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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 9431520" data-attributes="member: 6787503">I'm not looking for the type of "mapping" you're talking about. I don’t look at the LotR as historical fiction, so it’s not about experiencing a "known" historical period. It’s fantasy fiction which is about (among other things) the wonder of the unknown. I don’t think it’s conducive to the enjoyment of the genre to approach a given work's setting with an attitude that it’s something about which everything is already known. Maybe that explains some of the pushback in this thread -- it would spoil the enjoyment of some posters to think of the LotR being set in the "real world" because it seems too familiar and “known”, even at the distance of 6,000 years the letter suggests, for “literary credibility”. I’m not sure where that line is for those posters. I mean, no one seems to object to the frame story of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe being set in the “real world” during the Blitz despite no evidence having been found that any English country house ever contained a magical wardrobe capable of transporting children to another dimension at that time. Objections about Bag End containing silver spoons, umbrellas, clocks, and barometers would seem to be on the same order.So yeah, I think the idea that prehistory is "established" and "known" is not at all conducive to enjoyment of speculative fiction set in that period. You see the same problem with science fiction where people with a scientific background sometimes have difficulty accepting the premise of a certain technology working that they "know" is impossible. I think part of it is that some find comfort in assuming their knowledge is perfect. I'm not trying to disabuse anyone of beliefs that help preserve their sanity, but scientific knowledge is not complete, and the time and space of prehistory is vast. There's plenty of room for the unknown. If you more or less stick to what is known, you don't get fantasy. You get something more like The Clan of the Cave Bear.Another reason I don't look for "mapping" is it's an Elvish history for the most part, concerned with people and places that have long since vanished. It’s about things that have been lost. I don't expect to find them in the archaeological record.So to answer your question, the purpose, for me, of accepting the author's stated intention for his work to be set in our world in a reasonably well defined remote time-period, is it provides an enormous wealth of geographical and cultural/anthropological detail from our world that I can use to fill in the "blank spaces around the edges" and more fully imagine the world Tolkien describes, allowing greater penetration into the "unattainable vistas" that permeate his fiction. For me, this doesn't "destroy the magic". It increases my sense of wonder to imagine the fantastic elements of his stories inhabiting the same world as I do.</blockquote>

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