Why do you read HoME?

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Orphalesion

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.

I think such an approach risks treating this fiction as too "real". Ultimately I think the major concern is that the "actual history", which might be better understood as a "version more cohesive with modern scientific knowledge", would not retain the original poetic qualities of the old story. It might have a new one, but it would be different.

I don't think the original version of the story being treated by the author in later years as a "Mannish legend" diminishes from its potential meaning. For me at least the meaning is more important than what is "true" according to the internal narrative. It's all fiction at the end of the day, even fiction within fiction. It's not like one version is actually "true".