Tolkien and race

J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings have been said to embody outmoded attitudes to race.^[1][2][3] However, scholars have noted that he was influenced by Victorian attitudes to race and to a literary tradition of monsters, and that he was anti-racist both in peacetime and during the two World Wars.^[4]

With the late 19th century background of eugenics and a fear of moral decline,^[5] some critics believed that the mention of race mixing in The Lord of the Rings embodied scientific racism.^[6][7] Other commentators thought that Tolkien's description of the orcs was modelled on racist wartime propaganda caricatures of the Japanese.^[8] Critics have noted, too, that the work embodies a moral geography, with good in the West, evil in the East.^[9]

Against this, Tolkien strongly opposed Nazi racial theories, as seen in a 1938 letter he wrote to his publisher,^{[10][T 1]} while in the Second World War he vigorously opposed anti-German propaganda.^[10] His Middle-earth has been described as definitely polycultural and polylingual,^[3] while scholars have noted that attacks on Tolkien based on The Lord of the Rings often omit relevant evidence from the text.^[11][12][13]

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