I've been asked several times today to give my view on this so here it goes. First things first, there are links between Middle-earth and the history of Europe but not in any way this thread suggests. 1/13
@TolkienSociety @theoneringnet @JRRTolkien https://twitter.com/Robkearney1981/status/1294803278354681856
There is no such quotation in Tolkien's published works - unless the author of this thread or the article they cite have access to unpublished letters/manuscripts by Tolkien (and permission to quote from them):
https://twitter.com/Robkearney1981/status/1294806375479021568
2/13
No he didn't. He found lots of "old books" in several languages in the Bodleian, but this is hardly "the basement of the school's library" (which school, I wonder? and which library?)
3/13 https://twitter.com/Robkearney1981/status/1294807323542720515
(Sigh...) I can assure you there were (and are!) MANY Oxford dons and students who could read "ancient Scandinavian" (Old Icelandic, I presume?) - Tolkien was one of many.
https://twitter.com/Robkearney1981/status/1294808444814405632
4/13
Nop. What he actually said:
"I imagine the gap [between the end of the Third Age + 'our Days'] to be about 6000 years: that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as S.[econd] A.[ge] and T.[hird] A.[ge]."
https://twitter.com/Robkearney1981/status/1294811792179433472
5/13
Note the use of the word "imagine" in the quotation above (which comes from Letter #211). I'll come back to the 6000 years thing. Bear with me.
6/13
What #Tolkien DID do is claim that The #Hobbit and The #LordoftheRings were not his own creative writing but his ‘translation’ of selections from a manuscript compilation in an ancient, forgotten language: The Red Book of Westmarch.
7/13
This is a VERY old literary technique, the "found manuscript" topos, also used by Horace Walpole, H. Rider Haggard, H.G. Wells, Umberto Eco, and many others. The author says, I didn't make that up, I found that old book/manuscript and I am just editing/translating it, etc.
8/13
What #Tolkien also DID say was:
"I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world… The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary..." (continued) - again NOTE: "imaginary"!
9/13
(Continued) "...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." (Letter #183)
10/13
I've examined in detail in my book how Tolkien created a pastiche of ancient and medieval European cultures in Middle-earth of the Third Age that just didn't fit together chronologically - and he knew that well:
11/13
Re: the 6000 years, this is what I have argued in my book (I don't think the number was accidental!):
12/13
More on all of this in my book ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tolkien-Race-Cultural-History-Dimitra/dp/0230272843)
Over and out!
13/13
@David_Shearman here you go! 👆 And thanks to @LukeBShelton who first brought this to my attention!
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