Quote:
Originally Posted by Orphalesion
(...) 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.
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I think Christopher Tolkien is correct about JRRT's thinking, in a period before his father had even finished
The Lord of the Rings.
Quote:
"Where could such ignorance of the Elves be found but in the minds of Men of a later time? This, I believe, is what my father was concerned to portray: a tradition of Men, through long ages become dim and confused. At this time, perhaps, in the context of the Notion Club Papers and of the vast enlargement of his great story that was coming into being in The Lord of the Rings, he began to be concerned with questions of "tradition" and the vagaries of tradition, the losses, confusions, simplifications and amplifications in the evolution of legend, as they might apply to his own -- within the always enlarging compass of Middle-earth.
This is speculation; it would have been helpful indeed if he had at this time left any record or note, however brief, of his reflections. But many years later he did write such a note, though brief indeed, on the envelope that contains the texts of the Drowning of Anadune:
"Contains very old version (in Adunaic) which is good -- in so far as it is just as much different (in inclusion and omission and emphasis) as would be probable in the supposed case:
a) Mannish tradition
b) Elvish tradition
c) Mixed tradition"
note by JRRT loosely dated to "sometime in the 1960s"
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Now granted the note itself dates from the 1960s specifically, but the texts that inspired Christopher Tolkien's comments here are much earlier, again, dated to before
The Lord of the Rings was even completed.
For myself I think
Quenta Silmarillion as a mostly mannish affair was a natural enough resolution.