Urbanshaman30 - Fantasy Scholar

What inspired Tolkien to create the Middle Earth?

As Tolkien himself puts it, the whole legendarium started when he came across a strangely-sounding name of Earendel in one of the Old-Saxon poems. Upon reading the first few lines, he felt

“a curious thrill, as if something had stirred in me, half wakened from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words.”

In a letter to Mr. Rang, Tolkien says that it was the sound of this name that enchanted him. This sound was enough to plant in him the desire to create myths around this name.

For the Inklings, the name is the primary reality. The story — or what happened — is secondary. The main question is “Who?”, not “What?” What happens is always secondary to who it happens to.

The Hobbit was conceived in much the same way when Tolkien mindlessly scribbled on a piece of paper: “In the hole underground, there lived a hobbit.” The subsequent story was the elaboration on that name. The primary reality is “Who,” not “What.”

“What’s in a name?” Everything. By naming something or someone, we invoke the invisible reality that this name points to.

For Tolkien, the name is the ultimate mystery of who we are and what we are capable of. The name is for him “the primary world.” Everything else flows out of it. The reason Tolkien’s writing is so appealing is that WE ALL WANT TO KNOW WHO WE ARE!