Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age
This is a pretty straightforward question, but I am very curious. Where is the textual history of this chapter of the Silmarillion given? Wikipedia says it is given in the Treason of Isengard but I can find only references to one or two passages from it in that book. Is the textual history of the chapter ever given? Or is Christopher Tolkien's version the only one we have available? If the latter is the case, to what extent did he make it up from scratch?
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When I revised my PhD thesis, one of my examiners told me to reference the drafts found in The History of Middle-earth rather than the published Silmarillion so that I could accurately cite Professor Tolkien's own writing. I ended up eliminating any reference to "Of the Rings of Power" and using alternative sources because I simply couldn't find any version of it other than the one Christopher Tolkien published in The Silmarillion. |
I had always assumed that Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age was an essay compiled by Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay, a distillation of JRRT's work beyond the bounds of The Silmarillion proper, and meant to wed the textual threads of The Sil to LotR.
It is, in a sense, The Lord of the Rings and other 3rd Age material written in the the literary style of The Silmarillion. It is almost as if an Elvish scribe, uninterested in banal Hobbitish bits of the gross and mundane, described the Age in overarching themes and high prose rather than in the more precious style of Hobbits like Bilbo or Frodo; hence, "Gandalf" is always mentioned instead as "Mithrandir," Hobbits are referred to as "the Periannath" or "halflings", and Bilbo is not named at all. Again, I am assuming C. Tolkien and Gavriel Kay weaved disparate quoted material directly from various J. Tolkien notebooks into a framework which they created. |
Well, as far as I could find, in Unfinished Tales CT says this at the beginning of the short text of the Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn:
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On the other hand, some elements of the published Silmarillion are largely, if not entirely, unaltered, such as "Akallabęth", according to Christopher Tolkien in The Peoples of Middle-earth: Quote:
I'd almost be inclined to suggest that perhaps "Of the Rings of Power" was entirely Professor Tolkien's own work with minor editorial changes if it wasn't for the fact that parts of it seem peculiar. |
Certainly the impression I get from the relevant bits of HME is that Of The Rings of Power, like Akallabeth, was a work that Tolkien Pere had completed to his satisfaction and CRT did nothing more than touch it up. CT also points out, in the foreword to the 1977 Silmarillion, that both works were included in that volume "according to my father's explicit intention," which certainly argues that the Professor had written both works.
(The reason that Akallabeth and its antecedents receive substantial space in HME is that the legend of Numenor evolved over many drafts, and was intimately bound up with Tolkien's changing conception of his legendarium, whereas RPTA was, apparently, written off at a stroke, like most of Appendix A was (and quite possibly at about the same time, 1949-50 or so)) |
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