<blockquote>Tolkien (1964) remarked in an essay on fiction writing that any storyteller's "sub-created" world should have the "inner consistency of reality" according to its own rules (p. 47); it is the primary purpose of this paper to show, by geological analysis of the two major mountain ranges - Misty and White - featured in The Lord of the Rings, that Professor Tolkien's own creation certainly achieves this goal in the area of geology. The Misty Mountains will be considered first, with special reference to the underground tunnel-kingdom of Moria which provides a cross-section of their roots at a middle latitude; then the more complex geology of the White Mountains, including the travertine caves of Helm's Deep and the exposed pluton around which the city of Minas Tirith is built, will be considered and a tentative theory of their orogeny proposed.</blockquote>
➤ access-locked
