If I can stand on the same soil in which an ancient hero once did, then maybe at some point, a version of that hero was really there too. That is history.

This, to me, is the point of labeling our time as the “seventh age” in Tolkien’s legendarium: that there be some consistent truth carried over, even in the land itself. Thousands of years removed, Tolkien crafted Middle-earth to be based on the Old World, with the Shire matching latitudes with England and the rest of the land extending outward from there. This is what makes Tolkien’s mythology an “imaginary historical moment.” The story is set on the same earth we inhabit. Yes, the land has changed over thousands of years, but it remains continuous; just as you can sail the Mediterranean today, you can imagine traversing that same space as the Fellowship once did. Tolkien, then, was not simply creating a work of fiction for England, but a kind of imagined history, one grounded enough in the physical world that a reader might feel a connection to it in the very ground beneath their feet, and through that, a sense of identity.

-MC

Image: A map of Europe overlaid over the map of Middle Earth, to scale

Parallels in Quest of Goodness

In his letter of response to William H. Auden’s praise for “Return of the King”, Tolkien states at the very end, “Mine is not an imaginary world, but in the imaginary historical moment on ‘Middle-Earth’ - which is our habitation.” During class, we discussed in what modes JRRT accomplished this, and in choosing “good history” over “bad mythology” one can see the brilliance and nature in which he did so. 

To recount, there are many parallels between the historical, chronological, and linguistic aspects of Middle Earth created by Tolkien and our world that would suggest his “imaginary historical moment” to be feasible. There are historical parallels through the various real-life structures integrated into his work, with Tolkien himself admitting “the essentials of that abiding place are all there (at any rate for inhabitants of N. W. Europe) so naturally it feels familiar, even if a little glorified but the enchantment of distance in time.” Chronological parallels show how the temporal intervals run in similar proportions across timelines, with the recorded history of the First through Third Ages lasting about as long as early Christian historians theorized the earth to be: between six and eight thousand years old. And the languages Tolkien creates are themselves mixtures of various languages of our own world, predominantly Welsh and Finnish. 

But we did not discuss what the exact implications of this parallel would be. Tolkien had made a “good history,” and thus by definition of history, his tale cannot be allegorical. Tolkien supports this fact by having always claimed his work was never allegorical in any nature. So even if this tale takes place in our real world, Earth, what truth of our reality can it offer if its historical moment is imaginary and the content is not allegory? 

To answer this question, our attention should turn to the central conflict of “The Lord of the Rings” which is “not basically about Freedom though that is naturally involved. It is about God and his sole right to Divine honor. The Eldar and the Numenoreans believed in the One, the true God, and held worship of any other person in abomination.” This is a very important point, that the main conflict across this epic is a religious one: the battle between Good (Eru Iluvatar) and Evil (Morgoth/Sauron). It should be noted that Tolkien’s theological hierarchy and structure itself is very similar to Christianity more so than any other of the Norse or German source material he draws upon, creating another parallel between our time periods. This shows especially in his description of evil, claiming, “In my story I do not deal with Absolute Evil. I do not think there is such a thing,” thereby emulating how even “Satan” was once “Lucifer” in his figures of Morgoth and Sauron. This religious parallel, however, fundamentally differs from all the ones, because the historical, chronological, and linguistic parallels are all tools used to make this religious parallel the point/focus of the story. While yes, Tolkien's languages began the creation of this imagined historical moment, it did not finish it. So then, if these other elements are tools to prop up our central conflict parallel, what can this conflict say through its parallels?

Rather than looking at what parallels match, those that differ will provide the answer. One of the most striking differences between those two timelines is the fact that those Impossible Evils of Morgoth and Sauron are defeated, while Satan still exists in our world (according to Tolkien's Catholic beliefs and worldview). This difference is exactly what the conflict says in its parallels (or lack thereof): that evil can be defeated by us, simple men. That’s why Tolkien made this story fundamentally human through its focus on men and the many humane properties like courage, friendship, and perseverance in the face of evil that run through it. And our tale’s nature as a faerie-tale and historic epic urges the reader to learn just that lesson so we can face the evils in our own lives. Although the following passage was written for the movies, it embodies the idea well, so it is worth quoting in full:

“It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something… That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.”

In a similar conversation, we’ve discussed how Sam and Frodo converse about their still being in the same story as the ancient heroes of old, and how they carry on in this age-long quest. But if the central conflict of this tale is fundamentally about a battle of Good vs Evil grounded in Nature and the Christian religion, then in a way we have the ability to carry out that Quest in our own lives. That the battle exists in the same world as ours even at different times is the greatest parallel between our two worlds, one that bridges the good and purpose its heroes carry over to ours. Like their world, ours does have some good in it, and many fight for it every day.  A Quest may sound dangerous or rare like fighting a dragon or finding a lost city for men like us. Tolkien disagrees though: “Men do go, and have, in history, gone on journeys and quests, without any intention of acting out allegories of life... Most men make some journeys.” He continues, sharing what reason to go on such a quest: “a deliverance from the plant-like state of helpless passive software, and exercise however small of will, and Mobility - and of curiosity, without which a rational mind becomes stultified.” Curiosity specifically of that world that God (or Eru Illuvatar) has created for us, which in turn inspires that sub-creation of our own: “man, sub-creator, the refracted light / through whom is splintered from a single White / to many hues, and endlessly combined / in living shapes that move from mind to mind.” Thus, in Tolkien presenting “an imaginary historical moment on our habitation,” its differences and parallels serve as an ideal for the reader to view, and maybe use to create on their own to extinguish that evil in our world now. 

-GSG

Middle-earth, not Middle-something-else

Despite often considered in public consciousness one of the more archetypal paracosms, Middle-earth remains in actuality more true to its name than merely imaginary. Tolkien’s Legendarium, rather than being a wholly alternate world in the style of Martin’s Westeros or Cameron’s Pandora, occupies a role closer to historical fiction (albeit with vast liberties) a la Eaters of the Dead. Undoubtedly fantasy, yes, and hardly plausible given a scientific view of the world, yet still ostensibly set within it. Just as Ibn Fadlan likely never saw neanderthals on his travels, nor did grey angels with a peculiar resemblance to Magneto have much credibility of resurrecting white. Ibn Fadlan did however exist, and so too did Middle-earth in this manner.

Tolkien himself says rather simply to Rhona Beare in letter 211:

“I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for place.”

He goes on in that same letter to ridicule the notion that it is in fact wholly otherworldly:

“Many reviewers seem to assume that Middle-earth is another planet!”

In the interlude, he draws up an etymological relationship between his own constructed term and the Old English middan-geard, itself derived from Old Norse. 

He gives little information about the length of time specifically between the era of history (or rather prehistory as per his insistence) and that of the reader. What information he gives is a vibe-based ‘floor,’ so to speak, such that any possible length of time disqualifies familiarity between such times were there to be a time-travel mechanism as in The Notion Club Papers. Though in a vacuum a paracosm, supplementary writings and appendices establish that the vacuum is a misconception. This is not meant to be a mere novel, its story having never happened, nor is it so tangential so as to have no effect on the world that is our own as in works such as Star Wars (the locale being a galaxy far away in an older time). 

This lends itself to some rather bemusing speculation in regards to the relationship between similar cultures residing each in Middle-earth and its future counterpart. Other works hold real-to-fictional cultural similarities either out of personal taste or to provide a counterpart. Warhammer’s Empire of Man is the equivalent of the Holy Roman Empire, but merely so the neurodivergent can recognize their tiny plastic men. One is not meant to draw connections save to fill in gaps of cultural information. This is not so for Tolkien’s Legendarium, as it frames itself as an earnest remnant of a primordial time, the interlude lost yet continuous. 

Numenor’s grand monuments, for example, are not meant to be consumed as some intentional sorting of the civilization as the equivalent of Ancient Egypt. It instead is something that existed among such ancient civilizations, the greatest of many. Perhaps even a progenitor. It is not the Aztec Empire of Middle-earth, nor are its kings meant to represent pharaohs. Instead it offers an explanation for their pyramids and statues, of their colossal ossuaries and tombs. Numenor becomes more akin to a History Channel extraterrestrial race, supernatural and from a more fantastical time. The difference lies mostly in the specifics of such allegations. The Legendarium is no less history than Ancient Aliens, though perhaps recounted more earnestly.

Yet despite the alleged continuity between Middle-earth and modern Earth, they exist as worlds beholden to vastly different rules. It would not be remiss to turn to the Bible to figure out why. The Old Testament features a far more active God, directly smiting sin and presenting Himself to various prophets. When one turns to the New Testament, God mostly assigns Himself/His Son to mortal coils by which He interacts with the world. Simply put, there is far more magic in the Old Testament than the New. As far as the present day? There is little magic to be found anywhere, no God walking amongst us and as one of us, no cities bursting, no one spontaneously turned to salt for gazing upon such destruction.

Tolkien follows this trajectory in his extension of the world’s history. As the New Testament had more magic in it than now, so too must Middle-earth (being set by my estimate sometime between the primeval and ancestral history in the Book of Genesis). Middle-earth is not some new world conjured up by Tolkien, magic shoehorned in for the sake of plot and tone. It is this world when it was new, when God acted more through His own interventions. Specifically, in a place and time where God was known as Eru Iluvatar. The birth of Jesus Christ is also accounted for in Tolkien’s Legendarium, marking the transition from the Sixth Age to the Seventh according to some writings. Consistency is found not only within the Legendarium itself, but also between itself and reality (often warped by epochs).

In a sense, Tolkien’s distaste for allegory finds kinship with the impossibility of allegory within his writing. Any allegory would not be as such, per se, but would instead be prophecy due to the nature of Middle-earth’s past existence. Middle-earth is not merely a name, but an accurate descriptor of what it is. The people of today walk on its soil, not on its real-life equivalent. Gondor is not the Rome of Middle-earth, but a preceding civilization, perhaps even the literal progenitors of the men who would become Rome’s first kings. The Legendarium is itself a legendarium, not mere literature. 

-RLC