Tolkien the naturalist - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

William Cloud Hicklin · 01-02-2008, 08:53 PM

And Tolkien's idyllic Shire was a place of green fields and well-tilled earth: in other words a man-made landscape, even if organic. Bucolic rural England is (or was) the product of millenia of human habitation, clearing, ditching, draining, hedging, introducing species (the oh-so-English Peter Rabbit is a descendant of immigrants).

What Tolkien really objected to was industrialization, not anthropogenic change in general.

01-02-2008, 08:53 PM	#5
William Cloud Hicklin Loremaster of Annúminas Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 2,330	And Tolkien's idyllic Shire was a place of green fields and well-tilled earth: in other words a man-made landscape, even if organic. Bucolic rural England is (or was) the product of millenia of human habitation, clearing, ditching, draining, hedging, introducing species (the oh-so-English Peter Rabbit is a descendant of immigrants). What Tolkien really objected to was industrialization, not anthropogenic change in general. __________________ The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.