Quote:
|
AFAIK; this is one of the last issues addressed by Tolkien before his death (if not THE last). Some hold (I do not) that he was near dotage and couldn't remember things clearly, and that this is the reason for extensive changes in the latter part of his life. That is thier opinion of course. I let others judge the justness of it.
|
But this issue of Tolkien's memory is raised by Christopher Tolkien himself, for example...
Quote:
'These late writings are notable for the many wholly new elements that entered the 'legendarium'; and also for the number of departures from earlier work on the Matter of the Elder Days. It may be suggested that whereas my father set great store by consistency at all points with The Lord of the Rings and the Appendices, so little concerning the First Age had appeared in print that he was under far less constraint. I am inclined to think, however, that the primary explanation of these differences lies rather in his writing largely from memory. The histories of the First Age would always remain in a somewhat fluid state so long as they were not fixed in published work; and he certainly did not have all the relevant manuscripts clearly arranged and set out before him. But it remains in any case an open question, whether (to give a single example) in the essay Of Dwarves and Men he had definitely rejected the greatly elaborated account of the houses of the Edain that had entered the Quenta Silmarillion in about 1958, or whether it had passed from his mind.'
Christopher Tolkien, Foreword, The Peoples of Middle-Earth
|
Even Tolkien himself noted:
'There are clear evidences of confusion (as he said at one point, 'my memory is no longer retentive'), but there are elements...' CJRT, Last Writings
And I would add that Tolkien need not have been very old to write a new text while forgetting some detail already published.
The Lord of the Rings is a relatively long and detailed work, and it would be easy enough for anyone to forget something that arguably 'should' have been considered when writing later texts.