That was the first time he used that name for his imaginary history. Somewhere in the early 1930s Tolkien placed the name “Middle-earth” on one of the maps. He devised the tale of Numenor, the story of the Hobbit, and drew maps for his imaginary Beleriand and Valinor - the two lands in which his stories were set. This was the beginning of The Silmarillion but not of Middle-earth.Īs the years passed Tolkien wrote new stories, sometimes borrowing plots and characters from The Book of Lost Tales, sometimes imagining whole new elements. Although he never finished either poem (“Lay of Leithian” and “Lay of the Children of Hurin”) Tolkien eventually wrote a short narrative about an imaginary history of ancient Elves in which he recapped the events of the two poems. Neither of these poems was set in England - their geographies had become non-descript, generic, simply fantasy landscapes. Several years later Tolkien began writing two very long poems, called “lays”, which were romantic recreations of two of the greater adventures of The Book of Lost Tales. However, Tolkien never completed this project and he ultimately abandoned it. He gradually created a body of work that he called The Book of Lost Tales. Tolkien took words that had survived from the pre-Conquest period and used them to make up stories. It is commonly believed today that many Old English myths, legends, and folk tales were lost when the Normans conquered England in 1066.ĭesiring to create a body of legend that were English and not borrowed from French or Welsh traditions, J.R.R.
Languages like Old English, however, lose those stories when their cultures are conquered by other cultures that speak different languages.
Tolkien understood that words change meaning over time and that as they change they acquire a history of their own. His goal was to populate his mythology with stories that would explain many old words that had come down to modern use without explanation.Īs a philologist, J.R.R. This mythology for England was based IN England.
He began writing stories while he was in the army during the First World War to comprise a “mythology for England”. Tolkien did not set out to create a fictional world or to create anything like the Middle-earth we know today. Q: How Did JRR Tolkien Create Middle-earth?ĪNSWER: J.R.R.
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