Quote:
Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
Of course, in reality we know that T didn't develop his fiction of translation until a decade later.
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I assume you mean the idea that the various names + Rohirric were translated into Norse/Old English/rural English (for Hobbits)? I've never been sure when that notion first appeared - when are you dating it to?
The idea that the books were translated from old texts is a separate idea; I don't know how far that one goes, either, but Tolkien's 1937 Hobbit cover mentions it in the runic inscription ('... a years journey by Bilbo Baggins of Hobbiton compiled from his memoirs by J.R.R. Tolkien').
Or do you mean that the latter concept postdates the use of Norse names in the early Hobbit drafts by a decade? I haven't got a very concrete notion of the Hobbit writing timeline, so that could make sense.
(All complicated by the fact that The Hobbit was pretty clearly written as a derivative work feeding off the Silmarillion, and only adopted into its timeline when LotR was begun...)
hS