02-15-2002, 03:43 PM | #1 |
EIDRIORCQWSDAKLMED
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Plate Armor Too Advanced for Middle Earth?
I was reading an article on another site about FotR, and someone made an interesting point. They thought that using plate armor in middle earth was out of place. The point was that plate armor reflects more of a middle ages feel to armor while tolkien only spoke of chaim mail in the books, and that middle earth was more dark ages based. What do you think about this objection?
For me, I had always visualized all of the warrior characters in chain mail, except, for some reason, Imrahil of Dol Amroth, whom I visualized in a combo of chain mail and plate pieces. Was there any mention of other armor varieties in the book?
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"...[The Lord of the Rings] is to exemplify most clearly a recurrent theme: the place in 'world politics' of the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue of the apparently small, ungreat, fogotten in the places of the Wise and Great (good as well as evil). A moral of the whole (after the primary symbolism of the Ring, as the will to mere power, seeking to make itself objective by physical force and mechanism, and so also inevitably by lies) is the obvious one that without the high and noble the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless." Letters of JRR Tolkien, page 160. |
02-15-2002, 05:13 PM | #2 |
'Sober' Mullet Frosh
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Too advanced? Numenor created all sorts of cool stuff, Earendil sails in a space ship and Gondor can't create plate armor but they can create large scale infrastructure a la Argonath!
Sure...
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02-15-2002, 05:52 PM | #3 |
EIDRIORCQWSDAKLMED
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Well, the Egyptians built pyramids but plate armor was still thousands of years in the future...
A few public works does not a middle ages make.
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"...[The Lord of the Rings] is to exemplify most clearly a recurrent theme: the place in 'world politics' of the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue of the apparently small, ungreat, fogotten in the places of the Wise and Great (good as well as evil). A moral of the whole (after the primary symbolism of the Ring, as the will to mere power, seeking to make itself objective by physical force and mechanism, and so also inevitably by lies) is the obvious one that without the high and noble the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless." Letters of JRR Tolkien, page 160. |
02-15-2002, 06:24 PM | #4 |
'Sober' Mullet Frosh
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Gondor is apparently supposed to be Egypt like. However there seems to be no great problem with having plate armor, and it's possibly they are easier to make.
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02-15-2002, 06:34 PM | #5 |
Elf Lord
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Hmm, hello, Palantir? Sounds a lot like the internet to me Pretty advanced.
And it's not a true history either. Ai!
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02-16-2002, 07:45 PM | #6 |
Bard of Mangled Songs
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well, elves as Prof T pictured them didn't exist before he wrote about them.
also, if you had paper (egyptian), fireworks (chinese) and stirrups(huns) in the same hands(european looking, it seems), it certainly makes it difficult to compare with actual timelines. perhaps the wizards taught them the technology. on a less serious note.... besides, there was a car in the movie.
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02-17-2002, 06:27 AM | #7 |
Elven Warrior
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There was a mention of plate armor at one point of the books. In Rohan it was said to Merry, that "We don't have a chain mail of your size and we don't have time to forge a breastplate" or something like that. So at least some parts of armor were plate...
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02-17-2002, 10:51 AM | #8 |
EIDRIORCQWSDAKLMED
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Ah, Lightice, I had not recalled that part of the book. Good call.
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"...[The Lord of the Rings] is to exemplify most clearly a recurrent theme: the place in 'world politics' of the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue of the apparently small, ungreat, fogotten in the places of the Wise and Great (good as well as evil). A moral of the whole (after the primary symbolism of the Ring, as the will to mere power, seeking to make itself objective by physical force and mechanism, and so also inevitably by lies) is the obvious one that without the high and noble the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless." Letters of JRR Tolkien, page 160. |
02-17-2002, 01:44 PM | #9 |
Elf Lord
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Nah, I don't think it's too advanced. And Lightice's quote proves that there was at least some plate aromor. Although I think that it would have been more middle-earth as I imagined it if they'd done less plate and more chain mail.
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02-18-2002, 01:14 PM | #10 |
Enting
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Imrahil discovers that Eowyn is still barely breathing by showing the condensation on a piece of his armour...that particular piece of armour had to be burnished plate.
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02-18-2002, 01:59 PM | #11 | |
Peer of the realm of Sanguine
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Quote:
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02-22-2002, 03:49 PM | #12 |
King of Nargothrond
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In the Silmarillion it says that the Noldor of Valinor had armour. It also says that the dwarves invented chain mail. The Noldor and Dwarves didn't meet until the Return to middle Earth so the Noldor obviously didn'ty have mail. Remember, the noldor worked with Aule and he was the master smith.
Theis technology would have been carried on through Celebrimbor's smiths and their remnants went to Rivindell so the plate armour easily could hve been in existence. |
02-22-2002, 04:35 PM | #13 | |
Peer of the realm of Sanguine
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Quote:
From a historical perspective, chain mail was all that was used by European fighters in the middle ages. Breast-plates and scale armor began to be employed by the 1200's. Full body armor was not used until the 1500's. I don't think breast-plate or full body armor is out of the context of Tolkien's ME at all. Middle Earth craft does not necessarily follow the progress of our world's technology anyway, e.g., Palantiri, Orthanc, Rings of Power.
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