Lord of the Rings - English Icon

[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.