Quote:
Originally posted by Kamexkoopa
Middle-Earth is mostly the European part of the world
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More than "mostly" the European part of the world. For example, in
Letters #165:
Quote:
Middle-earth...is just a use of Middle English middel-erde
or (erthe), altered from Old English Middengeard: the
name for the inhabited lands of Men 'between the seas'. And although I have
not attempted to relate the shape of the mountains and land-masses to what
geologists may say or surmise about the nearer past, imaginatively this
'history' is supposed to take place in a period of the actual Old World of
this planet.
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One way of giving depth to Middle-earth is to only
describe in detail a small portion of it (what is, in effect, Europe) and
describing only vaguely, as someone in much of the medieval period, would
have known of Asia and most of Africa, and probably view it as menacing and mysterious.
Hence, Middle-earth is conceived as Europe, Africa, and Asia, in a time when
(Tolkien would teasingly now allude to continental drift as cause) the Old World
land mass "between the seas" of the Atlantic and Pacific were different.