Fantasy Counterpart Culture

[Inziladun]

Did Elven society have any real world correlation?

I think Tolkien may have discussed this a bit in Letters, but it seems to me that mostly Elves represent his idealized views of the best parts of Mankind.

They don't appear to generally possess negative traits; the one I see repeated is a feeling of superiority over other races. I think that's an unavoidable consequence of having immortal beings in cohabitation with those who quickly grew old and died.

To the Elves' credit though, we don't see them taking that superiority to the point of conquering and enslaving.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

I think Tolkien may have discussed this a bit in Letters, but it seems to me that mostly Elves represent his idealized views of the best parts of Mankind.

They don't appear to generally possess negative traits;

You seem to be forgetting all you have read about the Fëanorians.

Originally Posted by Nerwen

… isn't there a bit in either "On Translation" or the "Letters" where Tolkien says that his use of Anglo-Saxon to stand in for the "real" Rohirric language *shouldn't* be taken to imply a close equivalency between the cultures?

Yes. But in fact the equivalency is very close in terms of vocabulary used and culture, closer than to any other historic culture of which comparable knowledge has come down to us. The main difference is that the Rohirrim are very horse-centred while the Old English were not. See http://www.councilofelrond.com/litar...s-an-overview/ , http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Rohirrim , and http://www.oocities.org/licia_north/anglo.html .

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by jallanite

You seem to be forgetting all you have read about the Fëanorians.

And you seem to be forgetting that there is a large difference between the way Elves and Elf culture are depicted in different books and at different times. LOTR Elves are very different from Feanorians. You could also say that Elves in The Hobbit were based on people high on laughing gas, which isn't an inaccurate description of Elves in that book. You don't have to pick people''s words all the time, but gather the context from the context. Some things don't have to be stated explicitly.

If, however, you want to provide a different angle on the LOTR Elves or Silmarillion Elves and their real world counterparts, I would be interested to hear it.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

And you seem to be forgetting that there is a large difference between the way Elves and Elf culture are depicted in different books and at different times. LOTR Elves are very different from Feanorians.

Yes, but I have never seen the supposed difference between Hobbit Elves and Lord of the Rings elves. Yes, they act somewhat differently, but no more different than might appear in a description of the staff of a great house in a joyous and somewhat jesting meeting with unexpected guests and the same staff at a more formal event.

The short jesting conversation between Lindir and Bilbo in the Hall of Fire has, to me, the same flavour as the songs of the Elves of Rivendell in The Hobbit. But different people may perceive the same events in tales very differently from one another.

I don’t see any particular likeness between Elvish civilization and any historic civilization.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I think the LR is certainly written from a very Northern/Teutonic POV, but that doesn't mean that everything in it must correspond to peoples who spoke a descendant of Primitive Germanic. Certainly the Haradrim and Easterlings don't; the former have very clearly a Saracen/Persian flavor, and what little we see of the latter suggests Slavs.

Similarly, Gondor was (to our main characters) foreign, the great but distant and nearly legendary civilization of which most had heard but few visited. Its climate and vegetation are very explicitly Mediterranean, its scale and architecture unparalleled in the North; why shouldn't it occupy the same place relative to our protagonists as Constantinople to the Anglo-Saxons, the great if somewhat decayed capital of the surviving half of the mighty Empire which had once ruled their own land??

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Certainly the Haradrim and Easterlings don't; the former have very clearly a Saracen/Persian flavor, and what little we see of the latter suggests Slavs.

Interesting. May I ask why? I always saw it differently - I think the Easterlings have more of a Saracen/Middle Eastern base, while Haradrim parallel RL lands farther south. Hard as I try, I really can't see Slavs anywhere among those races. Could you elaborate?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Well, we get a very Mideast/North African impression, I think, from Sam's POV description of the dead Southron in 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit' (The mumakil aren't a problem: think Hannibal, probably Tolkien's inspiration).

We get very little about the Easterlings (Rhunians? Rhunrim????), besides the fact that they were bearded and carried axes, which would also qualify Vikings and even Dwarves. But who else would they be calqued on, but the Slavic peoples from the East? They certainly don't appear to be Scythians/Sarmatians/Huns.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by jallanite

You seem to be forgetting all you have read about the Fëanorians.

As a matter of fact, I did not. There is a clear difference between cultural behavior of a race in general, and the abberant acts of a minority.

If those deeds surrounding the Silmarils had not been deviant in the eye of most Elves, the histories would have been notably changed.