RathDarkblade said:
Tim Bombadil? Is he Tom's long-lost cousin?
Phthbbbbbt.
RathDarkblade said:
But fair enough. I still don't understand, though ... 18th-century English country living, fair enough, but what does it have to do with Middle-Earth?
The best parts of Middle-Earth, and most particularly the Shire, are acknowledged to be an idealized image, what Tolkien apparently wanted England to be, especially after the changes and losses of WWI. JRRT's stated goal was to create a mythos that was particularly English, not borrowed wholly from European or even ancient Greek and Roman sources. Imagine what you believed the world to be like when you were very young and knew nothing of history or war, the world in sanitized late 19th century children's books, make it slightly more grown-up so you can have Arthurian-style heroes, and you get The Lord of the Rings.
I'm currently reading parts of a dozen books, alternately. The most recent is What Jane Austen Ate and What Charles Dickens Knew, a potted history of the 19th century. It has some interesting details but tends to be a little sloppy in places about just when certain cultural changes began, and I've found one complete whopper. (The book isn't handy right now, but it involved something like saying X began around 1850 or so and then saying it happened during the English Regency, which ended about 20 years earlier.) I'm also slowly going through an annotated version of Pride and Prejudice, which seems to be more careful about dates and cultural changes.
