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A comment on Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?. Parent comment

Re:Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution? by hef19898 on Tuesday June 28, 2022 @04:22AM (#31905441)
>> was seriously considered as a major plot at some point

So the very out-of-universe answer is: Because Tolkien decided against it. So the better question, and also the one we can use some source material to answer, would be why Tolkien decided against it and wrote a classic fantasy story.

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Re:Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution? by TheOtherHobbes on Tuesday June 28, 2022 @08:10AM (#31906656)
Because he was a Professor of Anglo-Saxon and not a historian of the 18th/19th centuries.

There's no Industrial Revolution in Anglo-Saxon mythology. Including it would have jarred in a dyschronistic way.

More than that, fantasy is based on nostalgia for heroic simplicity and straightforwardness, with a dash of magic to instil some child-like wonder.

The Industrial Revolution operated on a completely different narrative and moral basis. It was more about colonisation at home, using mechanisation to organise forced labour.

It's hard to be a brave Romantic hero in that kind of setting.

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Re:Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution? by naniwaduni on Tuesday June 28, 2022 @07:14AM (#31906292)
Well, I wouldn't say he decided to write it classic.
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