A Sense of History: Passing Ships

[daughterofshadows]

The arrival and departure of ships across the Great Sea carries mythic significance for the peoples of Middle-earth. The image of ships crossing out of and back into a mysterious West appears as well in Beowulf and is alluded to in Tolkien's tower analogy in his lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," where the tower allows those who climb it to observe the passage of the ships.

For the past year, Simon J. Cook has been writing a series for our Sense of History column about towers: the tower analogy in the "Monsters and the Critics" essay (which has long fascinating critics and for which he offers a new reading) and the many towers the pepper the landscape of Middle-earth. In his latest installment, he considers the ships we view from the tops of those towers.

You can read Simon's "Passing Ships" here.