Middle Earth/Talk

I think that Middle Earth would make a better jump-off point for Tolkien's fictional universe then JRR Tolkien. -- STG

I'd agree that Middle Earth (or possibly The Lord of the Rings) is the best jump-off-point. When linking/creating these I assume we should use sublinks? (e.g. Middle Earth/Gandalf) -- General Wesc

Never mind, I see we already are sublinking from Middle Earth. I'll start listing the characters on Middle Earth. -- General Wesc

I think the characters should be included placed in the individual books, not on the Middle Earth page, except for, perhaps, the major ones- Gandalf, Frodo, Gollum, Sauron. -- SGL

There aren't any individual books. The Lord of the Rings is a single novel, which is only sold in three volumes for convenience. (And while we're at it, the proper spelling is "Middle-earth", but it's too late to change that now.) -- Xaonon

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Middle Earth does far a meaning outside of the realm of Tolkienania so it might be confusing if someone wrote an article on Nordic mythology

In Norse mythology, the term is usually left as "Midgard", so I think reserving "Middle Earth" for Tolkien's universe would be acceptable.

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I notice now that [JRR Tolkien/Rings of power]? should really belong to Middle Earth. Do you think it'd be best to move them, merge the two altogether, or drop the matter? --Uriyan

I wouldn't bother at this point. When we move to the new wiki software, all subpages will be convered to normal pages. --STG

Yes, but still, a [[Middle Earth -- Rings of power]] would make more sense than a [[JRR Tolkien -- Rings of power]] (JRRT is by the way the only case, known to me, that LMS actually approved of a subpage - see Faramir). As a side rant, I often wish that there will be allowance for at least these topic pages). --Uriyan

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"In Norse mythology, the term is usually left as "Midgard", so I think reserving "Middle Earth" for Tolkien's universe would be acceptable."

I seem to remember Old-English and Middle-English? texts mentioning 'middle-earth'. Certainly the Project Gutenberg translation of Beowulf does (see ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext97/bwulf10.txt).

Yes, 'middangeard' occurs half a dozen times in Beowulf. I think 'Middle-earth' is a poor choice as an overarching handle for Tolkien's creations. I don't think he often used the term for that purpose, and his principal editor (Christopher) tends to avoid it except when using it to refer to the geographical region properly so named. Much of Tolkien's writing covered events which took place outside Middle-earth itself. A page like [[Middle Earth -- Valar]], for example, would seem rather out of place.

 --Matthew Woodcraft