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  • Mapping Middle-earth: Environmental and Political Narratives in J. R. R. Tolkien's Cartographies

    Mapping Middle-earth by Behrooz, Anahit;

    Environmental and Political Narratives in J. R. R. Tolkien's Cartographies

    Series: Perspectives on Fantasy;

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      • Publisher's listprice GBP 24.99
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    12 647 Ft

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    Availability

    Estimated delivery time: In stock at the publisher, but not at Prospero's office. Delivery time approx. 3-5 weeks.
    Not in stock at Prospero.

    Why don't you give exact delivery time?

    Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.

    Product details:

    • Publisher Bloomsbury Academic
    • Date of Publication 22 February 2024
    • Number of Volumes Paperback

    • ISBN 9781350290808
    • Binding Paperback
    • No. of pages200 pages
    • Size 232x154x12 mm
    • Weight 300 g
    • Language English
    • 573

    Categories

    Long description:

    In this cutting-edge study of Tolkien's most critically neglected maps, Anahit Behrooz examines how cartography has traditionally been bound up in facilitating power.

    Far more than just illustrations to aid understanding of the story, Tolkien's corpus of maps are crucial to understanding the broader narratives between humans and their political and environmental landscapes within his legendarium. Undertaking a diegetic literary analysis of the maps as examples of Middle-earth's own cultural output, Behrooz reveals a sub-created tradition of cartography that articulates specific power dynamics between mapmaker, map reader, and what is being mapped, as well as the human/nonhuman binary that represents human's control over the natural world.

    Mapping Middle-earth surveys how Tolkien frames cartography as an inherently political act that embodies a desire for control of that which it maps. In turn, it analyses harmful contemporary engagements with land that intersect with, but also move beyond, cartography such as environmental damage; human-induced geological change; and the natural and bodily costs of political violence and imperialism. Using historical, eco-critical, and postcolonial frameworks, and such theorists as Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway and Edward Said, this book explores Tolkien's employment of particular generic tropes including medievalism, fantasy, and the interplay between image and text to highlight, and at times correct, his contemporary socio-political epoch and its destructive relationship with the wider world.

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    Table of Contents:

    Introduction
    - Space, power, and critical cartography
    - Literary maps
    - Structure and overview

    Chapter 1: Political mapmaking
    - Medieval cartographic practices
    - Modern cartographic practices
    - Tolkien's cartography
    Map I: I Vene Kemen
    Map II: The 'Ambarkanta' diagrams and maps
    Map III: Thror's Map
    Map IV: The Middle-earth map
    Map V: Map of Rohan, Gondor and Mordor

    Chapter 2: Environment
    - Navigating the human, nonhuman, and posthuman
    - Tom Bombadil and the nonhuman
    - Mapping the human and nonhuman in Middle-earth
    - Stewardship
    - Environmental destruction
    - Nonhuman agency

    Chapter 3: Geology and Time
    - Deep time
    - Middle-earth's geology
    - Mapping geology and geologizing maps
    - Fixing experiences of time
    - Mapping anthropological change

    Chapter 4: Imperialism and Race
    - The politics of land and map
    - (Dis)possessing Middle-earth's lands
    - The threshold space
    - Mutual vulnerability and racialization
    - Narratives of imperialism

    Conclusion
    Index
    Bibliography

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