EdCone.com

We watched the extended-version DVD of The Fellowship of the Ring last night, in preparation for the opening of The Two Towers next week. I wrote my newspaper column about Middle Earth, too, noting that my analysis of how the dwarves are Tolkien's Jews is the leading Google reference on that weighty subject. Tolkien doesn't translate wholly into any one allegorical framework, but through the same sort of medieval worldview you can easily see Gondor as Constantinople (the citadel of surviving half of an ancient empire, with the fallen North as Rome and the West), and the forces of Mordor as the Turks and Arabs of expansionist Islam. One supposes that the Elves are Anglicans.