Talk:Belegaer

Inspiration

We need to be careful about drawing conclusions about possible correspondences between real-world locations and the legendarium (Tolkien himself refused to analyse the LotR as an analogy). In case no one disagrees, I will remove the (current) note on inspiration.--Morgan 17:18, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. --Ederchil ^{(Talk/Contribs/Edits)} 17:35, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

+1 --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 11:29, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Disagreed (willing to elaborate if asked) Sage 15:34, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

+1 (on the condition that a source to a Tolkien scholar is given, like in the current situation). --Amroth 16:00, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Sage: please, elaborate. --Morgan 16:15, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

(Side note: whatever is decided here can we at least agree to take this out of an "Inspiration" heading. I doubt we'll get any proof that Tolkien was inspired by the Atlantic Ocean.) --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 16:28, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Disagree --Amroth 16:38, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Elaboration

First of all I am replying to Morgan's rationale about not drawing conclusions and parallels:

When Tolkien spoke about LotR and analogies he mainly discouraged conclusions such as "Saruman represents Hitler", "The Ring represents the atomic power" and so on. But cosmographic parallels are a wholly different story. In Letter 294 T was asked about such a matter and said "the North-west of ‘Middle-earth’ [is] equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean". Of course earlier in the letter he admitted "it would be difficult to fit" M-e's map and prehistorical Earth.

(I am not sure if it was in the same letter where T admits that he didn't take into consideration paleogeological evidence for drawing his maps. When finally someone brought this to his attention, he said that now it would be too late to change the story.)

With the above I want to point out that even if T did discourage drawing parallels on certain topics, in other topics he appeared far from discouraging, negative and dismissive. Although considering scientific evidence was not a priority, causing his creation be hard to fit with reality, he did not say something like "this matter is totally out, as LotR is not an analogy"

Now, I must open the matter of "speculation" vs. "self-evidence".

Must T mention that Erestor is immortal? Would it be "original research" or "unsourced claim" to mention that he is immortal? No. We can and do employ common sense and syllogism for such generic self-evident things: All Elves are immortal; Erestor is an Elf; ergo, it's self-evident that Erestor is immortal. No proof is required.

So if T admits an "equivalence" between the Westlands and Europe, the only straightforward mathematical consequent is "ergo Belegaer is equivalent to the Atlantic"; it's too self-evident to even call it an observation, an assumption, a theory, or an "original research".

Now, if you object with the phrasing "Belegaer is the Atlantic" why object to T's own word "equivalent"? Do we need a scholar to make the self-evident syllogism for us?

I understand that such syllogisms usually fall under the "original research" umbrella in Wikipedia which can be understandable for important real-life topics; but unless TG consciously decides to copy this mentality (to which I'd object if I were asked), I tend to support us being common-sensical over the letter of the law.

PS. I didn't add the "Atlantic" part in the article; I only moved it to another section.

Sage: thank you for a well-considered reply - I will try to find time tomorrow to write some kind of answer or feedback. --Morgan 21:46, 17 March 2012 (UTC)