Quote:
Quote:*Despite what T said in a letter many years later, TH *always* took place in the world of the Elvish legendarium; even the earliest drafts contain numerous references to things like the Three Kindreds, Gondolin, and even Beren and Luthien However the time-frame, while vague, seems to be not long after the events of what would later be called the First Age).
I find this rather curious. What in particular makes you think that TH was originally not very long after the events of the First Age? That's an impression that I never had myself.
|
Well, my statement was perhaps over-definite- what I should have said was that
at one stage the time-frame was quite early. Very telling is this, from the second draft of "An Unexpected Party:"
Quote:
[Bladorthin (> Gandalf):] "... but I found him a prisoner in the dungeons of the Necromancer."
...
[Gandalf (> Thorin, confusingly):] "We must give a thought to the Necromancer."
"Don't be absurd" said the wizard. "That is a job quite beyond the powers of all the dwarves, if they could be all gathered together again from the four corners of the world. And anyway his castle stands no more and he is flown to another darker place - Beren and Tinuviel broke his power, but that is quite another story."
|
Which implies very strongly that Thrain was imprisoned in Tol-in-Gaurhoth, before it was thrown down! And that, remarkably, this conversation takes place less than a century after that event.
But T quickly revised this thinking, since already in the first draft of Chapter 3 Elrond says that Gondolin was destroyed "ages and ages ago." (Elrond's very existence of course postdated the Fall of Gondolin).