The Middle of What?
 

It's well established that my youngest daughter is the center of the universe. Or that's at least what she believes to be true.

Studying some ancient writings this morning regarding geography, it dawned on me that I didn't know why Middle Earth was called 'Middle." Middle of what? Many cultures - and it's easy to see why - considered their main city or some important place to be the center, the middle, of everything. Just as with my daughter, in considering all of visible creation, a geocentric belief just makes sense...from a point of view. But what of Middle Earth?

Arda wasn't always the sphere that we know today. Before the Downfall of Númenor, Arda was presumably a flat plane, much like early human cultures believed of our earth. After that catastrophe, the straight roads were bent and Arda was changed into a sphere, presumably molded by Eru's hands like so much clay. Regardless, whether plane or sphere, much of the fun takes place within the confines of our much beloved Middle Earth.

Middle of what?

• Assuming the name came from the plane, we have Aman to the West of Middle Earth, and for it to be truly middle, there would need to be something to the East. And that land is...

• Assuming that the middle moniker isn't just a relic of the plane name, then Middle Earth is named why? Is it the middle world between heaven and hell, as again some ancient cultures considered? The middle of a sphere, to me, is within it - its center. The middle lands on a globe require a specific point of view; again, middle in relation to... Is it latitudinal - not too north, not too south?

Maybe the answer is right before my eyes, but I just can't see it.

I've seen maps that indicate there are continents to the east and south of Middle-Earth. I don't know if those maps are from earlier generations of Arda that were set aside though. If you look online you can quickly find an image of those maps.

Isn't it from Midgard/Mittilagart/Middangeard, or whatever Germanic myth Tolkien preferred? These are names for our world, which was believed between other worlds. Perhaps he just named his world for ours.

I believe you're right. Middle Earth is just a translation of Midgård, the old scandinavian or nordic name for the earth. Tolkien has borrowed a lot more than this name from the old nordic mythologies by the way.

And it's not just the Scandinavian mythology...

In many cultures around the world there is a conception of there being three worlds: the world above (the sky), the world below (under the earth) and the middle-earth where we humans live. Especially in shamanistic cultures around the world this was pretty usual way to see things - and sounds pretty natural as well.

No, no, Middle-earth really was in the middle.
Please note that initially Middle-earth was created as a perfect land with a north-south line of symmetry.
M-e was lying right between the two great seas, Belegaer in the W and the East Sea in the E. Symmetrical Aman liead W of Belegaer and the Land of the Sun laid E of the East Sea.

But, as we know Melkor just couldn't help break the symmetry.
I just found this picture of Arda in those times from Mrs. Fonstad's Atlas of Middle-earth:

http://www.tolkienfrance.net/images/cartes/pa_9.jpg

And even later M-e still was in the middle, you can see more or less good maps in the Atlas or the Encyclopedia of Arda.

EDIT: Sorry if there is copyright problem with the picture, I can only provide the link if necessary.

In the Akallabeth Tolkien talked of Aman, Middle Earth and Empty Lands to the East

Why shamanistic? Such an idea appeared at almost all cultures in the past in some way, and from the Near-eastern ancient civilisations through Greeks and others the concept of heavens/earth/underworld-sheol-hades-hell became a common view of the world in the hellenistic period, and being adopted this way it remains in the European (and of course through this also American and wherever the white man stuck his feet) subconscious to this time.

I believe Tolkien stated somewhere that Middle-Earth was supposed to refer to the men-inhabited world (exactly in the hellenistic view of "oikoumené", the inhabited world), as opposed to any other "spheres" - like heaven or hell (in our case probably just Valinor, resp. Aman; I am not aware of anything special being on the eastern side, but maybe the Empty Lands are a good thought - at least this is certainly not inhabited world) - so I believe the Midgard idea and what was said here before are on the good track.

Tolkien defined Middle-earth in an interview with Denis Gueroult

Though the usual interpretation is as Nogrod has stated, Earth in the middle of the Overworld & Underworld. The interview can be heard here http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/..._Interview.php

Personally, I find the most interesting his comment that Middle-earth is this world "at a different stage of imagination". Any thoughts on what that might mean?

Not that a source ever fully defines or explains things, yet they do sometimes demonstrate how a writer's imagination is sparked. (I suggest, in response to davem's question, that Tolkien was exceptionally able to enter into the imaginative space of the Anglo Saxon world through its poetic remains.)

Here's where Tolkien found the name in its Old English form, and here also Tolkien found the initial idea for his Earendil:

Old English poem Crist by Cynewulf

Modern English translation

I seem to recall that the Carpenter biography gives this info, but I don't have the bio at hand at the moment.

Oh, and I should correct myself, in old Scandinavian or rather Norse mythology Midgård is a name for the world inhabited by people, not a name for earth, just like in Tolkien's world. Midgård is also in the middle of the world, surrounded by a vast sea. In the far west, the gods dwell in Valhalla (compare Valmar) and brave warriors slain in battle come here in the afterlife.

The world at a stage where people had no knowledge of what was beyond the sea, where the familiar lands are just (presumably) small parts of an otherwise vast and unchartered world of unknown size and orgin. No wonder people came up with strange myths and stories.

But why a 'different stage of imagination', rather than, say, a 'different stage of knowledge', or a 'different stage of understanding'?

Tolkien seems to be implying that rather than see the world, what we do is imagine it.. So, our ancestors 'imagined' the world in the way they did not out of 'ignorance' of the facts about it, but because they were at a particular stage of imagination. Yet, if we are talking about 'stages' that implies that they would have seen the world that way whatever 'facts' they had known about it.

And would Tolkien have considered that stage of the imagination higher, or lower, than our own?

The two concepts are interconnected, aren't they?

In our ancient history, men knew very little of the world but must still have wondered as to why they were there in the first place and marvelled at the natural phenomena they witnessed. With very little sure knowledge, a curious mind must fill out the blanks with imagination. It's easy to see how bolts of lightning and earthquakes could be interpreted as the works of wrathful gods.

The earth was seen as flat for a very long time. It would have been impossible to imagine a round earth at that time: why, people on the underside would surely fall off. Then, eventually, as more and more observations were contrary to the flat earth theory, it had to be corrected, which opened up the imagination to new mysteries.

In these days, the earth and most everything on it is studied and well understood. Science has plausable theories on everything from the orgin of life on earth to the very first moments of time and existence. Only extremely ignorant westerners could imagine the bolts of lightning as thown by wrathful gods riding flying steeds across the skies or that the world was created by a bearded god sitting on a cloud some 6000 years ago.

I would say that different 'stages of knowledge' precede different 'stages of imagination'; yet the opposite could also be close to the truth. Knowledge can restrict imagination but is probably not possible without it either. We imagine what we don't know. Some leave it at that, others go out to learn the truth.

The imagination of Tolkien was close to escapism I would say. And most fans of his probably agree that it can be nice sometimes to flee the drudgery of everyday life into a magical world of elves and dragons. The greatest quality of Tolkiens works is how realistic he made his illusion, making it much easier to immerse one self into it.

To which decades later Tolkien returned:

Hail Earendil brightest of stars!

Just don't give me all this stuff to jump on! :D

We're getting scaringly philosophical in here...

Okay I'll just make a few comments on this: "We imagine what we don't know. Some leave it at that, others go out to learn the truth."

Up to the 19th century people thought that imagination was a faculty of mind that was able to separate those impressions that in fact belonged together and to join together different parts of things that were separate. Therefore a unicorn was just a human mind's application of a horned beast to a horse or a centaur the compilement of a human "upper body" tied to a horse's hind. Both were parts of earlier experiences so there was nothing new in there. Just splitting and adding from previous experiences.

In the end this was a theological question of whether a human mind could come forwards creating something there wasn't before - already Nicolas Cusanus thought in the 15th century that the humans were able to come up with new things as there were spikes and stalks in nature but only humans could produce a fork adding these two things up. But the general opinion was and were for a long time that all humans could do was to imitate the works of nature (powered by a God) and thus imagination was just dissecting or bringing together of things already existant in the God's creation perceived by men.

With the advent of romanticism there then emerged the idea of humans as all powerful creratures (hinted in the humanism of Pico della Mirandolla and other 15th century "humanists"). The added feature in the 19th century was the break from the past were the human geniuses were given the gift of actually creating something new or more real than the world around us from their individual psyche (or whatever). And you thought Freud invented the unconscious? No he didn't. It was the talk of the town already with the 19th century idealistic-romantic philosophers who aligned themselves with the artists (like Blake & fellows).

So the sentence: "We imagine what we don't know" only comes possible in the latter part of the 19th century and even then it has work to do to gain universal appeal. Now Tolkien surely was cognizant of this discussion...

The latter part then... "Some leave it at that, others go out to learn the truth".

The question of the meaning of the word 'truth' is one of the hardest ones. Truth comparing to what, reality itself (which is it outside human classifications - which is unprovable, or which is made by men whereafter we argue in a circle?), anyone's opinion, feeling of certainty, emotional tiedness, religious belief?

There's no easy answer here...

But was Tolkien going for the "correspondency theory" of truth, meaning that our language and the world just somehow share the same structures making our sentences able to say things in truth / express them correctly - even if our language today has possibly lost some of the key things the generations before us knew as some people say? Or is this just easy escapism in confronting the real world (whatever it is but the one that keeps disappointing us) which denies the past values?

The imagination of man has been and continue to be crippled by religious dogmas.

Don't even go there, mate! Much indeed is shades of gray but not all is relative either :)

Tolkien answered the question about the word "Middle-earth" in several letters to readers and publishers

The "'different stage of imagination" I read as "imaginary historical period"

So are we saying that 'Middle Earth' is middle because it is betwixt fire and ice, sea and shining sea? When was it established that there was a sea to the far east? Or did everyone just take Aulë's word for it? Was it one large continent like Eurasia?

I would conclude then that, like some of our own ancient stories, Arda too once was a flat table-like surface which then later became a globe. Did Tolkien create it this way to resonate further with our histories?