Ann-thennath

[Araen]

Was anything ever written concerning the rules and frame of the from of poetry? I like to write poetry and it would be fun if I could put a poem in this form. I have tried to figure it out using the one poem in this form that I know of, The Tale of Luthien Tinuviel and Beren, but I have had no luck.

[Galadriel55]

As far as I know, ann-thenath is any Elven song - ie any poe that has a melody to it, or something like that.

[Aiwendil]

There is an essay by Patrick Wynne and Carl Hostetter, "Three Elvish Verse Modes", that appeared in the collection Tolkien's Legendarium, that discusses Ann-thennath. Though we have almost no information about this verse form, they tease out several possibilities concerning it from the one example we have (Aragorn's song of Beren and Luthien) and from the name, which seems to mean something like "long-shorts" or "longs and shorts". They raise some interesting ideas, but ultimately we are limited by the fact that we don't know how closely the English translation of the song preserves whatever features define the mode. Still, you might want to read the Wynne-Hostetter essay if you can find it.

[Nerwen]

There is an essay by Patrick Wynne and Carl Hostetter, "Three Elvish Verse Modes", that appeared in the collection Tolkien's Legendarium, that discusses Ann-thennath. Though we have almost no information about this verse form, they tease out several possibilities concerning it from the one example we have (Aragorn's song of Beren and Luthien) and from the name, which seems to mean something like "long-shorts" or "longs and shorts". They raise some interesting ideas, but ultimately we are limited by the fact that we don't know how closely the English translation of the song preserves whatever features define the mode. Still, you might want to read the Wynne-Hostetter essay if you can find it.
But look on the bright side: no-one can point the finger and say you did it wrong. Why not just emulate the fairly simple form of Aragorn's song, and not worry too much about whether it's "real" ann-thennath?