Color of the Year 2014

"What is most striking about it is the profound presence of the natural world: geography and geology, ecologies, flora and fauna, the seasons, weather, the night-sky, the stars and the Moon. The experience of these phenomena as comprising a living and meaningful cosmos saturates his entire story. It wouldn't be stretching a point to say that Middle-earth itself appears as a character in its own right. And the living personality and agency of this character are none the less for being non-human; in fact, that is just what allows for a sense of ancient myth, with its feeling of a time when the Earth itself was alive. It whispers: perhaps it could be again; perhaps, indeed, it still is."

Defending Middle-earth--Tolkien: Myth and Modernity by Patrick Curry