It needs a lot of work and some more research but here it is!
Ruth Hollander
Jeremy Cole
Keystone
January 17, 2013
Maps of the Fantasy Realms
In the fantasy genre some authors choose to include maps of the world in which their story takes place. These maps serve to add a layer of reality to the world. In journey stories they also allow the reader to follow the protagonist's journey visually. These maps are a relatively new addition to the fantasy genre but some of the most popular fantasy books of the twentieth century. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit both featured maps that were exemplary of the style and purpose of maps in fantasy books.
The purpose of a map in a book differs from the purpose of real world maps. The purpose of the majority of maps in the real world is navigation (Kraak 48). But the purpose of maps in fantasy novels is to “give concreteness to a wholly imagined world” (Brogan 151). But the way that maps aid in visualization of the layout of the world crosses the real world-imaginary world mapping boundaries. Maps make spatial data accessible in a visual representation (Kraak 41). In a fantasy novel there is spatial information about the world that the novel takes place in and a map can help the reader visualize that information.
Maps in books have only become a possibility relatively recently. During the Victorian Era it became economically feasible to print images, like maps, in books (Brogan 150). The fantasy genre was a perfect place to put maps because fantasy novels introduce the reader to an unknown world. Maps and illustrations aid in familiarizing the reader with that unknown world. One of the first books to include a map was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (Brogan 150). Since then, many books have included map, for example, The Wizard of Oz series, Winnie the Pooh, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings (Brogan 150). These maps had a distinct style that stems from their presence in books.
There are size and color limitations when maps are included in books. When maps are scaled down not all of the information can be displayed (Kraak 42). Small scale maps can show the whole region at once but they have to leave out some of the smaller places and names (Sibley 48). When maps are put in books they have to be very small to fit into the dimensions of the pages. In The Hobbit, the maps were originally printed in black and red rather than in full color (Sibley 14). This was much more affordable to print. The maps in The Hobbit also included runes which gave them an authentic look (Sibley 13). Karen Wynn Fonstad’s maps of Middle-Earth were drawn in a “pictorial style”. When maps are drawn in this way they can’t show every hill or tree, “only a general impression” (Fonstad xi). For example, the mountains are represented as little drawings of mountains; the other kinds of terrain are also represented using small illustrations. The maps in The Lord of the Rings also had pictorial representations of the terrain, was printed in black and red, and was draw with strong lines (which print well) (Sibley 7).
Tolkien thought that maps were incredibly important to his novels. Tolkien first showed his skill at mapmaking by mapping the enemy trenches in the Battle of the Somme, during World War 1 (Sibley 5). This real world map was just a precursor to the maps that he created for his novels. Tolkien drew the two maps in the Hobbit himself, one of the Wilderland and also Thror’s map of the Lonely Mountain (Sibley 6). When The Hobbit was first shown to the publisher George Allen and Unwin, the Thror’s map was included in the manuscript (Sibley 14).
The world of Middle-Earth was expanded beyond the Wilderland in the Lord of the Rings (Sibley 6). Tolkien’s first detailed map of Middle-Earth was edited, changed and expanded as the story of Middle-Earth was written (Sibley 6). Tolkien had serious difficulty creating maps for The Lord of the Rings within the parameters that would make it possible to put it in the books and include all of the things that Tolkien felt were important (Sibley 7). Tolkien’s son, Christopher Tolkien, drew the final maps that were published in the The Lord of the Rings (Sibley 7).
The Hobbit is the story of a journey and “the one thing you need if you are setting out on a journey... is a map”(Sibley 28). In The Hobbit, Gandolf gives Thorin his grandfather’s map of the Lonely Mountain (Sibley 12). The map had secret moon-runes that revealed location of a secret door into the mountain which lead to the eventual defeat of Smaug the dragon (Sibley 13).
Work Cited
Brogan, Hugh. "The Lure of Maps in Arthur Ransome." You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination. By Katharine A. Harmon. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2004. 150-53. Print.
Fonstad, Karen Wynn. Introduction. The Atlas of Middle-earth. Revised ed. Boston, Ma.: Houghton Mifflin, 1991. Ix-Xi. Print.
Kraak, M. J., and Ferjan Ormeling. Cartography: Visualization of Spatial Data. 3rd ed. New York: Guilford, 2010. Print.
Sibley, Brian, and John Howe. The Maps of Tolkien's Middle-earth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Print.
