What Tech Level is the Hobbit?

[Rykion]

Clocks, door bells, fireworks, and umbrellas aren't really anachronisms in a fantasy world. They've all existed, or easily could have, for a thousand years or more.

Tolkien didn't originally plan the Hobbit to be set in the fantasy world he had been creating for many years. It was meant to be a one shot fantasy story. When he wrote LotR he decided to go ahead and set it in his created world. The elves in the Hobbit appear childish and out of place compared to Tolkien's other works. I don't blame Tolkien for wishing he'd changed the Hobbit more as it and LotR are the only works set in Arda that were published before his death.

Edit: Several phone calls kept me from getting my post in earlier so I didn't see jester47's last post. I can understand Tolkien feeling the use of the word elf made too many people think of the wrong thing. I find it ironic that Tolkien's elves are now at least as iconic as the fairy/sprite variety.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Yeah, wizards aren't into open-sourcing their shticks.

GURPS Banestorm actually covers this quite well. Why hasn't technology advanced into gunpowder and other bits? because the wizards don't want any challenges to their power.

 

[Desdichado]

I was refering to a letter that he wrote late in life where he stated he regretted tieing the mythology to legendary creatures because too many hippies had asked him about elves durring the 60's. (leonard nimoy probably did not help either). It was never made official, but this letter indicted some desire to retcon. He stated the connotation of elf corrupted the image of the type of being he was trying to convey.

That's not retconning, that's just wishing he had used different words to avoid the unfortunate preconceptions that he was unexpectedly saddled with. And I don't know how serious that really was; what Letter specifically are you referring to, anyway?

Not that Tolkien didn't contemplate some extremely serious retconning of his setting, but since all that retconning was going on behind the scenes, and nothing that was already published was due to change, I don't see what the big deal was. Don't forget--everything M-E related besides The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings itself was published posthumously. I don't know that retconning The Book of Lost Tales up to The Silmarillion standard, and then further planned (but not completed) retcons as mentioned in War of the Jewels, Morgoth's Ring and The Peoples of Middle-earth even count as retcons anyway, since none of it was published.

It's more of that 'fairy tale' feel, definately. I'm surprised how no-one ever mentions that Middle-Earth uses our real-world calender

Well, that's because technically it doesn't. I mean, the real-world calendar fits well onto it, because Middle-earth is supposed to be a mythical age of the real world. There is an Appendix at the end of Return of the King that explains the calendar situation, though--essentially, Tolkien "translated" dates into a Gregorian calendar, but he also details the calendar that the characters actually used, and how it differs.

The Necromancer, we later find out, is the shadow of Sauron.

Er, well, he is Sauron, plain and simple.

 

[loki44]

OK, it's not The Hobbit per se, but at the end of the trilogy (I think, "The Scouring of the Shire" is the name of the chapter) it's apparent that the Shire was actually just one societal evolutionary step away from an industrial revolution. That would make it fairly advanced in many ways I would imagine, even if it was not made wholly explicit by Tolkein.

 

[Akrasia]

I do have a very good idea of what I am talking about...

With all due respect, I don't think you do.

At no point in the LotR does Tolkien 'retcon' Elves into humans. That's rubbish.

Sorry, but it is, and it was never part of his mythology. In the Silmarillion, the first sketch of which was outlined when he was an infantryman during WWI, the Elves were a distinct people -- the 'First Children' of Illuvatar -- and they always remained so. Tolkien drew upon Norse mythology for his account of the Elves, and he never meant for them to be an 'offshoot' of humanity.

I suspect that you might the 'Dunedain' in mind here. (The Dunedain were a race of 'High Men' or 'Numenoreans' who had 'elvish blood' -- the first king of Numenor, 'Elros', was a 'half-elf' and brother of Elrond. Elros chose 'mortality', to be 'of men', and thus eventually died, whereas his brother, Elrond, chose to be 'of elves', and thus was granted immortality but lacked the freedom and the 'gift' of men. Aragorn II, as heir to the thrones of Arnor and Gondor, was a distant descendent of Elros, and so had 'elvish blood', but was not and elf, and was not even mentioned in the Hobbit.)

...
In a letter in his later years Tolkein expressed regret at calling the elves elves as it really did not fit what they were and that he should have made the races a difference of culture rather than species....

Sorry, but this is complete rubbish.

Please direct me to this letter (namely, tell me what letter it is, and where it can be found), and if you are right, I will happily eat my words.

(But I very much doubt that I will...)

 

[diaglo]

Sorry, but this is complete rubbish.

Please direct me to this letter (namely, tell me what letter it is, and where it can be found), and if you are right, I will happily eat my words.

(But I very much doubt that I will...)

I don't think this come directly from J.R.R.

iirc, it was in The Book of Lost Tales Part II edited by Christopher Tolkien.


for other reading we have:
The Hobbit

The Lord of the Rings a 6 book series which only has 3 titles:

The Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
The Return of the King

The Silmarillion

Unfinished Tales

The Book of Lost Tales Part I
The Book of Lost Tales Part II

The Tolkien Reader

Sir Gawain & The Green Knight

Smith of Wooton Major & Farmer Giles of Ham

By Humphrey Carpenter: Tolkien: The Authorized Biography

By Paul H. Kocher: Master of Middle-earth: The Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien

By Robert Foster: The Complete Guide to Middle-earth: From The Hobbit to The Silmarillion

 

[Akrasia]

I don't think this come directly from J.R.R.

iirc, it was in The Book of Lost Tales Part II edited by Christopher Tolkien.
...

Thanks. I'll have to dig through that book again.

I've read a tonne of Tolkien, and the notion that he ever thought that 'elves' should have simply been 'humans' runs in the face of pretty much everything I've ever read by him.

It violates his mythology -- which he developed over the course of his life -- on a fundamental level.

 

[Akrasia]

...
The Book of Lost Tales Part I
The Book of Lost Tales Part II
...

There are actually 10 volumes in the series.

The last volume is great simply because it contains two (incomplete) stories that Tolkien wrote after the LotR, one of which takes place in the Fourth Age (in Gondor, after the death of Aragorn). IIR, it's called 'The New Shadow'.

 

[diaglo]

There are actually 10 volumes in the series.

The last volume is great simply because it contains two (incomplete) stories that Tolkien wrote after the LotR, one of which takes place in the Fourth Age (in Gondor, after the death of Aragorn). IIR, it's called 'The New Shadow'.

i knew there was more. those were the titles i could see on my shelf.

 

[Desdichado]

I suspect that you might the 'Dunedain' in mind here. (The Dunedain were a race of 'High Men' or 'Numenoreans' who had 'elvish blood' -- the first king of Numenor, 'Elros', was a 'half-elf' and brother of Elrond. Elros chose 'mortality', to be 'of men', and thus eventually died, whereas his brother, Elrond, chose to be 'of elves', and thus was granted immortality but lacked the freedom and the 'gift' of men. Aragorn II, as heir to the thrones of Arnor and Gondor, was a distant descendent of Elros, and so had 'elvish blood', but was not and elf, and was not even mentioned in the Hobbit.)

To be a little nitpicky; only the line of kings themselves had any elvish blood, not all the Numenoreans. They benefited from the blessing of being favored of the elves and the Valar for their faithful service in the war against Morgoth, as well as by living in Numenor itself, "the Blessed Isle", as close as mortal men were supposed to get to Valinor. That was the source of their occasionally called "elvishness," which really just refers to the more "advanced" state of them; culturally, spiritually and otherwise, compared to other men. Most of them didn't actually have any elvish blood. Especially by the time of the Lord of the Rings itself.