Editing Lothlórien (section)

=== Earthly paradise ===

{{further|Valinor|Dreams and visions in The Lord of the Rings}}

[[File:Pearl Poet.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Earthly Paradise]]: Lothlórien has been compared to the place dreamed of in the [[Middle English]] poem ''[[Pearl (poem)|Pearl]]''.{{sfn|Shippey|2001|pp=198–199}}  Miniature from [[Pearl Manuscript|Cotton Nero A.x]] shows the Dreamer on the other side of the stream from the Pearl-maiden.]]

Lothlórien is a ''[[locus amoenus]]'', an idyllic land that Tolkien describes as having "no stain".{{sfn|Shippey|2001|pp=198–199}} The Tolkien scholar [[Tom Shippey]] notes that to get there, the Fellowship first wash off the stains of ordinary life by wading the River Nimrodel.{{sfn|Shippey|2001|pp=198–199}} He compares this perfect place to the [[Earthly Paradise]] that the dreamer speaks of in the [[Middle English]] poem ''[[Pearl (poem)|Pearl]]''.{{sfn|Shippey|2001|pp=198–199}} But then, Shippey writes, the Fellowship have to cross a rope-bridge over a second river, the Silverlode, which they must not drink from, and which the evil [[Gollum]] cannot cross.{{sfn|Shippey|2001|pp=198–199}} What place can they have come to then, he wonders: could they be "as if dead"?{{sfn|Shippey|2001|pp=198–199}}

Shippey notes however that it might be old England, the "'mountains green' of 'ancient time'" in [[William Blake]]'s ''[[Jerusalem (poem)|Jerusalem]]''.{{sfn|Shippey|2001|pp=198–199}} As evidence, Shippey explains that when they come to the deepest part of Lothlórien, the Elf Haldir welcomes them, calling the area the ''Naith'' or "[[wikt:gore#Etymology 1 2|Gore]]", both unfamiliar words for the land between two converging rivers, the Hoarwell or ''Mitheithel'', and the Loudwater or ''Bruinen'', and then giving a third word with a special resonance: the "Angle". Shippey states that the name "England" comes from the Angle between the [[Flensburg Fjord]] and the [[Schlei|River Schlei]], in the north of Germany next to Denmark, the origin of the [[Angles (people)|Angles]] among the [[Anglo-Saxons]] who founded England.{{efn|England was founded in around the 5th and 6th centuries. The connection between the foundation of England and the mythology of ''Lord of the Rings'' is discussed further in the article on [[The Shire]].<ref>{{Cite web |author=Hamerow, Helena |url=http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/wessex.html |title=The Origins of Wessex |publisher=University of Oxford |access-date=18 November 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120702185330/https://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/wessex.html |archive-date=2 July 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref>}} He suggests that Frodo's feeling that he has "stepped over a bridge of time into a corner of the Elder Days, and was now walking in a world that was no more" may be exactly correct.{{sfn|Shippey|2001|pp=198–199}}{{sfn|Stanton|2006|pp=394–395}}

{{anchor|Time}}