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Like Eomer said above, the tales of the First and Second Ages are mostly written as histories in the tradition of Old English, Old French, and Latin chronicles from Medieval Britain. It is, roughly, the equivalent of chapter headers like, "Sherman's March to the Sea" or "The Burning of Atlanta" in a modern Civil War text. A good illustration of this style might be The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer, which is divided into 'substories' a reader of the Silm might recognize.
Although Tolkien meant for the Silm to be published, he is said by CT to have meant it as a suppliment to the LotR (at least in its comprehensive version). When expanding the particular stories, he kept this historical view; never was it meant to be seen as a narrative in the style of a (modern) novel. Even LotR is a compromise between the two styles, because it began as a sequel to The Hobbit, yet ended up an epic every bit as full as the Narn.
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