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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 9431806" data-attributes="member: 6787503">It's a bit more than a single sentence. If you include the footnote I quoted, it's three sentences. Also, I'm not sure why you say "could have". The statement takes it as given the setting is our world. He acknowledges the difficulty of making the story "fit" and that he "could have fitted things in with greater verisimilitude, if the story had not become too far developed, before the question ever occurred to me." The reason I've asked for passages is I find it difficult to engage with the unsupported assertions that have mainly been offered by those who've posted that the novel's setting couldn't be our world in the time-period discussed, and I disagree I've been provided with any. To date, I don't think anyone has provided any actual quotes from the books. If I've overlooked any, I'd be happy to engage with them.My position isn't so much that the text shouldn't be taken literally. I mean, that's true of pretty much any text, and especially so when one considers the, albeit fictional, "translational" nature of the novel. I.e. it's clearly not a literal translation since it contains so much idiom. Since it's fiction, it's not meant to be taken as literal, i.e. factual. I think that's understood by most readers. But I think what you're responding to (which is unclear to me) is my statement that the drawing is not a faithful (i.e. literal) rendering of the interior of Bag End. Let me clarify my position on this. I think the words are meant to be taken literally. I.e. the reader is meant to imagine Bilbo as owning clocks, silver spoons, pocket handkerchiefs, umbrellas, etc. and Bag End as looking pretty much how it looks in the drawing which is perfectly compatible with its description in the book. However, given that these elements are primarily expressive of the 20th century West Midlands character that hobbits represent, I don't see them as particularly, or primarily, informative of setting. For elements that contribute to setting, I would look to the author's extensive use of geography and references to events in the distant past that give the novel a sense of time and place. I'd also look at the variety of cultures that are represented as a whole as something that informs the setting. Bag End and the Shire are, of course, settings of some parts of the novel's action, but they don't have a whole lot to say about the setting in its entirety.</blockquote>

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