Lord of the Rings - English Icon

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

You know, I think that it maybe an icon to the English who recognize the strong ties to their country, but to the rest of us, it is a darn good read, even if we haven't a clue that there is a country/culture that vaguely resembles M-E (or perhaps the Shire). Thus having said that, it would be hard for me to say it is an English icon, because it doesn't feel particularly English to me since I don't know what Englishness feels like. And neither does it feel particularly exotic, though on reflection, that statement is a strange one, and yet there you have it. It has just enough attachment to the language and values of the recent past make it familiar, despite the sometimes strange landscapes or inhabitants.

The long shot of it is that if you mention LotR, England doesn't immediately come to mind, whereas if you say 'cricket' or 'Trafalger Square' it does.

[Firefoot]

I have to second what Hilde says. If I look for ties, I can see them (mostly in the Hobbit), but if I think "LotR," I definitely don't think "England." Say Stonehenge or tea or cricket or Buckingham palace - those are what I would call English icons.

While LotR started out as a mythology for England, I think it has become almost too inter-cultural to be just an English icon. I'm not trying to downsize whatever influence it had on Tolkien, but for those of us who aren't experienced in Englishness, LotR does not speak to that. I can imagine little brooks and rolling hills and fields without picturing England; we have those here across the ocean, you know. They might be a bit different, and so my mental pictures of those places might be different than someone who lives in England, but understanding England is not essential to understanding LotR. On the other hand, LotR is certainly more English than, say, American, and if any country could claim iconology, it would be England. But in my opinion, an English icon should say "this is England" to more people than just English people, and I'm not sure that LotR does this.

Of course, if it came down between the miniskirt and LotR, hands down which would be the English icon... I had no idea miniskirts had anything to do with England.

until you get to problematic figures like Boromir who is far more American -- a cowboy, really, with all that lone gun bravado stuff; rugged individualism.

*Imagines Boromir in chaps and a cowboy hat...* Definitely never quite thought of it that way before.

[Aiwendil]

The degree to which LotR is associated with England will naturally vary with the reader. I first read LotR (or rather, had it read to me) when I was quite young - probably about six; at that time, naturally, it bore no connection whatsoever to England in my mind. Now it seems quintessentially English to me.

I suppose it has, in part, to do with how familiar one is with England and English society. I've never been to England, but I'm something of an Anglophile. I think that to someone who is familiar with English novels and television, hobbits (in their society, their manner of speech, their attitude, their homeland, and so on) simply ooze Englishness. But when I was very young, this fact was quite lost on me, simply because I had no experience of Englishness. As a matter of fact, thinking about it, it seems likely that what initially appealed to me about other English things was their similarity to Tolkien.

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

Aiwendil, that is an interesting point, and I think I must be disensitized to even noticing Englishness, (perhaps in the way you don't notice the hum of the refrigerator after awhile). I grew up fond of reading books by English authors, listening to English music and watching quite a bit of English television, though this wasn't intentional. I just found it more to my taste than what ever else was around.

It just seems that the increasingly global nature of these times tends to obscure the distinctions for me.