OK, I've seen several people in this thread make reference to Professor Tolkien's description of Arda as our own world in the past. Well, here are the quotes:
(
Note: He very specifically states that his mythology is
not set on another planet, unlike what someone previously posted. These quotes are also not by a hobbit, elf or what-have-you - but are taken from his personal correspondence and letters regarding his stories mythology. Anyway, here's what the Professor has to say about it himself.)
From a letter to the Houghton Mifflin Co., 30 June 1955:
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'Middle-earth', by the way, is not a name of a never-never land without relation to the world we live in (like the Mercury of Eddison). It is just a use of Middle English middel-erde (or erthe), altered from Old English Middangeard: the name for the inhabited lands of Men 'between the seas'. And though 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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From his notes on W.H. Auden's review of
The Return of the King, 1956:
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I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world. ... The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary. ... Mine is not an 'imaginary' world, but an imaginary historical moment on 'Middle-earth' – which is our habitation.
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From a letter to Rhona Beare, 14 October 1958:
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I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for [i]place[/]. I prefer that to the contemporary mode of seeking remote globes in 'space'. However curious, they are alien, and not lovable with the love of blood-kin.
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From a letter to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, 8 February 1967:
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The action of the story takes place in the North-west of 'Middle-earth', equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean. But this is not a purely 'Nordic' area in any sense. If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy.
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[ April 16, 2002: Message edited by: Bruce MacCulloch ]