The Name of the Hobbit

Abstract

This chapter takes as its focus the collapsing of fantastic medievalism and palaeontology in the narratives surrounding the discovery of homo floresiensis, the petite hominin species which has been called ‘the hobbit’ since it was uncovered in a cave on the island of Flores in 2003. The chapter analyses how homo floresiensis came to be seen through the prism of the globally exported medievalist fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth novels and their film adaptations. The medievalizing of the Flores hominin exposes the capacity for ‘the medieval’ to stand in for ‘deep time’ and the primeval past. The chapter also examines the racial politics underlying this episode, arguing that the framing of the Asian hominin within Tolkien-influenced medievalism constructs a limiting image of a globally conceived humanity. It reminds us that global medievalism has the potential to reinforce rather than unsettle the Eurocentric legacy of the Middle Ages in the modern world.