Tea at Trianon: The Giant Problem of Tolkien’s Legendarium

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, November 12, 2026

The Giant Problem of Tolkien’s Legendarium

From Visions of Middle-Earth:

Giants actually occur in several of Tolkien’s works. Although we never learn a great deal about them, tracing Tolkien’s changing ideas about giants reveals a fascinating corner of his creative process and raises an intriguing question: if giants really exist in Middle-earth, what exactly are they?
Giants are among the most widespread creatures of traditional folklore and mythology. As John D. Rateliff notes in The History of the Hobbit, ‘giants have a long, long tradition in folklore of being extremely dangerous if not downright wicked.’ Tolkien encountered them in many of the traditions he knew well, from Classical mythology to the powerful jötnar of Jötunheim in the Old Norse sources.
So giants were hardly an out-of-place idea for a mythology-minded writer like Tolkien. No more than dragons, dwarves, great eagles, or walking trees. And Tolkien clearly found the idea appealing. Throughout the development of his legendarium, he repeatedly experimented with giants and different roles they might play.
In this essay, I want to follow that history and explore where giants appear across Tolkien’s writings. In a follow-up to this article, I will look at the major theories about their identity and ask which explanation best fits the evidence. (Read more.)