Question about CT's editing hand in the Sil - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Maglor · 02-26-2007, 06:54 PM

Hi, folks. I'm new around here, obviously. I performed a search to try to find the answer to this, but couldn't find what I was looking for, so I thought I'd ask it here.

I'm a big fan of The Silmarillion and have just begun reading it again for the first time in several years. I'm aware that the Sil's place in Tolkien's "canon" is up for debate; I also know that HoME contains a wealth of knowledge dealing with how Christopher Tolkien went about compiling his father's work, and then published posthumously. Unfotunately, I've yet to read HoME.

So my question is this: To what extent did Chrisopher Tolkien play in "editing" his father's work for the Silmarillion? Was he...

A. The "voice", or narrator in effect of the Sil, using the stories written by his father and presenting them in the stylistic manner of his choosing (syntactical, dictional, etc.)

B. Merely the curator of his father's previously written works, splicing them together to form a narrative comprised of JRR's own words

C. Some undefinable combination of the two?

---

I guess what I'm interested in finding out is this: Was it the father's stories and the son's words or was it the father's words and the son's arrangement? I know it's probably somewhere in the middle, but I'd like to know a little about how the book that I'm reading came to be.

Can anyone shed some light?

02-26-2007, 06:54 PM	#1
Maglor Pile O'Bones Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 25	Question about CT's editing hand in the Sil Hi, folks. I'm new around here, obviously. I performed a search to try to find the answer to this, but couldn't find what I was looking for, so I thought I'd ask it here. I'm a big fan of The Silmarillion and have just begun reading it again for the first time in several years. I'm aware that the Sil's place in Tolkien's "canon" is up for debate; I also know that HoME contains a wealth of knowledge dealing with how Christopher Tolkien went about compiling his father's work, and then published posthumously. Unfotunately, I've yet to read HoME. So my question is this: To what extent did Chrisopher Tolkien play in "editing" his father's work for the Silmarillion? Was he... A. The "voice", or narrator in effect of the Sil, using the stories written by his father and presenting them in the stylistic manner of his choosing (syntactical, dictional, etc.) B. Merely the curator of his father's previously written works, splicing them together to form a narrative comprised of JRR's own words C. Some undefinable combination of the two? --- I guess what I'm interested in finding out is this: Was it the father's stories and the son's words or was it the father's words and the son's arrangement? I know it's probably somewhere in the middle, but I'd like to know a little about how the book that I'm reading came to be. Can anyone shed some light?