Quote:
Originally Posted by Galin
My thought is that JRRT solved this by recasting Quenta Silmarillion as a mostly Mannish tradition, and he was going to give the Round World point of view in other accounts (or notes), for comparison.
Oddly enough (or ingeniously enough, I think) in my opinion a main "other" source being the confused mannish tradition of the fall of Numenor (The Drowning of Anadune). In it Men confuse the Elves with the Valar for instance, or certain points of geography, or don't all believe what the Elves teach... but the tradition includes that the Western Elves teach the World was always round (believe it or not, Men of Numenor)...
... the King of Numenor even wants to test this teaching by sailing East to get around the ban! But it never happens, and other stuff happens. Or you have the Elvish account of the Awakening of the Quendi, where (despite being a fairy tale mixed with counting lore) the Sun already exists before the Elves awake. Possibly too, the account of the Death of Feanor's youngest son... if that was to stand as a variant Elvish telling of the matter of Losgar (outside of the main QS text), it at least implies the Sun already existed, if I recall correctly.
Thus no need for a completely Elvish Silmarillion, with its always round worldedness and early existing Sun. That's why I think Myths Transformed was abandoned, even though the Dome of Varda made it into a later "LQS" text.
My opinion anyway.
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That's well and good if you are interested in Mannish Legends. I am not.
I'd rather have a Silmarilion that would recount the "actual" history of Middle Earth. To me it seemed more a "cop out" because Tolkien might have been afraid that he was no longer up to the task of restructuring the Legendarium in such a significant way.