Elves visiting Numenor

[Galin]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

There's nothing especially mystifying here; Tolkien made an earlier pass at a round-world cosmology but didn't like it so went back to flat-world- until he changed his mind again.

I mean with respect to the Numenorean transmission preamble that begins AAM*. If I recall correctly, Christopher Tolkien's stab at a date for AAM* is early 1950s.

The earlier pass at a Round World Ainulindale (version C*) appears to have been written "before the writing of the Return of the King" (CJRT) or at least before The Lord of the Rings was finished . . . and in any case, Elfwine still appears in Ainulindale C*, as I read the description in Morgoth's Ring anyway.


It's true, I guess we can say that there's nothing especially mystifying with Tolkien changing his mind, but what "throws me a bit" is: Christopher Tolkien's statement on dating AAM*: "There seems no way to determine with certainty when it was made, and I can only record my feeling that it belongs with the writing of the AAm manuscript rather than to some later time. At any rate my father soon abandoned it (see, p. 80)." CJRT, section 1 AAm*


No problem. But I think even CJRT would admit that this reads pretty uncertain, while, if I may be so bold, the Numenorean preamble at least, arguably fits better with the later 1950s, where Numenor mixes with Myths Transformed.

If not so be it. It doesn't throw me that much

In other words, the Numenorean transmission Preamble to AAM*, if it lives in the early 1950s, seems fairly "surrounded" by the old Elfwine-Pengolodh transmission.