[Formendacil]

One thing that has occurred to me in reading through the recent discourse here, is to what extent it is fair to say that Tolkien always considered CoH as a part of the "The Silmarillion" and not as an independent story. Obviously, I think, you cannot divorce it from the wider Legendarium (and I would consider anyone who attempted such an endeavour to be a fool). At the same time, however, "The Silmarillion", as it stands, is not really a single tale, but a compendium of related tales. It is somewhat like the Bible, in that respect, the Bible being a collection of books (a library) rather than a single book.

It's more complicated than just saying "The Silmarillion" is just a library of tales, however. Like the Bible, there is a single story throughout, and unlike the Bible, it is the work of a single human editor, who was specifically interested in following a specific story. It is worth noting that I am not speaking of "The Silmarillion" here as the 1977 volume published posthumously, and including "The Ainulindalë," "The Valaquenta," etc. Rather, I mean the "Quenta Silmarillion," considered as a single narrative tale. "The Silmarillion," then, considered as a single narrative, is really the story of the Silmarils, the story of the Noldor, the story of the House of Fëanor, and the story of Morgoth. It intersects with the stories of the House of Húrin, of Gondolin/Eärendil, of Beren and Lúthien, and so forth... but these other stories are, for "The Silmarillion" really only chapters, and not fully considered tales in their own right.

From the point of view of "The Silmarillion," the real chief characters of "The Lay of Leithian" are Celegorm, Curufin, and Morgoth--they are the continuing characters of the previous chapters, who are now jointly spited by the interloping lovers. From the perspective of "The Silmarillion," Beren and Lúthien only start becoming really important AFTER they have the Silmaril--in other words, when they become entangled in the Doom of the Noldor, and avenge Thingol's killers, and thus set up Doriath for both the creation of the Nauglamír and the revenge of the Sons of Fëanor--and the deaths of Celegorm, Caranthir, and Curufin.

What about the love story, however, of the Man and the Elf, and the doomed romance of death and inevitably sundered destinies and the eucatastrophe of Mandos bending Lúthien's doom? This barely plays from the perspective of the main narrative in "The Silmarillion," because it is not the point there.

I think this difference of focus is even stronger with CoH, because CoH features even fewer of the main players of "The Silmarillion" story, and is an even more insignificant chapter in that narrative. The Nirnaeth, which is the biggest "Silmarillion" event in CoH is given a separate chapter and treatment in "The Silmarillion," and within the context of the wider work, is not really seen as a part of the story of Húrin so much as of Maedhros.

And after that? Well... Nargothrond falls, and Morgoth eventually loses his new prototype weapon, after having proved its effectiveness--and Glaurung will soon be replaced by Ancalagon and the winged dragons anyway, so perhaps it's best that he was put out of his misery by Túrin. It's only once Túrin is dead, and Húrin can then be released, that Morgoth starts getting what he's looking for: the approximate location of Gondolin, the other shoe falling for Thingol having taken the Silmaril.

My point is not that CoH--or "The Lay of Leithian," or the Gondolin/Eärendil saga, for that matter--is insignificant in and of itself, nor that "The Silmarillion" can go on without it. No story can go on as if some of its chapters, in which the plot is advanced, were not written. My point, however, is that the emphasis on what is more broadly "important" changes depending on whether one is following the story of the Silmarils in the chapter on Túrin, or whether one is following the tragic tale of the Children of Húrin from beginning to end. In the former, it is crucially important that Nargothrond fall and Húrin be broken to Morgoth's will. In the latter, the emphasis is on Túrin and Nienor, and their own, personal tragedy. Morwen is of very little consequence to "The Silmarillion" narrative--she is too far from the main events to really matter as the source of crucial action--but in CoH, she is at its very heart, and it could not be understood without her.

I have one last point before I end, and since my copies of the HoME are boxed away somewhere in my van, I cannot offer any proof of what I am about to say, so bear with the possible misremembering. However...

As far as my memory goes, the Fall of Gondolin, the Lay of Leithian, and Turin and the Dragon are the oldest components in the Book of Lost Tales, the first "Silmarillion." "The Book of Lost Tales," by itself, is a more compartmentalised account than the "Quenta Silmarillion," and the focus is much more on the individual tales than one the broader arc. What is more, we really only have these three tales in their later Lost Tales form, and not in the very germ of story-thought in which they were conceived. Knowing the source of "Beren and Tinúviel" in Tolkien's own marriage, and more strongly of "Turin and Glómund" in the Finnish Kallevala, it seems to me entirely possible that these three tales were NOT, in origin, conceived as part of a cohesive whole--possibly part of a related mythology, but that is several steps from the united tale of "The Silmarillion."

I think, if I am right here, that this original conception of these tales as independent, and less as part of the cycle, gives them a tenser relationship with the rest of "The Silmarillion" than, say, "The Account of the Sun and Moon." Tolkien continued to work on larger, "independent" accounts of these tales from the 1920s through the 1950s, the same period that saw the formation of "The Silmarillion" largely as we know it. This gives us the abortive tale "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin," the text of CoH as we have it, and poetic accounts of both Túrin and Leithian.

In short--if I can be short--there is a back-and-forth between inclusion in "The Silmarillion" and their own stand-alone qualities, which goes back through their whole history of creation, and is, I think, quite deliberate on Tolkien's part. From this, I hardly think it is legitimate to either separate the tales totally from this context, or to attempt to examine them exclusively within this context. Depending on the situation, and the need or the desire, either or both approach is valid.