116-481: An orc (sometimes spelt ork ; / ɔːr k / ), in J. R. R. Tolkien 's Middle-earth fantasy fiction , is a race of humanoid monsters, which he also calls " goblin ". In Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings , orcs appear as a brutish, aggressive, ugly, and malevolent race of monsters , contrasting with the benevolent Elves . He described their origins inconsistently, including as a corrupted race of elves, or bred by
232-465: A Catholic , realised he had created a dilemma for himself , as if these beings were sentient and had a sense of right and wrong, then they must have souls and could not have been created wholly evil. Dragons (or "worms") appear in several varieties, distinguished by whether they have wings and whether they breathe fire (cold-drakes versus fire-drakes). The first of the fire-drakes ( Urulóki in Quenya)
348-622: A frame story that changed over the years , first with an Ælfwine-type character who translates the "Golden Book" of the sages Rumil or Pengoloð; later, having the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins collect the stories into the Red Book of Westmarch , translating mythological Elvish documents in Rivendell . The scholar Gergely Nagy observes that Tolkien "thought of his works as texts within the fictional world " (his emphasis), and that
464-762: A tightrope unaided. Their eyesight is keen. Elves are immortal, unless killed in battle. They are re-embodied in Valinor if killed. Men were "the Secondborn" of the Children of Ilúvatar: they awoke in Middle-earth much later than the Elves. Men (and Hobbits) were the last humanoid race to appear in Middle-earth: Dwarves, Ents and Orcs also preceded them. The capitalized term "Man" (plural "Men")
580-690: A "strip of raw dried flesh ... the flesh of he dared not guess what creature". Half-orcs appear in The Lord of the Rings , created by interbreeding of orcs and Men; they were able to go in sunlight. The "sly Southerner" in The Fellowship of the Ring looks "more than half like a goblin"; similar but more orc-like hybrids appear in The Two Towers "man-high, but with goblin-faces, sallow, leering, squint-eyed." In Peter Jackson 's Lord of
696-460: A Catholic, took it as a given that "evil cannot make, only mock", so orcs could not have an equal and opposite morality to that of men or elves. In a 1954 letter, Tolkien wrote that orcs were "fundamentally a race of 'rational incarnate' creatures, though horribly corrupted, if no more so than many Men to be met today." The scholar of English literature Robert Tally wrote in Mythlore that despite
812-793: A catastrophic transition from a flat to a spherical world, known as the Akallabeth, in which Aman became inaccessible to mortal Men. Tolkien described the region in which the Hobbits lived as "the North-West of the Old World, east of the Sea", and the north-west of the Old World is essentially Europe , especially Britain . However, as he noted in private letters, the geographies do not match, and he did not consciously make them match when he
928-724: A class). They had similar names in other Middle-earth languages: uruk in Black Speech; in the language of the Drúedain gorgûn , "ork-folk"; in Khuzdul rukhs , plural rakhâs ; and in the language of Rohan and in the Common Speech , orka . Tolkien stated in a letter to the novelist Naomi Mitchison that his orcs had been influenced by George MacDonald 's The Princess and the Goblin . He explained that his word "orc"
1044-565: A continuing examination of Tolkien's works and supporting mythology, became a scholarly area of study soon after his death. A legendarium is a literary collection of legends . This medieval Latin noun originally referred mainly to texts detailing legends of the lives of saints . A surviving example is the Anjou Legendarium , dating from the 14th century. Quotations in the Oxford English Dictionary for
1160-660: A crude accent, was used as a common language. When Sauron returned to power in Mordor in the Third Age , Black Speech was used by the captains of his armies and by his servants in his tower of Barad-dûr . A sample of debased Black Speech can be found in The Two Towers , where a "yellow-fanged" guard Orc of Mordor curses Uglúk of Isengard (an Uruk-hai chief) with the words "Uglúk u bagronk sha pushdug Saruman-glob búbhosh skai!" In The Peoples of Middle-earth , Tolkien gives
1276-481: A fixture of fantasy fiction and role-playing games . In the fantasy tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons ( D&D ), orcs are creatures in the game, and somewhat based upon those described by Tolkien. These D&D orcs are implemented in the game rules as a multi- tribed race of hostile and bestial humanoids . The D&D orcs are endowed with muscular frames, large canine teeth like boar's tusks, and snouts rather than human-like noses. While
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#17327983943821392-520: A letter dated 21 October 1963 to a Mrs. Munsby that "there must have been orc-women". In The Fall of Gondolin Morgoth made them of slime by sorcery, "bred from the heats and slimes of the earth". Or, they were " beasts of humanized shape", possibly, Tolkien wrote, Elves mated with beasts, and later Men. Or again, Tolkien noted, they could have been fallen Maiar , perhaps a kind called Boldog , like lesser Balrogs ; or corrupted Men. Shippey writes that
1508-476: A little glorified by enchantment of distance in time. ...if it were 'history', it would be difficult to fit the lands and events (or 'cultures') into such evidence as we possess, archaeological or geological, concerning the nearer or remoter part of what is now called Europe; though the Shire , for instance, is expressly stated to have been in this region...I hope the, evidently long but undefined gap in time between
1624-575: A need to do evil as to obtain fulfilment through the act of war. In the Warhammer 40,000 series of science-fiction games, they are a green-skinned alien species, called Orks . Orcs are an important race in Warcraft , a high fantasy franchise created by Blizzard Entertainment . Several orc characters from the Warcraft universe are playable heroes in their crossover multiplayer game Heroes of
1740-495: A private letter, Tolkien describes orcs as: squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types. O'Hehir describes orcs as "a subhuman race bred by Morgoth and/or Sauron (although not created by them) that is morally irredeemable and deserves only death. They are dark-skinned and slant-eyed, and although they possess reason, speech, social organization and, as Shippey mentions,
1856-473: A private project to create a mythology for England . The earliest story, "The Voyage of Earendel, the Evening Star", is from 1914; he revised and rewrote the legendarium stories for most of his adult life. The Hobbit (1937), Tolkien's first published novel, was not originally part of the larger mythology but became linked to it. Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (1954 and 1955) are set in
1972-402: A product of ancient necromancy , or a zombie -like creature. The term "orc" is used only once in the first edition of Tolkien's 1937 The Hobbit , which preferred the term "goblins". "Orc" was later used ubiquitously in The Lord of the Rings . The "orc-" element occurs in the sword name Orcrist , which is given as its Elvish language name, and glossed as "Goblin-cleaver". Tolkien began
2088-508: A publisher would take it, and notes that Tolkien was a perfectionist, and further that he was perhaps afraid of finishing as he wished to go on with his sub-creation , his invention of myth in Middle-earth. Tolkien first began working on the stories that would become The Silmarillion in 1914. His reading, in 1914, of the Old English manuscript Christ I led to Earendel and the first element of his legendarium, "The Voyage of Earendel,
2204-459: A pug-nose ("flat-nosed") was attributable to Tolkien's written correspondence, the pig-headed (pig-faced) look was imparted on the orc by the D&;D original edition (1974). It was later modified from bald-headed to hairy in subsequent editions. In the third version of the game the orc became gray-skinned, even though a complicated color-palleted description of a (non-gray) orc had been implemented in
2320-596: A rival to Sauron for absolute power in Middle-earth. Other races involved in the struggle against evil were Dwarves , Ents and most famously Hobbits . The early stages of the conflict are chronicled in The Silmarillion , while the final stages of the struggle to defeat Sauron are told in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings . Conflict over the possession and control of precious or magical objects
2436-484: A sequel to The Hobbit . Tolkien began to revise the Silmarillion, but soon turned to the sequel, which became The Lord of the Rings . Writing The Lord of the Rings during the 1940s, Tolkien was attempting to address the dilemma of creating a narrative consistent with a "sequel" of the published The Hobbit and a desire to present a more comprehensive view of its large unpublished background. He renewed work on
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#17327983943822552-453: A sort of moral sensibility, they are inherently evil." He notes Tolkien's own description of them, saying it could scarcely be more revealing as a representation of the " Other ", and states "it is also the product of his background and era, like most of our inescapable prejudices. At the level of conscious intention, he was not a racist or an anti-Semite " and mentions Tolkien's letters to this effect. The literary critic Jenny Turner, writing in
2668-468: A spectre, or goblin." In the sense of a monstrous being, the term is used just once in Beowulf , as the plural compound orcneas , one of the tribes belonging to the descendants of Cain , alongside the elves and ettins (giants) condemned by God: The meaning of Orcneas is uncertain. Frederick Klaeber suggested it consisted of orc < L. orcus "the underworld" + neas "corpses", to which
2784-506: A vision of the end of the world, its breaking and remaking, and the recovery of the Silmarilli and the 'light before the Sun'"; and in 1954, "Actually in the imagination of this story we are now living on a physically round Earth. But the whole 'legendarium' contains a transition from a flat world ... to a globe ". On both texts, he explained in 1954 that "... my legendarium , especially
2900-507: Is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun; but Saruman 's orcs can endure it, even if they hate it. I wonder what he has done? Are they Men he has ruined, or has he blended the races of orcs and Men ? That would be a black evil! The Germanic studies scholar Sandra Ballif Straubhaar however argues against the "recurring accusations" of racism, stating that "a polycultured, polylingual world
3016-577: Is a recurring theme in the stories. The First Age is dominated by the doomed quest of the elf Fëanor and most of his Noldorin clan to recover three precious jewels called the Silmarils that Morgoth stole from them (hence the title The Silmarillion ). The Second and Third Age are dominated by the forging of the Rings of Power , and the fate of the One Ring forged by Sauron, which gives its wearer
3132-479: Is a sacred direction'. That is not true. The North-west of Europe, where I (and most of my ancestors) have lived, has my affection, as a man's home should. I love its atmosphere, and know more of its histories and languages than I do of other parts; but it is not 'sacred', nor does it exhaust my affections. I do have, for instance, a particular fondness for the Latin language, and among its descendants for Spanish. That it
3248-506: Is absolutely central" to Middle-earth, and that readers and filmgoers will easily see that. The historian and Tolkien scholar Jared Lobdell likewise disagreed with any notions of racism inherent or latent in Tolkien's works, and wondered "if there were a way of writing epic fantasy about a battle against an evil spirit and his monstrous servants without its being subject to speculation of racist intent". The journalist David Ibata writes that
3364-533: Is called Khuzdul , and was kept largely as a secret language for their own use. Like Hobbits, Dwarves live exclusively in Middle-earth. They generally reside under mountains, where they are specialists in mining and metalwork. Tolkien identified Hobbits as an offshoot of the race of Men. Another name for Hobbit is 'Halfling', as they were generally only half the size of Men. In their lifestyle and habits they closely resemble Men, and in particular Englishmen, except for their preference for living in holes underground. By
3480-579: Is taken by his lieutenant Sauron , a Maia . The Valar withdrew from direct involvement in the affairs of Middle-earth after the defeat of Morgoth, but in later years they sent the wizards or Istari to help in the struggle against Sauron. The most important wizards were Gandalf the Grey and Saruman the White . Gandalf remained true to his mission and proved crucial in the fight against Sauron. Saruman, however, became corrupted and sought to establish himself as
3596-476: Is the known world, "recalling the Norse Midgard and the equivalent words in early English", noting that Tolkien made it clear that this was " our world ... in a purely imaginary ... period of antiquity". Tolkien explained in a letter to his publisher that it "is just a use of Middle English middle-erde (or erthe ), altered from Old English Middangeard : the name for the inhabited lands of men 'between
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3712-520: Is untrue for my story, a mere reading of the synopses should show. The North was the seat of the fortresses of the Devil [ie. Morgoth ]. Scholars of English literature William N. Rogers II and Michael R. Underwood note that a widespread element of late 19th century Western culture was fear of moral decline and degeneration; this led to eugenics . In The Two Towers , the Ent Treebeard says: It
3828-543: Is used as a gender-neutral racial description, to distinguish humans from the other human-like races of Middle-earth. In appearance they are much like Elves, but on average less beautiful. Unlike Elves, Men are mortal, ageing and dying quickly, usually living 40–80 years. However the Númenóreans could live several centuries, and their descendants the Dúnedain also tended to live longer than regular humans. This tendency
3944-468: The London Review of Books , endorses Andrew O'Hehir's comment on Salon.com that orcs are "by design and intention a northern European's paranoid caricature of the races he has dimly heard about". Tally describes the orcs as a demonized enemy , despite (he writes) Tolkien's own objections to demonization of the enemy in the two World Wars. In a letter to his son, Christopher , who was serving in
4060-538: The Miðgarðr of Norse mythology and Middangeard in Old English works, including Beowulf . Middle-earth is the oecumene (i.e. the human-inhabited world, or the central continent of Earth ) in Tolkien's imagined mythological past . Tolkien's most widely read works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , are set entirely in Middle-earth. "Middle-earth" has also become a short-hand term for Tolkien's legendarium , his large body of fantasy writings, and for
4176-669: The Monster Manual for the first edition (1977). Newer versions seem to have dropped references to skin-color. Early versions of the game introduced the "half-orc" as race. The orc was described in the first edition of Monster Manual ( op. cit. ), as a fiercely competitive bully, a tribal creature often dwelling and building underground; in newer editions, orcs (though still described as sometimes inhabiting cavern complexes) had been shifted to become more prone to non-subterranean habitation as well, adapting captured villages into communities, for instance. The mythology and attitudes of
4292-693: The Ainur entered Arda, following the creation events in the Ainulindalë and long ages of labour throughout Eä , the fictional universe . Time from that point was measured using Valian Years , though the subsequent history of Arda was divided into three time periods using different years, known as the Years of the Lamps , the Years of the Trees and the Years of the Sun . A separate, overlapping chronology divides
4408-654: The Black Speech (Burzum) for his slaves (such as Orcs ) to speak. In the Third Age , five of the Maiar were embodied and sent to Middle-earth to help the free peoples to overthrow Sauron. These are the Istari or Wizards , including Gandalf , Saruman , and Radagast . The Elves are known as "the Firstborn" of Ilúvatar: intelligent beings created by Ilúvatar alone, with many different clans . Originally Elves all spoke
4524-475: The Dark Lord Morgoth , or turned to evil in the wild. Tolkien's orcs serve as a conveniently wholly evil enemy that could be slaughtered without mercy. The orc was a sort of "hell-devil" in Old English literature, and the orc-né (pl. orc-néas , "demon-corpses") was a race of corrupted beings and descendants of Cain , alongside the elf, according to the poem Beowulf . Tolkien adopted
4640-587: The Latin word orcus , noting that "the word used in translation of Q[uenya] urko , S[indarin] orch is Orc. But that is because of the similarity of the ancient English word orc , 'evil spirit or bogey', to the Elvish words. There is possibly no connection between them". Orcs are of human shape, and of varying size. They are depicted as ugly and filthy, with a taste for human flesh. They are fanged, bow-legged and long-armed. Most are small and avoid daylight. By
4756-528: The Latin word/name Orcus , though Tolkien himself expressed doubt about this. The term orcus is glossed as " orc, þyrs, oððe hel-deofol " ("Goblin, spectre, or hell-devil") in the 10th century Old English Cleopatra Glossaries , about which Thomas Wright wrote, " Orcus was the name for Pluto , the god of the infernal regions, hence we can easily understand the explanation of hel - deofol . Orc , in Anglo-Saxon, like thyrs , means
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4872-518: The RAF in the Second World War, Tolkien wrote of orcs as appearing on both sides of the conflict: Yes, I think the orcs as real a creation as anything in 'realistic' fiction ... only in real life they are on both sides, of course. For 'romance' has grown out of 'allegory', and its wars are still derived from the 'inner war' of allegory in which good is on one side and various modes of badness on
4988-476: The Third Age of Middle-earth , while virtually all of his earlier writing had been set in the first two ages of the world. The Lord of the Rings occasionally alludes to figures and events from the legendarium to create an impression of depth , but such ancient tales are depicted as being remembered by few until the story makes them relevant. After The Lord of the Rings , Tolkien returned to his older stories to bring them to publishable form, but never completed
5104-567: The Third Age , a new breed of orc had emerged, the Uruk-hai, larger and more powerful, and no longer afraid of daylight. Orcs eat meat, including the flesh of Men , and may indulge in cannibalism : in The Two Towers , Grishnákh, an orc from Mordor , claims that the Isengard orcs eat orc-flesh. Whether that is true or spoken in malice is uncertain: an orc flings Peregrin Took stale bread and
5220-471: The West Midlands , with the town at its centre, Hobbiton , at the same latitude as Oxford . Tolkien's Middle-earth is peopled not only by Men , but by Elves , Dwarves , Ents , and Hobbits , and by monsters including Dragons, Trolls , and Orcs . Through the imagined history, the peoples other than Men dwindle, leave or fade, until, after the period described in the books, only Men are left on
5336-542: The "primary 'legendarium'", for the core episodes and themes of The Silmarillion which were not abandoned in his father's constant redrafting of the work. The scholars Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter edited a scholarly collection " Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth ". Flieger writes that "...the greatest [event] is the creation of the Silmarils, the Gems of light that give their names to
5452-606: The 'Downfall of Númenor ' which lies immediately behind The Lord of the Rings , is based on my view: that Men are essentially mortal and must not try to become 'immortal' in the flesh", and in 1955, "But the beginning of the legendarium, of which the Trilogy is part (the conclusion), was an attempt to reorganise some of the Kalevala ". "Tolkien's legendarium" is defined narrowly in John D. Rateliff 's The History of The Hobbit as
5568-853: The Ainur entered Eä, and the greatest of these were called the Valar . Melkor , the chief agent of evil in Eä, and later called Morgoth , was initially one of the Valar. With the Valar came lesser spirits of the Ainur, called the Maiar . Melian, the wife of the Elven King Thingol in the First Age , was a Maia. There were also evil Maiar, including the Balrogs and the second Dark Lord, Sauron . Sauron devised
5684-619: The Crebain, evil crows who become spies for Saruman , and the Ravens of Erebor , who brought news to the Dwarves. The horse-line of the Mearas of Rohan, especially Gandalf's mount, Shadowfax, also appear to be intelligent and understand human speech. The bear-man Beorn had a number of animal friends about his house. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , both set in Middle-earth, have been
5800-509: The Evening Star". He intended his stories to become a mythology that would explain the origins of English history and culture, and to provide the necessary "historical" background for his invented Elvish languages . Much of this early work was written while Tolkien, then a British officer returned from France during World War I, was in hospital and on sick leave. He completed " The Fall of Gondolin " in late 1916. He called his collection of nascent stories The Book of Lost Tales . This became
5916-484: The Fall of Barad-dûr and our Days is sufficient for 'literary credibility', even for readers acquainted with what is known as 'pre-history'. I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for place. I prefer that to the contemporary mode of seeking remote globes in 'space'. In another letter, Tolkien made correspondences in latitude between Europe and Middle-earth: The action of
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#17327983943826032-418: The Finnish epic, the Kalevala ; or of St Jerome , Snorri Sturlusson , Jacob Grimm , or Nikolai Gruntvig, all of whom Tolkien saw as exemplars of a professional and creative philology. This was, Nagy believes, what Tolkien thought essential if he was to present a mythology for England , since such a thing had to have been written by many hands. Further, writes Nagy, Christopher Tolkien "inserted himself in
6148-421: The Rings films , the actors playing orcs are made up with masks designed to make them look evil. After a disagreement with the film producer Harvey Weinstein , Jackson had one of the masks made to resemble Weinstein, as an insult to him. The Orcs had no language of their own, merely a pidgin of many various languages. However, individual tribes developed dialects that differed so widely that Westron , often with
6264-514: The Rings , Tolkien writes: "Those days, the Third Age of Middle-earth, are now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed..." The Appendices make several references in both history and etymology of topics "now" (in modern English languages) and "then" (ancient languages); The year no doubt was of the same length,¹ [ the footnote here reads : 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 46 seconds.] for long ago as those times are now reckoned in years and lives of men, they were not very remote according to
6380-401: The Rings , did he realise the significance of hobbits in his mythology. In 1937, encouraged by the success of The Hobbit , Tolkien submitted to his publisher George Allen & Unwin an incomplete but more fully developed version of The Silmarillion called Quenta Silmarillion . The reader rejected the work as being obscure and "too Celtic ". The publisher instead asked Tolkien to write
6496-1008: The Rings: The Return of the King received 11 Academy Award nominations and won all of them, matching the totals awarded to Ben-Hur and Titanic . Two well-made fan films of Middle-earth, The Hunt for Gollum and Born of Hope , were uploaded to YouTube on 8 May 2009 and 11 December 2009 respectively. Numerous computer and video games have been inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien 's works set in Middle-earth. Titles have been produced by studios such as Electronic Arts , Vivendi Games , Melbourne House , and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment . Aside from officially licensed games, many Tolkien-inspired mods , custom maps and total conversions have been made for many games, such as Warcraft III , Minecraft , Rome: Total War , Medieval II: Total War , The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim . In addition, there are many text-based MMORPGs (known as MU*s ) based on Middle-earth. The oldest of these dates back to 1991, and
6612-405: The Silmarillion after completing The Lord of the Rings , and he greatly desired to publish the two works together. When it became clear that would not be possible, Tolkien turned his full attention to preparing The Lord of the Rings for publication. John D. Rateliff has analysed the complex relationship between The Hobbit and The Silmarillion , providing evidence that they were related from
6728-411: The Storm . The orc features in numerous Magic: The Gathering collectible cards, in the 1993 game series published by Wizards of the Coast . In The Elder Scrolls series, many orcs or Orsimer are skilled blacksmiths. In Hasbro 's Heroscape products, orcs come from the pre-historic planet Grut. They are blue-skinned, with prominent tusks or horns. The Skylander Voodood from the first game in
6844-540: The ability to give conscious life to things. The precise origins of Orcs and Trolls are unclear, as Tolkien considered various possibilities and sometimes changed his mind, leaving several inconsistent accounts. Late in the Third Age, the Uruks or Uruk-hai appeared: a race of Orcs of great size and strength that tolerate sunlight better than ordinary Orcs. Tolkien also mentions "Men-orcs" and "Orc-men"; or "half-orcs" or "goblin-men". They share some characteristics with Orcs (like "slanty eyes") but look more like men. Tolkien,
6960-505: The body of Tolkien's work consisting of: These, with The Lays of Beleriand , written from 1918 onwards, comprise the different "phases" of Tolkien's Elven legendary writings, posthumously edited and published in The Silmarillion and in their original forms in Christopher Tolkien's series The History of Middle-earth . Other Tolkien scholars have used the term legendarium in a variety of contexts. Christopher Tolkien's introduction to The History of Middle-earth series talks about
7076-418: The book for the benefit of readers, despite the expense involved. The definitive and iconic map of Middle-earth was published in The Lord of the Rings . It was refined with Tolkien's approval by the illustrator Pauline Baynes , using Tolkien's detailed annotations, with vignette images and larger paintings at top and bottom, into a stand-alone poster, " A Map of Middle-earth ". In Tolkien's conception, Arda
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#17327983943827192-406: The conflicts between orcs and humans from the orcs' point of view. In Terry Pratchett 's Discworld series, orcs are close to extinction; in his Unseen Academicals , it is said that "When the Evil Emperor wanted fighters he got some of the Igors to turn goblins into orcs" to be used as weapons in a Great War, "encouraged" by whips and beatings. Orcs based on The Lord of the Rings have become
7308-626: The editor, Christopher Tolkien." Dickerson and Evans use the phrase "legendarium" to encompass the entirety of Tolkien's Middle-earth writings "for convenience". This would encompass texts such as the incomplete drafts of stories published before The History of Middle-earth in the 1980 Unfinished Tales . Shaun Gunner of The Tolkien Society has called the 2021 collection of Tolkien's previously unpublished legendarium writings The Nature of Middle-earth , edited by Carl F. Hostetter, "an unofficial 13th volume of The History of Middle-earth series". Unlike " fictional universes " constructed for
7424-422: The entirety of his fictional world. Middle-earth is the main continent of Earth (Arda) in an imaginary period of the past, ending with Tolkien's Third Age , about 6,000 years ago. Tolkien's tales of Middle-earth mostly focus on the north-west of the continent. This region is suggestive of Europe, the north-west of the Old World , with the environs of the Shire reminiscent of England , but, more specifically,
7540-515: The events in Tolkien's stories take place in the north-west of Middle-earth. In the First Age , further to the north-west was the subcontinent Beleriand ; it was engulfed by the ocean at the end of the First Age. Tolkien prepared several maps of Middle-earth. Some were published in his lifetime. The main maps are those published in The Hobbit , The Lord of the Rings , The Silmarillion , and Unfinished Tales , and appear as foldouts or illustrations. Tolkien insisted that maps be included in
7656-418: The first big screen adaptation of the fictional setting was introduced in Ralph Bakshi 's animated The Lord of the Rings . New Line Cinema released the first part of director Peter Jackson 's The Lord of the Rings film series in 2001 as part of a trilogy; it was followed by a prequel trilogy in The Hobbit film series with several of the same actors playing their old roles. In 2003, The Lord of
7772-401: The forms of the Children of Ilúvatar. Alternatively, they may have been East Elves (Avari) enslaved, tortured, and bred by Morgoth (as Melkor became known), or, "perhaps ... Avari [(a race of elves)] ... [turned] evil and savage in the wild", both according to The Silmarillion . The orcs "multiplied" like Elves and Men, meaning that they reproduced sexually . Tolkien stated in
7888-408: The functional place of Bilbo" as editor and collator, in his view "reinforcing the mythopoeic effect" that his father had wanted to achieve, making the published book do what Bilbo's book was meant to do, and so unintentionally realising his father's intention. Middle-earth Middle-earth is the setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien 's fantasy. The term is equivalent to
8004-406: The gift of life but under the condition that they be taken and put to sleep in widely separated locations in Middle-earth and not to awaken until after the Firstborn were upon the Earth. They are mortal like Men, but live much longer, usually several hundred years. A peculiarity of Dwarves is that both males and females are bearded, and thus appear identical to outsiders. The language spoken by Dwarves
8120-425: The history into 'Ages of the Children of Ilúvatar'. The first such Age began with the Awakening of the Elves during the Years of the Trees (by which time the Ainur had already long inhabited Arda) and continued for the first six centuries of the Years of the Sun. All the subsequent Ages took place during the Years of the Sun. Arda is, as critics have noted, "our own green and solid Earth at some quite remote epoch in
8236-445: The idea of multiple 'voices' who collected the stories over the millennia. When Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937 (which was itself not originally intended for publication, but as a story told privately to his children), the narrative of the published text was loosely influenced by the legendarium as a context, but was not designed to be part of it. Carpenter comments that not until Tolkien began to write its sequel, The Lord of
8352-520: The implied concept of evil as Boethian – that evil is the absence of good. He notes, however, that Tolkien did not agree with that concept of evil; Tolkien believed that evil had to be actively fought, with war if necessary. That is something that Shippey describes as representing the Manichean position– that evil coexists with good, and is at least equally as powerful. The possibility of racism in Tolkien's descriptions of orcs has been debated. In
8468-688: The interpretations of orcs in Peter Jackson 's Lord of the Rings films look much like "the worst depictions of the Japanese drawn by American and British illustrators during World War II ". As a response to the type-casting of orcs as generic evil characters or antagonists, some novels portray events from the point of view of the orcs, or make them more sympathetic characters. Mary Gentle 's 1992 novel Grunts! presents orcs as generic infantry, used as metaphorical cannon-fodder. A series of books by Stan Nicholls , Orcs: First Blood , focuses on
8584-653: The latitude of ancient Troy . In another letter he stated: ...Thank you very much for your letter. ... It came while I was away, in Gondor ( sc. Venice ), as a change from the North Kingdom, or I would have answered before. He did confirm, however, that the Shire , the land of his Hobbit heroes, was based on England , in particular the West Midlands of his childhood. In the Prologue to The Lord of
8700-772: The memory of the Earth. Both the Appendices and The Silmarillion mention constellations, stars and planets that correspond to those seen in the northern hemisphere of Earth, including the Sun, the Moon, Orion (and his belt), Ursa Major and Mars . A map annotated by Tolkien places Hobbiton on the same latitude as Oxford , and Minas Tirith at the latitude of Ravenna , Italy. He used Belgrade , Cyprus , and Jerusalem as further reference points. The history of Middle-earth, as described in The Silmarillion , began when
8816-546: The middle-earth sent unto men. This is from the Crist 1 poem by Cynewulf . The name Éarendel was the inspiration for Tolkien's mariner Eärendil , who set sail from the lands of Middle-earth to ask for aid from the angelic powers, the Valar . Tolkien's earliest poem about Eärendil, from 1914, the same year he read the Crist poem, refers to "the mid-world's rim". Tolkien considered middangeard to be "the abiding place of men",
8932-627: The more modern use of the English term "orc" to denote a race of evil humanoid beings. His earliest Elvish dictionaries include the entry Ork (orq-) "monster", "ogre", "demon", together with orqindi and "ogresse". He sometimes used the plural form orqui in his early texts. He stated that the Elvish words for orc were derived from a root ruku , "fear, horror"; in Quenya , orco , plural orkor ; in Sindarin orch , plurals yrch and Orchoth (as
9048-585: The name for the first two volumes of The History of Middle-earth , which include these early texts. Tolkien never completed The Book of Lost Tales ; he left it to compose the poems " The Lay of Leithian " (in 1925) and " The Lay of the Children of Húrin " (possibly as early as 1918). The first complete version of The Silmarillion was the "Sketch of the Mythology" written in 1926 (later published in Volume IV of The History of Middle-earth ). The "Sketch"
9164-571: The narrative framing device of an Anglo-Saxon mariner named Ælfwine or Eriol or Ottor Wǽfre who finds the island of Tol Eressëa , where the Elves live, and the Elves tell him their history. He collects, translates from Old English , and writes the mythology that appears in The History of Middle-earth . Ælfwine means "Elf-friend" in Old English; men whose names have the same meaning, such as Alboin, Alwin, and Elendil , were to appear in
9280-508: The nature of evil in Arda , the origin of Orcs , the customs of the Elves , the nature and means of Elvish rebirth, the "flat" world, and the story of the Sun and Moon. In any event, with one or two exceptions, he made little change to the narratives during the remaining years of his life. The scholar Verlyn Flieger writes that Tolkien thought of his legendarium as a presented collection, with
9396-510: The orcs are described in detail in Dragon #62 (June 1982), in Roger E. Moore 's article, "The Half-Orc Point of View". The orc for the D&D offshoot Pathfinder RPG are detailed in the 2008 book Classic Monsters Revisited issued by the game's publisher Paizo . Games Workshop 's Warhammer universe features cunning and brutal orcs in a fantasy setting, who are driven not so much by
9512-586: The orcs in The Lord of the Rings were almost certainly created just to equip Middle-earth with a continual supply of enemies who one could kill without compunction, or in Tolkien's words from The Monsters and the Critics "the infantry of the old war" ready to be slaughtered. Shippey states that all the same, orcs share the human concept of good and evil, with a familiar sense of morality , though he notes that, like many people, orcs are quite unable to apply their morals to themselves. Shippey opined that Tolkien, as
9628-556: The other. In real (exterior) life men are on both sides: which means a motley alliance of orcs, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, and angels. John Magoun, writing in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia , states that Middle-earth has a "fully expressed moral geography ". Any moral bias towards a north-western geography, however, was directly denied by Tolkien in a letter to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, who had recently interviewed him in 1967: Auden has asserted that for me 'the North
9744-518: The overlapping of different and sometimes contradictory accounts was central to his desired effect. Nagy notes that Tolkien went so far as to create facsimile pages from the Dwarves' Book of Mazarbul that is found by the Fellowship in Moria . Further, Tolkien was a philologist ; Nagy comments that Tolkien may have been intentionally imitating the philological style of Elias Lönnrot , compiler of
9860-467: The past." As such, it has not only an immediate story but a history, and the whole thing is an "imagined prehistory" of the Earth as it is now. The Ainur were angelic beings created by the one god of Eä, Eru Ilúvatar . The cosmological myth called the Ainulindalë , or "Music of the Ainur", describes how the Ainur sang for Ilúvatar, who then created Eä to give material form to their music. Many of
9976-490: The physical reality of creation as a whole. In careful geographical terms, Middle-earth is a continent on Arda, excluding regions such as Aman and the isle of Númenor. The alternative wider use is reflected in book titles such as The Complete Guide to Middle-earth , The Road to Middle-earth , The Atlas of Middle-earth , and Christopher Tolkien 's 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth . Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter states that Tolkien's Middle-earth
10092-428: The physical world in which Man lives out his life and destiny, as opposed to the unseen worlds above and below it, namely Heaven and Hell . He states that it is "my own mother-earth for place ", but in an imaginary past time, not some other planet. He began to use the term "Middle-earth" in the late 1930s, in place of the earlier terms "Great Lands", "Outer Lands", and "Hither Lands". The first published appearance of
10208-442: The planet. Tolkien's stories chronicle the struggle to control the world (called Arda ) and the continent of Middle-earth between, on one side, the angelic Valar , the Elves and their allies among Men ; and, on the other, the demonic Melkor or Morgoth (a Vala fallen into evil), his followers, and their subjects, mostly Orcs , Dragons and enslaved Men. In later ages, after Morgoth's defeat and expulsion from Arda, his place
10324-498: The power to control or influence those wearing the other Rings of Power. In ancient Germanic mythology , the world of Men is known by several names. The Old English middangeard descends from an earlier Germanic word and so has cognates such as the Old Norse Miðgarðr from Norse mythology , transliterated to modern English as Midgard . The original meaning of the second element, from proto-Germanic gardaz ,
10440-445: The purpose of writing and publishing popular fiction, Tolkien's legendarium for a long period was a private project, concerned with questions of philology , cosmology , theology and mythology. His biographer Humphrey Carpenter writes that although by 1923 Tolkien had almost completed The Book of Lost Tales , "it was almost as if he did not want to finish it", beginning instead to rewrite it; he suggests that Tolkien may have doubted if
10556-646: The rest of the physical world), which itself was part of the wider creation he called Eä. Aman and Middle-earth are separated from each other by the Great Sea Belegaer , though they make contact in the far north at the Grinding Ice or Helcaraxë. The western continent, Aman, was the home of the Valar , and the Elves called the Eldar . On the eastern side of Middle-earth was the Eastern Sea. Most of
10672-562: The road / And flung his cobweb cloak on me..." C. S. Lewis 's 1938–1945 Space Trilogy calls the home planet "Middle-earth" and specifically references Tolkien's unpublished legendarium; both men were members of the Inklings literary discussion group. Within the overall context of his legendarium , Tolkien's Middle-earth was part of his created world of Arda (which includes the Undying Lands of Aman and Eressëa , removed from
10788-593: The same Common Eldarin ancestral tongue, but over thousands of years it diverged into different languages. The two main Elven languages were Quenya , spoken by the Light Elves, and Sindarin , spoken by the Dark Elves. Physically the Elves resemble humans; indeed, they can marry and have children with them, as shown by the few Half-elven in the legendarium. The Elves are agile and quick footed, being able to walk
10904-525: The seas'." There are allusions to a similarly- or identically-named world in the work of other writers both before and after him. William Morris 's 1870 translation of the Volsung Saga calls the world "Midgard". Margaret Widdemer 's 1918 poem "The Gray Magician" contains the lines: "I was living very merrily on Middle Earth / As merry as a maid may be / Till the Gray Magician came down along
11020-579: The series, Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure , is an orc. Tolkien%27s legendarium Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien 's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his The Lord of the Rings , and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of The Silmarillion and documented in his 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth . The legendarium's origins reach back to 1914, when Tolkien began writing poems and story sketches, drawing maps , and inventing languages and names as
11136-473: The start of The Hobbit ' s composition. With the success of The Lord of the Rings , Tolkien in the late 1950s returned to the Silmarillion, planning to revise the material of his legendarium into a form "fit for publication", a task which kept him occupied until his death in 1973, without attaining a completed state. The legendarium has indeed been called "a jumble of overlapping and often competing stories, annals, and lexicons." Much of his later writing
11252-522: 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. ... 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
11368-493: The subject of a variety of film adaptations. There were many early failed attempts to bring the fictional universe to life on screen, some even rejected by the author himself, who was skeptical of the prospects of an adaptation. While animated and live-action shorts were made of Tolkien's books in 1967 and 1971, the first commercial depiction of The Hobbit onscreen was the Rankin/Bass animated TV special in 1977 . In 1978
11484-421: The synonymous noun legendary date from 1513. The Middle English South English Legendary is an example of this form of the noun. Tolkien described his works as a "legendarium" in four letters from 1951 to 1955, a period in which he was attempting to have his unfinished Silmarillion published alongside the more complete The Lord of the Rings . On the Silmarillion, he wrote in 1951, "This legendarium ends with
11600-497: The task. Tolkien's son Christopher chose portions of his late father's vast collection of unpublished material and shaped them into The Silmarillion (1977), a semi-chronological and semi-complete narrative of the mythical world and its origins. The sales were sufficient to enable him to work on and publish many volumes of his father's legendarium stories and drafts; some were presented as completed tales, while others illustrated his father's complex creative process. Tolkien research ,
11716-417: The term orc from these old attestations, which he professed was a choice made purely for "phonetic suitability" reasons. Tolkien's concept of orcs has been adapted into the fantasy fiction of other authors, and into games of many different genres such as Dungeons & Dragons , Magic: The Gathering , and Warcraft . The Anglo-Saxon word orc, which Tolkien used, is generally thought to be derived from
11832-440: The time of The Hobbit , most of them lived in the Shire , a region of the northwest of Middle-earth, having migrated there from further east. The Ents were treelike shepherds of trees, their name coming from an Old English word for giant. Orcs and Trolls (made of stone) were evil creatures bred by Morgoth . They were not original creations but rather "mockeries" of the Children of Ilúvatar and Ents, since only Ilúvatar has
11948-403: The translation "evil spirits" failed to do justice. It is generally supposed to contain an element -né , cognate to Gothic naus and Old Norse nár , both meaning 'corpse'. If *orcné is to be glossed as orcus 'corpse', then the compound word can be construed as "demon-corpses", or "corpse from Orcus (i.e. the underworld)". Hence orc-neas may have been some sort of walking dead monster,
12064-615: The translation: "Uglúk to the cesspool, sha! the dungfilth; the great Saruman-fool, skai!" However, in a note published in Vinyar Tengwar he gives an alternative translation: "Uglúk to the dung-pit with stinking Saruman-filth, pig-guts, gah!" Alexander Nemirovsky [ ru ] speculated that Tolkien might have drawn upon the language of the ancient Hittites and Hurrians for Black Speech. The origin(s) of orcs were explained in multiple inconsistent ways by Tolkien. Early works depict them as creations of Morgoth, mimicking
12180-505: The two unfinished time travel novels, The Lost Road in 1936 and The Notion Club Papers in 1945, as the protagonists reappeared in each of several different times. There is no such framework in the published version of The Silmarillion , but the Narn i Hîn Húrin is introduced with the note "Here begins that tale which Ǽlfwine made from the Húrinien ." Tolkien never fully dropped
12296-472: The uniform presentation of orcs as "loathsome, ugly, cruel, feared, and especially terminable", "Tolkien could not resist the urge to flesh out and 'humanize' these inhuman creatures from time to time", in the process giving them their own morality. Shippey notes that in The Two Towers , the orc Gorbag disapproves of the "regular elvish trick" (an immoral act) of abandoning a comrade, as he wrongly supposes Sam Gamgee has done to Frodo Baggins . Shippey describes
12412-544: The whole legendarium", equating the legendarium with the Silmarillion (which with italics denotes the 1977 book published under that name, and without italics means the larger body of un-edited drafts used to create that work). In the J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia , David Bratman writes that " The History of Middle-earth is a longitudinal study of the development and elaboration of Tolkien's legendarium through his transcribed manuscripts, with textual commentary by
12528-428: The word "Middle-earth" in Tolkien's works is in the prologue to The Lord of the Rings : "Hobbits had, in fact, lived quietly in Middle-earth for many long years before other folk even became aware of them". The term Middle-earth has come to be applied as a short-hand for the entirety of Tolkien's legendarium, instead of the technically more appropriate, but lesser known terms "Arda" for the physical world and " Eä " for
12644-414: Was "derived from Old English orc 'demon', but only because of its phonetic suitability", and I originally took the word from Old English orc ( Beowulf 112 orc-neas and the gloss orc : þyrs ('ogre'), heldeofol ('hell-devil')). This is supposed not to be connected with modern English orc , ork , a name applied to various sea-beasts of the dolphin order". Tolkien also observed a similarity with
12760-578: Was "enclosure", cognate with English "yard"; middangeard was assimilated by folk etymology to "middle earth". Middle-earth was at the centre of nine worlds in Norse mythology, and of three worlds (with heaven above, hell below) in some later Christian versions . Tolkien's first encounter with the term middangeard , as he stated in a letter, was in an Old English fragment he studied in 1913–1914: Éala éarendel engla beorhtast / ofer middangeard monnum sended. Hail Earendel, brightest of angels / above
12876-663: Was Glaurung the Golden, bred by Morgoth in Angband , and called "The Great Worm", "The Worm of Morgoth", and "The Father of Dragons". Middle-earth contains sapient animals including the Eagles , Huan the Great Hound from Valinor and the wolf-like Wargs . In general the origins and nature of these animals are unclear. Giant spiders such as Shelob descended from Ungoliant , of unknown origin. Other sapient species include
12992-555: Was a 28-page synopsis written to explain the background of the story of Túrin to R. W. Reynolds, a friend to whom Tolkien had sent several of the stories. From the "Sketch" Tolkien developed a fuller narrative version of The Silmarillion called Quenta Noldorinwa (also included in Volume IV). The Quenta Noldorinwa was the last version of The Silmarillion that Tolkien completed. The stories in The Book of Lost Tales employ
13108-517: Was created specifically as "the Habitation" ( Imbar or Ambar ) for the Children of Ilúvatar ( Elves and Men ). It is envisaged in a flat Earth cosmology, with the stars, and later also the sun and moon, revolving around it. Tolkien's sketches show a disc-like face for the world which looked up to the stars. However, Tolkien's legendarium addresses the spherical Earth paradigm by depicting
13224-442: Was however concerned more with the theological and philosophical underpinnings of the work, rather than with the narratives themselves. By this time, he had doubts about fundamental aspects of the work that went back to the earliest versions of the stories, and it seems that he felt the need to resolve these problems before he could produce the "final" version of The Silmarillion . During this time he wrote extensively on such topics as
13340-477: Was weakened both by time and by intermingling with lesser peoples. The Dwarves are a race of humanoids who are shorter than Men but larger than Hobbits. The Dwarves were created by the Vala Aulë, before the Firstborn awoke due to his impatience for the arrival of the children of Ilúvatar to teach and to cherish. When confronted and shamed for his presumption by Ilúvatar, Eru took pity on Aulë and gave his creation
13456-478: Was writing: As for the shape of the world of the Third Age , I am afraid that was devised 'dramatically' rather than geologically , or paleontologically . 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. The essentials of that abiding place are all there (at any rate for inhabitants of N.W. Europe), so naturally it feels familiar, even if
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