Cultural developments since the end of the Middle Ages had
made little impact on the face of the English landscape. The
major change was the loss of the great, ancient forests, sacrificed
to the building of the largest naval force in the world. But
the nineteenth century brought the Industrial Revolution, the
building factories, new houses, quarries, and coal mines, as
well as new roads and railways cutting through the countryside.
Much of the population moved to the urban areas, many which
grew as large as London had once been. The changes, encouraged
by rapid advances in technology, were not embraced eagerly by
everyone. As early as 1812 workers in the textile mills of Leicestershire
erupted in violence in protest over their replacement by labour-saving
machines. The rioters were called Luddites (named after a farm
labourer who had destroyed such machines in the late 1700s),
a word which has since become synonymous with opposition to
industrial change. Despite such reactions, the pace of change
could not be stopped. The English countryside had been largely
transformed by the time of Tolkien's birth in 1892, and, although
it was still possible in places to experience England as it
had once been, these places were rapidly disappearing.
Tolkien has been called by the Los Angeles Times a "a
neo-Luddite who never owned a car" (19 December 2001).
Of course, only an Angeleno could connect not owning a car with
Ludditism. In Tolkien's Oxford, nearly everything was within
easy reach by bicycle or bus. To add to the irony, the name
of the dragon Smaug in Tolkien's The Hobbit is frequently
mispronounced by readers as 'smog' (a word which first came
into being in 1905, only about 30 years before Tolkien began
the book). But the charge has some truth. Tolkien bitterly resented
the effect of industrialism on the countryside, as well as on
its traditional way of life. This is nowhere more evident than
in his representation of the Shire, the culture of which is
deliberately evocative of the England of the late 1800s. The
chapter on "The Scouring of the Shire" is Tolkien's
response to the effect of industrialism and its lifestyle. However,
Tolkien's attitude may be detected more subtly in his portrayal
of Saruman's Orthanc ('cunning mind'). However, the heavily
archaic nature of Tolkien's interests and writing may also be
seen as a typically Victorian response to the social and physical
changes England underwent as a result of industrialism. For
instance, the Gothic style, which represented the high-point
of medieval art and architecture, was extensively copied during
the nineteenth century, including the famous Houses of Parliament
in London. Artists and writers turned to medieval stories for
their inspiration, notably Tennyson in his poem "Idylls
of the King" and Pre-Raphaelites like Dante Gabriel Rossetti
and Edward Burne Jones in many of their paintings. The decorative
arts were influenced by medieval designs, most notably in the
work of William Morris, also a translator of Old Norse sagas.
In general, the retreat into archaism typified the arts of the
late nineteenth century. The advent of Modernism in the 1920s
changed all that, and it is Tolkien's refusal to jump on the
bandwagon which has opened him up to criticism.
Tolkien's dislike of the effect of industrialisation on the
English landscape is particularly worthy of note, evident as
it is in his creation of the prehistoric forests of Fangorn,
Mirkwood, and the Old Forest. The conflict between the Ents
and the Entwives may also be approached from this direction.
However, it must be said that the primaeval mountains and forests
of Middle-Earth are not representative of the English countryside,
either as Tolkien knew it, or as it had once been. These we
must attribute to his imagination, though perhaps also to dramatised
American landscapes (Tolkien had an boyhood devotion to tales
of 'Red Indians'). It is thus perhaps no accident that even
Tolkien's worst critics have praised him for his description
of landscape, and that the makers of the recent film of the
The Lord of the Rings felt that reproducing it was one
of their primary responsibilities. Tolkien has also been embraced
by the environmental movement since the sixties; in this he
may connect with our own turning from industrialism and longing
for an older, more 'natural' existence.
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