sustainable fiction

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R E F E R E E D P A P E R

Sustainable Fictions Geographical, Literary and CulturalIntersections in J. R. R. Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings

Ina Habermann1 and Nikolaus Kuhn2

1Department of English, University of Basel, Nadelberg 6, Basel, Switzerland. 2Department of Environmental

Sciences, University of Basel, Klingelbergstr. 27, Basel, Switzerland.

Email: [email protected]

J. R. R. Tolkien s The Lord of the Rings (1954/1955), one of the founding texts of fantasy literature and the centrepiece

of a number of writings about the geography, history and mythology of Middle-earth, has long become a cult

phenomenon. We argue that in this influential text, Tolkien offers a fictional exploration of sustainability. Combining an

application of Geographic Information System techniques with textual analysis and interpreting text and spatial data in

conjunction, we show that there is a systematically varying distance between our real world and the physical features of

Tolkiens Secondary World, as regards climate and vegetation patterns. There is an emphasis on land degeneration, a

missing forest problem which prompts a closer look at the role of woods and trees in Tolkiens work. It emerges that the

preservation of trees is at the centre of Tolkiens sustainable fictions. For the author, it was a function of fantasy, which he

sets against a dystopian and secular modernism as well as the destructive aspects of modernity, to provide (positive)

escape, consolation and recovery, which is achieved through a final vision of the successful preservation of the

environment.

Keywords: sustainable fictions, Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Middle-earth, environment, GIS

TOLKIENS SYMBOLIC TOPOGRAPHY AND THE

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF IMAGINARY WORLDS

J. R. R. TolkiensThe Lord of the Rings(pub. 1954/1955),one of the founding texts of fantasy literature and thecentrepiece of a number of writings about the geography,history and mythology of Middle-earth, has long becomea cult phenomenon. Its massive success proves the culturalresonance of the creation of imaginary worlds which standin an oblique relationship to the world as we know it:distant and yet familiar enough both to allow for analytical

reflection and to express the desire for an unattainable ideal,a world suffused with meaning and capable of redemption.In our essay, we propose to explore from a literary andgeographical perspective how Middle-earth is textually andvisually constructed and to explain its specific relation toour world as well as its cultural significance.

In his evocations of benign natural forces and thecontrasting industrialized forces of evil, Tolkien creates anarchetypal, quite timeless scenario, but he also paints a moralportrait of the interwar period, when the bulk of the workwas written. Importantly, his trajectory is neither allegory, asused for example by George Orwell in Animal Farm, norsimply a conservative ruralism in tune with the preservation-

ism and organicism of the period (see Matless, 1998,particularly Part II, Organic England, pp. 101170).

Instead, Tolkien creates an intricate symbolic topography,which manages to retain the complexity of our world while atthe same time advocating a careful stewardship of theenvironment. His work thus offers a fictional exploration ofsustainability which has also had a sustained culturalresonance.

How is Middle-earth textually and visually constructed? Asis often emphasized in Tolkien criticism, Tolkien regrettedthe lack of a proper mythology for England along the lines ofthe Germanic or Finnish sagas which he studied andadmired, and he set out to create such a mythology, which

he could dedicate to England; to my country (Tolkien,1990b, p. 144). This turned out to be a life-long project,which he began during World War I and left unfinished whenhe died in 1973. The most prominent product published inTolkiens lifetime is The Lord of the Rings. Importantly, thestory unfolds against the backdrop of a vast universe whichcan be glimpsed in the novel (supplemented by a number ofexplanatory appendices), but which is more thoroughlyelaborated in The Silmarillion as well as other writingspublished after Tolkiens death by his son Christopher(Shippey, 2003; Fimi, 2008, pp. 127). In his biography,Humphrey Carpenter reports a conversation between C. S.Lewis and Tolkien where the latter gives a concise outline of

his view of mythopoeia and the complex interrelationbetween the world we live in and imaginary world creation:

TheCartographic Journal Vol. 48 No. 4 pp. 263273 Cartographies of Fictional Worlds - Special Issue November 2011#TheBritish Cartographic Society 2011

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You call a tree a tree, he said, and you think nothingmore of the word. But it was not a tree until someonegave it that name. You call a star a star, and say it isjust a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course.But that is merely how you see it. By so naming thingsand describing them you are only inventing your own

terms about them. And just as speech is invention aboutobjects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.(Carpenter, 1987, p. 151; see also the correspondingpoem Mythopoeia inTree and Leaf, Tolkien, 1989,pp. 97101)

In line with this, and on the basis of his devout Catholicfaith which made him see human beings as sub-creators,inspired by the divine energy of the Creator, Tolkieninvented a Secondary World (On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien,1989, pp. 1170; 4452). In his invention about truth, hegradually turned from more fanciful notions, such as seeingthe world as a great Viking ship, to conceiving of his worldas a mythical pre-history of our world (Shippey, 2003, p.

116; Kocher, 2004; Whittingham, 2008). As such a worldneeds the inner consistency of reality (On Fairy-Stories,p. 44), Tolkien always worked closely with maps which healso integrated into the work. In narratological terms, spaceis not to be conceived as a backdrop for the characters andtheir actions, but it is continuously created within the text(Dennerlein, 2009, p. 93 andpassim). In contrast, the mapsproduce spatial expanses which appear to be already there,without gaps, before the story unfolds, suggesting amaterial reality which serves like an anchor for the storysflights of fancy. Tolkiens more fantastic creatures appearreal because they have, as it were, their feet on the ground.TheTolkien Encyclopaediaaptly explains the importance of

maps and their function:While the story unfolds line by line over hours of reading, the map allows the entire story to be recalled ata glance, producing a rich tapestry of associations.While a word may automatically activate a mentalimage of an object, the map automatically recalls thestorys whole physical and emotional space. The success ofthe maps, and their continuing popularity as evenposters on walls, results from the extraordinary amountof detail they contain, their skilled integration with thestory, and their graphic excellence. Because the maps arereferenced within the story, and the fiction is main-tained that the maps are fair copies of Bilbos maps,

which are fair copies of the Elves maps, the antique styleof the maps themselves adds another level of historicityconnecting the past with the present. The maps invite theviewer to adventure, which pulls him or her instantlyinto the world of the story just as Thrors map pulledBilbo from his comfortable parlor on a spring day in anearlier age of the world. (Drout, 2007, p. 408)

Perhaps paradoxically, while the editorial fiction serves toenhance the truth value of the creation, the fact that themaps of Middle-earth do not have a referent in empiricalfirst space even serves to enhance their attraction becausethe medium of representation is not indexical but containsthe whole. As Carpenter emphasizes, the maps needed to be

supplemented by calculations of time and distance as wellas charts concerning events in the story, showing dates, the

days of the week, the hours, and sometimes even thedirection of the wind and the phase of the moon(Carpenter, 1987, pp. 198, 202). Tolkien paid meticulousattention to detail, to the lie of the land, to flora, fauna andclimate, which reflects his perfectionism and his concern foraccuracy, both in terms of inner consistency and referencing

to our world. Karen Fonstad, who prepared a successfuland comprehensive atlas of Middle-earth, also testifies toTolkiens thoroughness and care: only such breadth ofknowledge and attention to detail could provide the datafor an entire atlas (Fonstad, 1991, p. vi). In addition, wewould argue that this amount of detail is not only presentedin the service of verisimilitude, but that it is part of thepoint of Tolkiens mythopoeia. Tolkien creates a power-ful sense of place, reinforced, as Curry states, by hisnaming of places, which also reflects his love and knowledgeof language. As a result, there is none of the sense ofarbitrariness which attends most invented words (orworlds), but rather one of historical depth and integrity

(Curry, 1997, pp. 6061). Successful sub-creation demandsa commitment to detail and locality in order to avoid gapsin the picture.

The same holds true for Tolkiens successful and innovativecombination of the modern adventure story with thevenerable tradition of epic. Due to his profound knowledgeof the epic tradition, there is nothing bogus about the epicelement, despite some derision from literary critics (Curry,1999/2005), and the stories, legends, languages andcharacters emerging from this largely Manichaean universereflect the expansiveness, dignity and authority of the epic.Still, successful world-making in a modern vein is cruciallybased on the treatment of setting, which is our main concernhere both visual, as already emphasized with regard to maps,

and textual, in the composition of the narrative itself.Regarding the visual dimension, it must be added thatTolkien also produced a great number of drawings andwatercolours depicting Middle-earth (Hammond and Scull,1995). Although these are not as intrinsically part of the workas the maps, they give an impression of Tolkiens visualimagination, adding iconic images of landscapes and places tothe birds eye view of the map. This vivid visual imaginationalso translates into evocative descriptions. Tolkien is a masterof landscape descriptions, frequently focalized through thecharacters, which allows readers to visualize and imaginativelyto situate themselves in the landscapes that unfold in the text,supported by the maps and other drawings. Here is just one

example out of many, shortly before the breaking of thefellowship, when Frodo has escaped from Boromir by puttingon the Ring:

He was sitting upon the Seat of Seeing, on Amon Hen,the Hill of the Eye of the Men of Numenor. Eastward helooked into wide uncharted lands, nameless plains, andforests unexplored. Northward he looked, and the GreatRiver lay like a ribbon beneath him, and the MistyMountains stood small and hard as broken teeth.Westward he looked and saw the broad pastures of Rohan; and Orthanc, the pinnacle of Isengard, like ablack spike. Southward he looked, and below his very feetthe Great River curled like a toppling wave and

plunged over the falls of Rauros into a foaming pit; aglimmering rainbow played upon the fume. And Ethir

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Anduin he saw, the mighty delta of the River, andmyriads of sea-birds whirling like a white dust in thesun, and beneath them a green and silver sea, ripplingin endless lines. (LoR, The Fellowship of the Ring,Tolkien, 1985, p. 518)

In descriptions of sometimes startling beauty, Tolkienoften gives his readers such views from a height withvanishing points in a far distance, where the mythiclandscape melts into a mystical beyond suggesting anultimately ineffable spiritual dimension. Incidentally, it is atypically English feature to express this ultimate trajectoryof desire and spirituality in images of the sea. Suchperspective views are in accordance with Tolkiens viewson the various dimensions of fantasy were expressed in hispoetological treatise On Fairy Stories: Even fairy-storiesas a whole have three faces: the Mystical towards theSupernatural; the Magical towards Nature; and the Mirrorof scorn and pity towards Man. The essential face of Fae rieis the middle one, the Magical. But the degree in which the

others appear (if at all) is variable (On Fairy-Stories, p.28). Tolkien seeks to integrate all three dimensions in hisstory-telling, with an emphasis on the enchantment of andthrough nature that recalls Romanticism and sometimesborders on the pantheistic. Because of his commitment tothe natural world, he also makes clear that he prefers story-telling to the dramatic mode, which introduces someserious limitations in Tolkiens view: You are, for instance,likely to prefer characters, even the basest and dullest, tothings. Very little about trees as trees can be got into a play(On Fairy-Stories, 48).

It is crucial for our argument that Tolkien shaped hisfictional physical world with particular care and with close

reference to our world. Peculiar features can thus beattributed to design rather than coincidence or ignoranceon the part of the author. Regarding its cultural signifi-cance, Tolkiens work first became a cult phenomenon inthe early 1960s in the context of a youth culture move-ment critical of consumerism and susceptible to Tolkiensconcern about natural resources and the environment(Walmsley, 1983; Harrison, 1984; Curry, 1997). Sincethen, there has been a general awareness of the ecologicalaspects of the work which was foregrounded again in thecontext ofecocriticism, but a more detailed study remains tobe done. Curry comes closest to this when he explains thatthe

places themselves are animate subjects with distinctpersonalities, while the peoples are inextricably in and oftheir natural and geographical locales: the Elves andtheir woods and forests, the Dwarves and mountains,hobbits and the domesticated nature of field andgarden. And some of the most beautiful places inMiddle-earth are so, in large part, because they areloved by the people who share them. Tolkiens prescientecologism is therefore radical, in the modern sense aswell as the old one of a return to roots.(Curry, 1997, p.28)

Tolkiens project of literary mythology thus amounts tothe resacralization (or re-enchantment) of experienced and

living nature, including human nature, in the local cul-tural idiom (Curry, 1997, p. 29). When we began our

interdisciplinary dialogue between geography and thecultural criticism of literature about The Lord of the Rings,we noticed a variation in the distance between the featuresof our world and Middle-earth: there are in fact certainaspects of the geography of Middle-earth where thedepiction of the natural world departs consistently from

what would be expected in the world as we know it, whileother features are represented quite accurately. Thevariation mainly concerns aspects of land degenerationand, in connection with this, the particular importance oftrees in Tolkiens world, where geographical accuracy givesway to a symbolic dimension. At such points, we argue thatTolkiens political negotiation of human beings interactionwith their world is thrown into particular relief.

CLIMATE AND VEGETATION IN MIDDLE-EARTH:

ENVIRONMENTAL CONSISTENCIES, DISCREPANCIES

AND EXPLANATIONS

To support the notion of a varying distance between thereal world and the physical features of Middle-earth, such asclimate and vegetation patterns, the spatial informationdepicted in the Atlas of Middle-earth (Fonstad, 1991) onboth features was analysed using Geographic InformationSystem techniques. Using GIS offered the opportunityto compare spatial data depicted in different maps bygenerating overlays with specific qualitative and quantitativeinformation, e.g. on vegetation and climate. Using overlays,discrepancies between real world and Middle-earth spatialcovariances between land cover and climate could bevisualized and placed in the context of Tolkiens perspectiveof the human interaction with nature associated with the

key characters and their people in The Lord of the Rings.Digitizing Karen Fonstads maps using Arc-GIS gener-

ated digital climate and vegetation maps (Figure 1). Theattributes assigned to different types of land cover byFonstad were, with the exception of distinguishing betweenalpine and polar vegetation, not interpreted any further.While forest character obviously changes along climaticgradients, for our analysis of the internal environmentalconsistency of Middle-earth, the presence/non-presence ofnatural forest was sufficient. Regarding climate, Fonstadsqualitative description was amended by applying somequantitative climatic reference points given by Tolkienhimself as well as general European climatology.

MAP, TEXT AND REAL WORLD: THE CLIMATE OF

MIDDLE-EARTH

Fonstads qualitative description of the climate requires afiner quantitative resolution, accounting for continental-scale climatic gradients as well as particular regional weatherphenomena, such as mountain environments, to assess theconsistency with the real world. Therefore, her climate mapwas quantified by using descriptions of weather andclimate in The Lord of the Rings. For example, the refe-rences to growing pipe weed in Concerning Hobbits andOther Matters (Tolkien, 1990a, p. 20) and Cabbages and

Potatoes (Tolkien, 1990a, p. 36) in A Long Expected Partyon the agriculture in the Shire as well as Tolkiens own

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Figure 1. Climate (top) and vegetation (bottom) of Middle-earth (maps produced by digitizing and recolouring the maps of Fonstad (1991,pp. 183, 185)



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comments on the geography of Middle-earth suggest aclimate similar to southern England for the Shire. Sucha climate is represented in Figure 2, showing averagemonthly temperatures and rainfall in London. Movingsoutheast according to the distances and directions given byTolkien in his maps, further locations in Europe offeringthe potential for a quantitative description of the climate ofMiddle-earth can be identified. For example, Minas Tirith issituated about 1200 km southeast of the Shire, so that theclimate there can be associated with Florence in Tuscany(Figure 2, right). The fairly mild weather conditions duringlate winter and spring described in The Return of the Kingsupport this spatial covariance between Middle-earth andEurope.

The simple use of distances to identify stations suitable forquantification of climate becomes insufficient towards east-ern Middle-earth due to the differences in general topo-graphy compared to Europe. Moving east from the Shire to

Rivendell into the Misty Mountains, one can expect anorographic effect on the regional climate. Based on justdistance and direction, Rivendell would be situated about600 km east of the Shire/London near the city of Guterslohin Germany. The climate there (Figure 3, top left) is fairlysimilar to London with just a slightly more pronounceddifference between winter and summer temperatures.Tolkien himself associated the landscape of Rivendell withthe Lauterbrunnen valley in Switzerland, which he visitedin 1911 (Carpenter, 1987, pp. 5758). The climate inLauterbrunnen is similar to that of nearby Interlaken(Figure 3, top right) with pronounced rainfall duringsummer. This renders Tolkiens association of Lauter-

brunnen with the pleasant Rivendell problematic. How-ever, a climatological analysis of the location of Rivendell

helps to explain this discrepancy. The latitudinal direction ofthe Alps contrasts the longitudinal extent of the MistyMountains. The difference in direction is likely to affect theweather in Rivendell due to a rain shadow effect of thewestern ranges of the Misty Mountains. The rain shadow is

generated by an uplift and cooling of moist air moving infrom the west. This leads to condensation and increasedrainfall on the western edge of the mountains, but leaves theair moving further east dry and warm when descendingbeyond the mountain ranges, generating frequent sunnyweather. Rain shadow effects similar to the ones assumed forRivendell can be observed in the American Midwest or theWallis region of the Swiss Alps, illustrated by the climate ofVisp (Figure 3, bottom). Considering the drier, warmer andsunnier conditions in Visp, which would appear more suitedto Rivendell than both Gutersloh and Interlaken, theinteresting fact emerges that the real world is actually morepleasant than its supposed Middle-earth equivalent of

Lauterbrunnen.

THE FOREST PROBLEM OF MIDDLE-EARTH

Once the climatic conditions have been quantified usingmeteorological data, the geoecology of Middle-earth can beanalysed. On a continental scale, vegetation cover is largelydetermined by climate. In middle Europe, a broad leaf forestwould be the natural vegetation covering a region stretchingfrom northern Spain to the Ural and southern Scandinaviato the Alps and the western Black Sea (Figure 4). Closer tothe Mediterranean, an evergreen forest would dominate.One could therefore assume a similar natural land cover in

Middle-earth. Further, a spatial covariance between cli-mate and vegetation could also be expected, i.e. regions of

Figure 2. Climate associated with the Shire (London) and Minas Tirith (Florence) based on the assumption that the climate of the Shire issimilar to Tolkiens home in Oxford: the remarks on climate in Minas Tirith and its location approximately 1200 km southeast of the Shire,

which roughly corresponds to the city of Florence. Source: http://www.klimadiagramme.de (accessed April 2011)



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Middle-earth with climate similar to Europe would carry asimilar natural vegetation to Europe. This expectationshould be particularly valid because large parts of Middle-earth are not or only scarcely populated. Examining thevegetation map of Middle-earth roughly shows a Europeanvegetation pattern when moving north to south west of theMisty Mountains (Figure 2). However, large parts of theforests of Middle-earth are not as dense as expected on the

basis of climate and natural vegetation in Europe. East of theMisty Mountains; on the other hand, dense forests exist in

Mirkwood, Fangorn and Lorien. They also extend muchfurther south than in the west. This pattern is not inaccordance with the climate (Figure 1), which becomeswarmer and drier on both sides of the Misty Mountains, butwould be suitable for a forest cover throughout. Apparently,vegetation on one side of the mountains is wrong, i.e. notdetermined by climate alone. The mismatch between climateand vegetation raises the questions whether (1) the ecology

of Middle-earth differs from the natural world as we know it;(2) Tolkien made a mistake; or (3) another explanation for

Figure 3. Climate associated with Rivendell based just on the distance east of the Shire (Gutersloh), Tolkiens association of Rivendell withLauterbrunnen (Interlaken) and consideration of a rain shadow effect of the Misty Mountains (Visp). Source: http://www.klimadiagramme.de(accessed April 2011)



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the pattern exists within the realm of the landscape history ofMiddle-earth.

Merging climate and vegetation into one map byoverlaying in GIS and reclassifying into forest and areaswith suitable climate, but no forest (degraded forest)(Figure 5) enables a further analysis of the missing forestproblem identified above. The extent of the forest ofRhovanion confirms again that the climate east of the MistyMountains is wet enough for forests, despite the rain

shadow effect. The forests of Lorien immediately east ofthe Misty Mountains, Ithilien and Rhun even further

south and east, respectively, also give an indication of thesouthern- and easternmost extent of the potential forestcover. These patches of forest in drier and warmer partsof Middle-earth again raise the question why the tree coverin the low lying, flat and humid areas between the Shire andGondor is not dense as well. Based on the geoecologyof Europe (Figure 4), no natural reason can be identi-fied. However, land degradation as a consequence of non-sustainable land use is common in Europe and has had a

significant influence on political power relations (Mont-gomery, 2007). In the light of the decline of Gondor, one

Figure 4. Ecozones of Europe (Schultz, 2010). The regions with landscapes similar to those in The Lord of the Rings (humid temperate zoneand wet winter subtropics) would, with the exception of alpine regions above 2000 m a.s.l., carry a natural forest cover, either deciduousbroadleaf or evergreen. Based on this natural vegetation in Europe, a closed forest cover can be inferred for regions of Middle-earth withhumid climates



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could speculate that the reason for the missing forest lies withinthe Anthroposphere: humans destroyed the forest throughprotracted wars and perhaps extensive ship building, whichobliterated the natural resource upon which the power ofGondor was based and ultimately caused the weakening of thewestern kingdoms and the rise of Mordor.

The identification of the missing forest problem and thepossible explanation offered above shows the use of GISand the merging of climate and vegetation maps to be a

helpful tool for analyzing human-environment relationshipsdepicted in The Lord of the Rings. The additional environ-mental information carried by the map in Figure 5 is notpart of the text, but serves as a backdrop for the actualnarrative. The central importance of land degradation inMiddle-earth could only be discovered by interpreting textand spatial data in conjunction, including their discrepan-cies with the real world. This forest problem thereforeprompts a closer look at the role of woods and trees inTolkiens work, and it emerges that their importance canhardly be overemphasized. Tolkien himself states: I am(obviously) much in love with plants and above all trees,and always have been; and I find human maltreatment of

them as hard to bear as some find ill-treatment of animals(Tolkien, 1990b, p. 220). As a visual artist, Tolkien had

particular skill in drawing landscapes, and as Carpenter says,he was at his best when picturing his beloved trees, and likeArthur Rackham (whose work he admired) he could give totwisted root and branch a sinister mobility that was at thesame time entirely true to nature (Carpenter, 1987, pp.166167). In a poem about his love to his wife, Tolkienimagined love as two trees intertwined (Carpenter, 1987, p.82). Moreover, it is significant that his symbol for artisticcreation is the painting of a tree, as expressed in his short

story Leaf by Niggle about a man whose long-term projectis the painting of the perfect tree. Niggles problem is thathe pays so much attention to individual leaves that theshape of the whole tree continues to elude him, and Tolkienquite explicitly makes the connection with his own creativeprocess when he says that in addition to my tree-love (itwas originally called The Tree), it arose from my own pre-occupation with The Lord of the Rings, the knowledge thatit would be finished in great detail or not at all, and the fear(near certainty) that it would be not at all (Tolkien,1990b, p. 257). Perhaps by way of consolation, Tolkiengrants Niggle an epiphany shortly before his death, a visionof his tree as he meant it to be: The blossom of the Great

Tree was shining like flame. All the birds were flying in theair and singing (Leaf by Niggle; Tolkien, 1989, p. 93).

Figure 5. Result of the GIS-based analysis of areas with climate suitable for forest and actual vegetation cover. The green and brown areas(both light and dark) mark the regions which are potentially suitable for forest cover based on their climate. The dark green covers the actualforest mentioned in the Lord of the Rings and mapped in Fonstads Atlas of Middle-earth. The discrepancy between brown areas, described aspatchy woodlands and different types of grassy vegetation (a type of land cover that does not naturally occur in western Europe except inalpine regions) and the dark green forest indicates that natural forest has been destroyed (5missing forest). One likely explanation, at least inthe real world, would be destruction by human land use. Such destruction is widespread in Europe, particularly the Mediterranean(Montgomery, 2007) and is assumed to have contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire



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Regarding the importance of trees in the world Tolkiencreated, his immersion in Northern mythology must alsobe taken into account. Here, the cosmos is supported bythe mighty tree Yggdrasil, and Tolkien initially took thison board in his conception, because in his cosmology,the two trees Telperion and Laurelin give light and shape

to the world even before the creation of the sun andmoon. InThe Lord of the Rings, good and bad people canbe distinguished by their attitudes to trees. The elves aretree-people dwelling in enchanted forests and buildingtheir houses in trees, and the Hobbits regard trees bothas a central element of their cultural landscape and as thefocus of their communal life, embodied in the PartyTree. Gondors decline is symbolized by the withering ofthe White Tree, and its restoration comes about whenAragorn as the rightful king replaces the withered stumpwith a blooming new sapling. The dwarves, who areminers and known to chop down trees for their forges,occupy an ambivalent position. Conspicuously, the main

impact of evil characters on the environment is always theslaying of trees. Saruman is seen as the tree-killer(LoR, The Two Towers, Tolkien, 1985, p. 220), bothbecause of his actions in Isengard and in his devastationof the Shire, where the ultimate crime is the choppingdown of the Party Tree. Finally, nothing manages togrow where Saurons shadow falls. The advancement ofthe shadow correlates with a marginalisation of trees,although they still retain some of their power. After theHobbits are assaulted by an aggressive willow in the OldForest, the nature spirit Tom Bombadil explains thetrees grudge:

Toms words laid bare the hearts of trees and their

thoughts, which were often dark and strange, and filledwith a hatred of things that go free upon the earth,gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning: destroy-ers and usurpers. It was not called the Old Forestwithout reason, for it was indeed ancient, a survivor ofvast forgotten woods; and in it there lived yet, ageing noquicker than the hills, the fathers of the fathers of trees,remembering times when they were lords. (LoR, TheFellowship of the Ring, Tolkien, 1985, pp. 180181)

He thus helps the Hobbits to understand the lives of theForest, apart from themselves, indeed to feel themselves asthe strangers where all other things were at home (LoR,The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien, 1985, p. 180). This is

reinforced by the appearance of Treebeard and the Ents.Treebeard embodies the worlds being within the frame-work of a mythic world picture, and his name, long andcontinually growing, tells the story of the world (LoR, TheTwo Towers, Tolkien, 1985, p. 85). Due to his remoteexistence, he is initially reluctant to engage in the affairs ofthe world: I am not altogether on anybodys side, becausenobody is altogether on my side, if you understand me:nobody cares for the woods as I care for them, not evenElves nowadays (LoR, The Two Towers, Tolkien, 1985, p.95, italics in original). But once he has come to theconclusion that Saruman with his mind of metal andwheels (LoR, The Two Towers, Tolkien, 1985, p. 96) must

be stopped, the revenge of the natural world on theperpetrators of ruthless industrialism is terrible. After the

great battle, one of the most powerful images of redemp-tion is Sams use of Galadriels gift for the reforestation ofthe Shire:

Spring surpassed his wildest hopes. His trees began tosprout and grow, as if time was in a hurry and wished

to make one year do for twenty. In the Party Field, abeautiful young sapling leaped up: it had silver barkand long leaves and burst into golden flowers in April.It was indeed a mallorn, and it was the wonder of theneighbourhood. In after years, as it grew in grace andbeauty, it was known far and wide and people wouldcome long journeys to see it: the only mallorn west of theMountains and east of the Sea, and one of the finest inthe world. (LoR, The Return of the King, Tolkien,1985, p. 375)

In contrast, the absence of trees signifies degeneration,both physical and moral. In the stone city of Minas Tirith,the steward Denethor has succumbed to the power of

Sauron and lost heart. Just as the absence of trees hasallowed the shadow to spread, recovery must be affectedthrough the return of nature. They need more gardens,said Legolas. The houses are dead, and there is too littlehere that grows and is glad. If Aragorn comes into his own,the people of the Wood shall bring him birds that sing andtrees that do not die (LoR, The Return of the King,Tolkien, 1985, p. 181). On their way south, Sam andFrodo, led by Gollum, come to that land that Men oncecalled Ithilien, a fair country of climbing woods and swift-falling streams (LoR, The Two Towers, Tolkien, 1985, p.326). The land is still fair, but there are already signs ofdecay created by the shadow of Mordor: Ithilien, thegarden of Gondor now desolate, kept still a dishevelleddryad loveliness (LoR, The Two Towers, Tolkien, 1985,p. 327). As they go on, the destruction becomes morevisible:

They had not come very far from the road, and yet evenin so short a space they had seen scars of the old wars,and the newer wounds made by the Orcs and other foulservants of the Dark Lord: a pit of uncovered filth andrefuse; trees hewn down wantonly and left to die, withevil runes or the fell sign of the Eye cut in rude strokes ontheir bark. (LoR, The Two Towers, Tolkien, 1985,p. 329)

In the Dead Marshes, nothing is alive, a land defiled,

diseased beyond all healing unless the Great Sea shouldenter in and wash it with oblivion (LoR, The Two Towers,Tolkien, 1985, p. 302), and Mount Doom, aptly named, isthe central symbol of a hostile environment of volcanicsmoke and fire, tellingly described in terms of an industrialplant: The confused and tumbled shoulders of its greatbase rose for maybe three thousand feet above the plain,and above them was reared half as high again its tall centralcone, like a vast oast or chimney capped with a jaggedcrater (LoR, The Return of the King, Tolkien, 1985,p. 269). In the apocalyptic fight between good and evil, wewould argue, symbolism overrides the geographical accu-racy that the narrative elsewhere seeks to observe, and as

growing trees signify the good, the belching volcanoembodies evil.



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HUSBANDRY AND THE CREATION OF SUSTAINABLE

FICTIONS

The novel relates the end of the Third Age of Middle-earthwhich is also the end of magic, of wizards and the elves andtheir forest culture, and the new age belongs to men (and

hobbits), who must create cultural landscapes based on theright kind of equilibrium between the needs of the naturalworld and the needs of humans, or rather there must be arecognition of the ways in which humans are part of thenatural world. Despite this clearly ecological agenda,however, The Lord of the Ringsescapes being a propagandapiece in the spirit of preservationist allegory through itssense of place, topographical specificity and localness. AsCurry puts it, [t]his localness marks the difference betweena conservationist love of the land and a conservative (orworse) love of an inflated fatherland (Curry, 1997, p. 61).He also reminds readers of Tolkiens repeated assertionthat the kernel of his mythology was a place: a smallwoodland glade filled with hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire,

where he saw his young wife dancing. This gave creative riseto the Tale of Luthien Tinuviel and Beren, the heart ofTheSilmarillion, and thence The Lord of the Rings. (Curry,1997, p. 160). Even as the story-teller remains faithful tothings in themselves, attending to their particularity, properhusbandry emerges as a task for the future, embodied in thefigure of the gardener, and it makes sense in this respect tosee Sam Gamgee as the true hero of the tale. He is notsusceptible to the power of the Ring because he knows thathusbandry must be small-scale: The one small garden of afree gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollento a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others tocommand (LoR,The Return of the King, Tolkien, 1985, p.

216). While the other characters depart from the GreyHavens to a spiritual realm beyond the known world orrecede into the background as if embroidered upon amedieval tapestry, Sam remains very conspicuously there, asif to fulfil both the command to be fruitful and multiplyaccording to Gods original intention, and the promise thatthe meek shall inherit the earth.

Having presented an ecocritical argument aboutTolkiens project, it remains, finally, to situate the authormore clearly within the ecological movement. Althoughhe liked trees, gardening and wholesome food and wasinterested in his brothers activities as a fruit farmer, Tolkienwas not a political activist or practitioner of organicfarming, like, for example, Rolf Gardiner (Jefferies and

Tyldesley, 2011). He remains a scholar, a philologist andstory-teller who has fascinating things to say about thefunction of literature for the preservation of the environ-ment, and we argue that his specific aim was the creation ofsustainable fictions. For Tolkien, the functions of fantasy,which he sets against a dystopian and secular modernism aswell as the destructive aspects of modernity, is escape, seenas positive, consolation and recovery. To the elvish craft,Enchantment, fantasy aspires (On Fairy-Stories, p. 50),he says, and Fantasy remains a human right (On Fairy-Stories, p. 52). Things must be seen apart from ourselves,with fresh attention and freed from possessiveness. Thus,Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a

re-gaining regaining of a clear view (On Fairy-Stories, p.53), achieved through the literary creation of a Secondary

World to mirror, interrogate, and perhaps improve ourown.

To conclude, let us ask what we have gained from ourinvestigation: literary geography as an interdisciplinaryapproach has allowed us to take a new look at Tolkiensinfluential work informed by geographical method, identi-

fying specific themes and features in the text and thusmoving beyond an impressionist assertion of Tolkiensecological agenda. In consequence, it has also allowed us todevelop our understanding of the impact of literature oncultural and political debates an impact which in fact turnsout to be stronger and more sustainable as the literaryfiction moves beyond propaganda.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Ina Habermann has beenProfessor of English sinceSeptember 2007. Hermain fields of interest in-clude Shakespeare andthe early modern period,literature and film in theinterwar period and theSecond World War, Irishliterature, cultural and lit-erary history and theory,as well as gender studies.She studied English inFrankfurt, Exeter andMunich and was a mem-ber of the Munich grad-

uate school Geschlechter-differenz & Literatur. From 1998 to 2007, Ina Habermannwas a lecturer in English and cultural studies at theUniversity of Erlangen, Germany. She is the author ofStaging Slander and Gender in Early Modern England(Ashgate, 2003) and ofMyth, Memory and the Middlebrow:Priestley, du Maurier and the Symbolic Form of Englishness(Palgrave, 2010). Her current research projects deal withliterary negotiations of silence and with cultural topogra-phies. She has initiated and is the chairwoman of the Centreof Competence Cultural Topographies.

REFERENCES

Burns, M. (2005). Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in TolkiensMiddle-earth, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Ont.

Carpenter, H. (1987). J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography [1977],Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA.

Curry, P. (1997). Defending Middle-earth. Tolkien: Myth andModernity, Harper Collins, London.

Curry, P. (1999/2005). Tolkien and his critics: a critique, in Rootand Branch. Approaches Towards Understanding Tolkien, ed. byHonegger, H., pp. 75146, Walking Tree Publishers, Zurich/Berne.

Dennerlein, K. (2009).Narratologie des Raums, De Gruyter, Berlin/New York.

Drout, M. (Ed.). (2007). J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Scholarshipand Critical Assessment, Routledge, New York.

Fimi, D. (2008).Tolkien, Race and Cultural History. From Fairiesto Hobbits. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.



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Fonstad, K. W. (1991). The Atlas of Middle-Earth, HoughtonMifflin, Boston, MA.

Hammond, W. G. and Scull, Ch. (1995). J.R.R. Tolkien Artist &Illustrator, HarperCollins, London.

Harrison, F. (1984). England, home and beauty, in Second Nature,ed. by Mabey, R., Clifford, S. and King, A., pp. 162172, JonathanCape, London.

Jefferies, M. and Tyldesley, M. (Eds.). (2011).Rolf Gardiner: Folk,Nature and Culture in Interwar Britain, Ashgate, Aldershot.Kocher, P. (2004). Middle-earth: An Imaginary World?, in

Understanding the Lord of the Rings. The Best of TolkienCriticism, ed. by Zimbardo, R. A. and Isaacs, N. D., pp. 14662,Houghton Mifflin, Boston, CA/New York.

Matless, D. (1998). Landscape and Englishness, Reaktion Books,London.

Montgomery, D. (2007). Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations,University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA.

Shultz, J. (2010). Die Okozonen der Erde, Ulmer, Stuttgart.Shippey, T. (2003). The Road to Middle-earth, Houghton Mifflin,

Boston, MA.Tolkien, J. R. R. (1985). The Lord of the Rings [1954/5], Ballantine

Books, New York.Tolkien, J. R. R. (1989). Tree and Leaf, ed. by Tolkien, C., Houghton

Mifflin, Boston, MA.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1990a). The Lord ofthe Rings, HarperCollins, London.Tolkien, J. R. R. (1990b). Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien: A Selec-tion, ed. by Carpenter, H. and Tolkien, C., Allen & Unwin,London.

Walmsley, N. (1983). Tolkien and the 60s, in J.R.R. Tolkien:This Far Land, ed. by Giddings, R., pp. 7383, Vision Press,London.

Whittingham, E. A. (2008). The Evolution of Tolkiens Mythology.A Study of the History of Middle-earth, Mcfarland & Company,Jefferson, NC/London.



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