Negative Space: comic conventions

Tolkien’s creation of Middle-earth is his attempt to recreate a world of forgotten English archetypes. The scale of Tolkien’s undertaking is staggering. It would be as if Homer, before writing the Iliad and the Odyssey, had first to invent the whole of Greek mythology and history. What is most remarkable is that Tolkien actually achieved his ambitions to an extraordinary degree. His hobbits are now as much part of the English heritage as leprechauns are to the Irish, gnomes to the Germans and trolls to the Scandinavians. — John O. E. Clark (Maps that Changed the World)