Remembering and Forgetting: National Identity Construction in Tolkien’s Middle-earth

The medieval period in Europe saw the development of vernacular literatures, grown out of oral tradition and classical mythology, in which epic poems were a means of preserving culture, sharing a moral code, and offering solace in times of hardship. These epic poems, usually transcribed or translated in monastic scriptoria, were passed down through generations and enabled the sharing of memory via storytelling. In many ways, this early literature, rooted as it was in both the religious and the secular aspects of life in this time, was as much a part of the identity of the various European peoples as popular culture is today. The stories and songs of the medieval period may point us towards the beginnings of a sense of ‘nationalism’ and national identity in this time. In Tolkien’s Middle-earth, the various peoples, or nations, form and maintain a consciousness of their identity via folktales, songs, archives, and memorials, preserving that identity by constructing shared memory. Concurrently, each nation is being remembered by others, often based on a perception of their morality. Crucially, a nation’s constructed history may omit significant details, typically through a collective act of ‘forgetting,’ to perpetuate a more positive self-image or to enable post-traumatic healing. By investigating the ways in which memory plays a part in how the peoples of Middle-earth see themselves and understand their place in the world, and how this resonates with the ways in which the medieval poets were preserving tradition and culture, this article explores Tolkien’s fascination with cultural signifiers and recorded histories. Engaging with scholars such as Verlyn Flieger, John D. Rateliff, Patrick J. Geary, and Homi Bhabha, I examine how national identity is first fashioned, then sustained, through an understanding that the past must be articulated if it is to become memory.