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Originally Posted by TheLostPilgrim
Is there any indication that Tolkien would've, if he had had the time or longevity, brought some of the other stories and legends in The Silmarilion to a more complete state? I mean the way he worked on The Children of Hurin until that work was complete and in a novel format? More a finished story rather than a summary or brief history of one?
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There's no way, of course, of knowing what would have happened if Tolkien had lived longer or if he had had more time to devote to writing. But it does seem that in his post-Lord of the Rings work on the Silmarillion material, he was moving back in the direction of longer, fuller narratives (I say 'back' in that direction because the earliest version of the Legendarium,
The Book of Lost Tales, was actually a much more in-depth narrative than what is found in the 'Silmarillion' tradition).
In the revised version of the Quenta Silmarillion that he wrote in the 1950s (LQ), for example, there is a tendency toward a longer-form narrative than in the previous versions. Unfortunately, the substantive new work on LQ breaks off just after the Darkening of Valinor.
A similar thing happened in the 'Annals of Aman' and particularly the 'Grey Annals'. The predecessors of these annals, written in the 1930s, were brief chronological outlines of events (somewhat like the 'Tale of Years' in LotR), but in the new version they slide into a more narrative mode. In fact, much of what became 'The Children of Hurin' derived from the Grey Annals. But naturally, the Grey Annals aren't complete either; they taper off soon after the death of Turin.
At least at one time, Tolkien seems to have considered writing full versions of all the later Silmarillion tales - essentially from Beren & Luthien onward. In some notes that date from the 1950s, he mentions a hypothetical work called the
Atanatarion, the 'Legendarium of the Fathers of Men', which would include the 'three great tales': the
Narn Beren ion Barahir, the
Narn i Chin Hurin, and the
Narn e Dant Gondolin ar Orthad en El - that is, the 'Tale of Beren son of Barahir', the 'Tale of the Children of Hurin', and 'The Tale of the Fall of Gondolin and the Rise of the Star'. In the note, he proposed making these tales appendices to the
Silmarillion. In another place he refers to a hypothetical tale called 'Sigil Elu-naeth', or 'Necklace of the Woe of Thingol'.
In fact, one can make the case that he started writing each of these - or at least, in each case, there's something that
could have served as the longer form of the tale if it had been completed.
- The post-LotR revision of the 'Lay of Leithien' could have served as the 'Narn Beren ion Barahir', but it tapers off around when Beren arrives in Doriath.
- The 'Narn i Chin Hurin' was in fact almost completed, and, with minimal touching up, a complete version was published as
The Children of Hurin.
- The vivid narrative called 'The Wanderings of Hurin' was apparently intended to lead into the 'Sigil Elu-naeth', but it breaks off before Hurin goes to Nargothrond.
- The text given in
Unfinished Tales under the name 'Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin' was actually intended to be a full-length 'Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin', but it breaks off just as Tuor reaches the city.