French Literature Reviews - 2026

Anahit Behrooz, Mapping Middle-earth. Environmental and Political Narratives in J. R. R. Tolkien's Cartographies
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

In this cutting-edge study of Tolkien's most critically neglected maps, Anahit Behrooz examines how cartography has traditionally been bound up in facilitating power.

Far more than just illustrations to aid understanding of the story, Tolkien's corpus of maps is crucial to understanding the broader narratives between humans and their political and environmental landscapes within his legendarium. Undertaking a diegetic literary analysis of the maps as examples of Middle-earth's own cultural output, Behrooz reveals a sub-created tradition of cartography that articulates specific power dynamics between mapmaker, map reader, and what is being mapped, as well as the human/nonhuman binary that represents humans' control over the natural world.

Mapping Middle-earth surveys how Tolkien frames cartography as an inherently political act that embodies a desire for control of that which it maps. In turn, it analyses harmful contemporary engagements with land that intersect with, but also move beyond, cartography such as environmental damage; human-induced geological change; and the natural and bodily costs of political violence and imperialism. Using historical, eco-critical, and postcolonial frameworks, and such theorists as Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway and Edward Said, this book explores Tolkien's employment of particular generic tropes including medievalism, fantasy, and the interplay between image and text to highlight, and at times correct, his contemporary socio-political epoch and its destructive relationship with the wider world.

Table of Contents

Introduction
- Space, power, and critical cartography
- Literary maps
- Structure and overview

Chapter 1: Political mapmaking

- Medieval cartographic practices
- Modern cartographic practices
- Tolkien's cartography
Map I: I Vene Kemen
Map II: The 'Ambarkanta' diagrams and maps
Map III: Thror's Map
Map IV: The Middle-earth map
Map V: Map of Rohan, Gondor and Mordor

Chapter 2: Environment

- Navigating the human, nonhuman, and posthuman
- Tom Bombadil and the nonhuman
- Mapping the human and nonhuman in Middle-earth
- Stewardship
- Environmental destruction
- Nonhuman agency

Chapter 3: Geology and Time

- Deep time
- Middle-earth's geology
- Mapping geology and geologizing maps
- Fixing experiences of time
- Mapping anthropological change

Chapter 4: Imperialism and Race

- The politics of land and map
- (Dis)possessing Middle-earth's lands
- The threshold space
- Mutual vulnerability and racialization
- Narratives of imperialism

Conclusion
Index
Bibliography

Drawing upon historical, eco-critical, and postcolonial frameworks, the author engages with prominent theorists such as Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway, and Edward Said to analyze J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium. By treating the maps of Middle-earth as diegetic cultural artifacts rather than mere illustrative aids, the study investigates the complex relationships between mapmakers, readers, and the territories they depict. This approach illuminates how fantasy literature interacts with real-world socio-political structures, particularly regarding human dominance over natural environments and the ideological implications of representing space visually.

The volume will prove especially valuable to scholars of fantasy literature, environmental humanities, and cultural geography seeking fresh perspectives on world-building and cartographic tropes. It addresses central questions concerning imperialism, human-induced geological change, and the ethics of land stewardship within speculative fiction. By examining medievalist traditions alongside modern cartographic practices, the work offers a rigorous tool for understanding how imaginative literature critiques historical and contemporary power dynamics.