Talk:History of Arda
Page contents not supported in other languages.
 | History of Arda has been listed as one of theLanguage and literature good articles under thegood article criteria. If you can improve it further,please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you canreassess it. Review: January 27, 2022. (Reviewed version). |
| This article is ratedGA-class on Wikipedia'scontent assessment scale. It is of interest to the followingWikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | This article iswritten inBritish English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour,travelled,centre,defence,artefact,analyse) and some terms may be different or absent from othervarieties of English. According to therelevant style guide, this should not be changed withoutbroad consensus. |
Archives |
| 1 |
The fact is that the Two Lamps were never intended to keep the track of time in the first place. --Ar-Zigûr (talk)16:28, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
STOP. IT. There is zero - I repeat, ZERO - reason to take the time to establish a hyperlink that goes nowhere. It's baffling as well as frustrating that someone would take the time to do this - and given how most (all) Wikipedia articles are run like co-ops in NYC, YOU WOULD THINK that an editor would go back in and proof whether or not a link... actually links. I get it that no one actually cares, but maybe someone actually does.173.94.83.254 (talk)19:53, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
An editor has seen fit now twice to remove the lead image from the article, arguing thatThe image of the Baltistan mountains represents a real-world location and does not accurately depict any specific landscape from Tolkien's fictional world of Arda. Arda is a meticulously constructed mythological setting with abundant original illustrations and concept art, the use of unrelated real-world imagery is unnecessary and misleading. Also ther reference is unrelated to the image.
As well as ignoring Wikipedia policy in the shape ofWP:BRD, the edit is I believe quite clearly mistaken in its argument. The image correctly depicts what the caption stated directly to be, in Kocher's words, quoted and cited
"our own green and solid Earth".
This is quite plainly true of the depicted image. I take it that Tolkien's statement on Arda is definitive, since he is the sole author ofhis legendarium. Tolkien did not say that Arda represented only part of our green and solid Earth: Arda is all of Earth, and we are at complete liberty to choose any part of it to represent his statement, and indeed the article. This is correctly cited to a reliable secondary source, Kocher's discussion of Arda; obviously we can have a primary (Tolkien) source in addition if that would help. I take it therefore that the quotation, caption, and citation are demonstrably relevant to the article; they are also directly relevant to the image, for the following reasons.
The image is not intended to "depict any specific landscape from Tolkien's fictional world of Arda", as the caption makes quite clear: it depicts a landscape on Earth.
The other half of Tolkien's quoted statement is "at some quite remote epoch in the past". This obviously excludes definitely-modern images of Earth, such as those with factories, motorways, or skyscrapers. The Baltistan mountains image quite satisfactorily and correctly depicts a "green and solid Earth", with small houses, small fields, rough ground, a river, forested hillsides, and mountains. These depict the sort of Earth that Tolkien was describing in the quoted phrase. Accordingly, we should keep the image. All the best,Chiswick Chap (talk)12:19, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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'... Many reviewers seem to assume that Middle-earth is another planet!(Letter 211), and Kocher as quoted and cited in the caption and text of "Imagined prehistory" says so directly. Therefore, we are free to use an image of Earth to illustrate the statement. There is no "clearly editorial" about it, that is simply mistaken, and I am surprised you should repeat the error when Kocher is actually being allowed to speak in his own plain words: Arda is "our own green and solid Earth ... at some quite remote epoch in the past". But I see from your reply that you are not prepared to listen to my words, so there is no point our discussing this any further. Let's wait for other editors to comment.Chiswick Chap (talk)20:22, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
