Tolkien’s Subcreation

Subcreational studies of Tolkien this year emphasized maps. Here Be Dragons: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Settings by Stefan Ekman (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2013) is based on a survey of a large number of fantasy novels, dating from the mid-1970s at oldest, except for The Lord of the Rings, included because “its central position in the genre makes it a useful point of reference” (3). Rather than focusing on the analysis of statistical summaries of trends, however, Ekman presents descriptions of representative individual works to discuss each of his points. Frequently that individual work is The Lord of the Rings. A good 20 pages (44–65) of his chapter on maps is occupied by an impressively close reading of the foldout map of Middle-earth and the map of “A Part of the Shire.” Ekman deduces what he can from the maps themselves, rather than relying on knowledge of the text, addressing such points as internal and external authorship of the map, framing of the area shown, importance of features as revealed by lettering size and coloring, and the labeling of historical depth (e.g., “The Lost Realm of Arnor”). He notes that the Shire “is a country with infrastructure” (47) and observes the eerie absence of both thick settlement and broad woodlands in the larger Middle-earth. (Such forests as they exist are relatively small, discrete, and mostly individually named.) Occasionally Ekman’s zeal takes him overboard, as his finding it odd that “A Part of the Shire” shows a quarry but not any more typical locales of Hobbit culture such as mills or breweries (51–52). But quarries are far more commonly shown on primary-world maps also, perhaps due to their size and relative permanence.

In subsequent chapters, Ekman also uses Tolkien’s work as examples. “Borders and Boundaries” addresses Lothlórien as a polder, a term from The Encyclopedia of Fantasy meaning an isolated enclave armed against the wrongness that surrounds it. Ekman identifies five thresholds that the Fellowship crosses to enter Lórien and argues, in a manner similar to Judith Klinger’s article on the geography of Shelob’s Lair (“Hidden Paths of Time,” Tolkien and Modernity, ed. Frank Weinreich and Thomas Honegger [Zurich: Walking Tree, 2006], 2.143–209), that apparent errors in Tolkien’s chronology are actually a subtle but deliberate sign of otherness of time breaking through (101–9). A chapter on fantasy cities treats the pressure between culture and nature in Minas Tirith (135–41), and a section on landscapes of evil discusses Mordor (199–204) with more comparisons to other authors (Stephen R. Donaldson and Robert Jordan here) than Ekman provides elsewhere in the book. However, Ekman’s command of the subcreational facts is less sure here than elsewhere, as when he claims that all Sauron wants from the West is “tribute and dominion” (205), which sounds a lot more benign than the conquest and destruction Sauron is actually up to. Tolkien is frequently mentioned elsewhere in the book as well; Ekman makes particular reference to Tolkien’s concept of secondary worlds.

In contrast with Ekman’s holistic approach, John Wyatt’s book The Use of Imaginary, Historical, and Actual Maps in Literature: How British and Irish Authors Created Imaginary Worlds to Tell Their Stories (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2013) consists of separable vignettes on individual authors. His piece on Tolkien (183–89) is a brief description of Thror’s Map and the large folding map of Middle-earth, with no commentary other than the passing observation that Tolkien, like other authors, used maps to manifest and control his creation. A supplementary section equally briefly describes Karen Wynn Fonstad’s Atlas of Middle-earth and the maps in the parodies of Adam Roberts (203–6).

Further alluding to maps, Dale Nelson’s “ ‘A Scream about Landscape’: Topographic Romance and Cartographic Romance: Alan Garner vs. J.R.R. Tolkien” (Mythprint 50.2: 4–6) is a brief but thoughtful comparison of Garner’s fantasies set in real-world locations (i.e., “topographic romance”) to Tolkien’s, which are as deeply concerned with landscape but whose locales are imaginary (i...