Why has popular culture, right-wing political groups, and numerous editorialists assumed that J.R.R. Tolkiens Middle-earth promotes a racialized universe? Did Tolkien, by situating his various characters as races, indicate that within Middle-earth he had created an essentialized structure of difference between peoples? Decoding the ideology of Tolkiens Middle-earth is the work of this paper, and untangling this discourse will supply us with an understanding of the impact and importance of race as it resonates with readers.
This paper treats the literary landscape of Middle-earth as analytical space, and this literary analysis is informed by anthropological concepts and methods complimented by the context of Tolkiens historical moment. Discovering these ethnographic representations of the various humanoid characters in Middle-earth allows me to establish the degree to which these depictions contribute to a racialized and racist understanding of Middle-earth. As the greatest impact of Tolkiens work has resulted predominantly from the popularity of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, these are the texts used to question Tolkiens racial message.
Tolkien did not ostensibly implant in Middle-earth a racist microcosm of the world. Through close readings, this paper reads the hierarchical structure of Middle-earth as a dialogic space, where even as Tolkien uses racial generalizations he undercuts these assumptions through the plasticity of his characters and their interactions. Middle-earths characters dialogize such racial issues as miscegenation, literary representations of blackness, colonization, and pluralism as its actors explore the tensions inherent in these issues. Thus, while initially Tolkien seems to engage race only as a descriptive tool, he does not freeze these descriptions of difference. Rather, Tolkien uses his characters own flawed racial assumptions to highlight the illogicity of such conjectures. By providing a dialogic racial space, Middle-earth is especially valid for demonstrating the work needed for understanding and respecting cultural difference.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-05062009-002112 |
| Date | 18 May 2009 |
| Creators | Farrell, Eliza C |
| Contributors | Emily McEwan-Fujita, Amy Murray Twyning, Bernard Hagerty, Eric Johnson |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-05062009-002112/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds