'Time and Ageing' Sequence of Composition

[gondowe]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

Oh yes. This (once any kinks have been worked out) is getting copied out and slipped in the front of the book. Let's see what we've got.

- I.1 - Hostetter is slightly unclear in the dating here, referencing amendments to the Annals of Aman. This is kind of true, in that the draft AAm (ie, the reworking of the Annals of Valinor) was amended to give the shorter VY; but per CT, the first proper AAm text is the 9.58-year one. So yes, 1951.

- There is an oddity in XX: it gives the date of the Awakening in VY 1050, matching the Annals of Aman, but introduces the idea of the March ending in VY 1450 (not 1133). I think this has to just be a slip - even after Tolkien switched the Awakening to VY 1000, he maintained the 1133 date.

- X clearly predates the note to IX: X states a gestation period of 900 months (100:1) and then corrects this to 10:1, which change was carried across to the note on IX. So we have IX - X - IX (note).

- I think XI must precede X. XI introduces the 10:1 growth-rate which X includes as written (partly to resolve the issue of Maeglin). The gestation period is actually a clue to this: footnote 10 to X says that it was written as 12 years, amended to 900 months, and then a second note corrects it to 8 years (which was then transposed into IX (note). So we have IX - XI - X - IX (note).

- IV is a bit weird. It states outright a gestation of 8 years, then launches into a description using 144-year growth-years. Worse, footnote 21 shows that it was originally written with a 1 sun-year gestation! Given the "what about Maeglin?" note at the end, I think this text as originally written has to precede XI; but the notes to it came in over the course of the IX-X-XI complex. I see no indication that IV includes the change to 100:1 in Beleriand, which appears ab initio in XX and IX; so we have IV - XX - IX - XI - X.

- With V, I can return to your order: it includes the ca. 9-year gestation adopted by the note to IX.

- VII, VIII, and VI (A) and (B) are complex. VI seems to be the first introduction of the Awakening in VY 1000, which places it before VII; but the "later Legend" note strongly implies that VI is later. Best guess is that VI.A [the second text in VI] was the first of this set, while VI.B was written specifically for collection in front of VII & VIII (it ends with "as shown also in what follows", referencing the March timeline). VI.A - VII - VIII - VI.B.

- In fact, I suspect VI.B was specifically written for inclusion in the larger piece assembled in III, "Of Time in Arda". That would put it immediately before III, as you say.

- XII is interesting, because it draws on both V and IV - it uses the "tortoises" passage from IV, for instance. Given that the title matches the one Tolkien added to IV when writing III, I think XII might be a replacement for the aborted III - ie, Tolkien went "hang on, IV and V should really be one text", gave up rewriting IV, and started over on a synthesis. So I agree with the placement.

- Concur on XIV and XIII 2-3. However, XIII.1 must come after the final generational scheme in XVII, as it adopts the birth-dates of Finwe et al from that text (among other details). XV must still fall before XVII.1, because the former gives far higher numbers of children in the earlier generations, while the XVII.3 schemes all follow XVII.1 in reducing this to 6 or fewer.

- XVI still falls between XV and XVII.1, so the final order for this set is XIII.3 - XIII.2B - XVII.2 - XIII.2A - XV - XVI - XVII.1 - XVII.3 - XIII.1

- And then I agree on the last few texts; I don't think there's any way of dating the '68-69 texts relative to each other.

So my current order is:

I.1
XXIII
I.2
XXII
IV
XX
IX
XI
X
V
VI.A
VII
VIII
VI.B
III
XII
XIV.2
XIV.1
XIII.3
XIII.2B
XVII.2
XIII.2A
XV
XVI
XVII.1
XVII.3
XIII.1
XVIII
XXI
XIX

A pictoral comparison. Basically, I've reshuffled the earliest 1959 texts, split VI, and moved XIII.1 to be the final timeline.

This is obviously not set in stone! I'm sure there's still room for improvement. (As a note I can't remember where it goes: the fact that IV originally had a 1-sun year gestation indicates that LaCE could well have been written before the '59s: Tolkien rejected the 1-year gestation for mathematical reasons, only to eventually readopt it.)

hS

A question. Could IV postdate III, due to the word Onnalúmë included in IV against Onnarië included in III?

Greetings

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by gondowe

A question. Could IV postdate III, due to the word Onnalúmë included in IV against Onnarië included in III?

Greetings

Uh-oh.

There are three texts which seem to be heavily based on each other: IV (manuscript), III (typescript), and XII (manuscript). Our interpretation has been that Tolkien originally wrote IV, V, and VIII as separate texts. He then began to assemble them into a single typescript, as III (almost entirely based on IV), giving them their titles and numbers. Then, abandoning III, he switched to a synthesis manuscript, XII.

It's not entirely clear that III had a title typed on it - it may be a separate title page attached to the "Time in Arda" collection. If it didn't, we could theoretically have a sequence of [lost manuscript] > III > IV > XII.

There are some indications this might be true. A change of "100" to "90-96" in IV was not reflected in III, and of course there's onnarië . The first at least indicates that some of Tolkien's red-pen amendments post-date the typescript, which doesn't fit easily with the idea that they were amendments for the typescript.

And... IV feels "later". III has "Elves" and "Men", where IV has "Quendi" and "Atani". I can't easily imagine Tolkien stepping back from using the 'more technical' terms. In many places IV goes into more detail than III, and the only place I can find it having less detail is right at the start, when it drops the otherwise-unknown "the Valar are the soul of Arda" idea. (Compare the transition from IV to XII, where the latter almost doubles the length of some paragraphs; Tolkien liked to add stuff!)

Um.

Okay. All of that is quite subjective; "Onnarië" is concrete. Let's see where that takes us.

- "Onnarië" only appears in III. It's not even indexed.
- "Onnalúmë" appears in IV, V, XII, XV, XVII.
- "Ontalúmë" appears in IV alone, as an alternative form of "onnalúmë".

A scenario where III was the earliest text would certainly explain this! But... I can't quite believe that Tolkien either lost/destroyed the very earliest version of III/IV/XII, or tried to write ab initio in typescript - with, as CH notes, red text used for Elvish words, very fancy, not what you'd do when drafting. Furthermore, CH's formatting strongly suggests that the typescript III was titled, on page, "OF TIME IN ARDA - I - The Quendi compared with Men". That section title and number were added as an amendment to IV; if IV was a rewriting of III, why would Tolkien do that?

As an alternative view... if Tolkien was trying to compress three or more sets of notes down into a single fair text, he might well have made it shorter on the way. He got two pages in, and then decided he didn't actually agree with what he was typing up any more! He pulled out a new piece of paper and began writing XII; by the time he got to the first mention of "Onnalúmë", he forgot that he'd ever considered changing it.

(XX does something similar, introducing a new date for the March which was immediately reverted to the original date.)

hS

[gondowe]

In any case it is true that the structure and explanations of CH are sometimes very vague. These texts may have a much greater degree of complexity than those presented to us CT in HoME but I miss this.
But it is very possible what you say in relation to my question. Tolkien may have forgotten that he had changed Onnarië

Greetings

[Arvegil145]

Just to make sure that no one missed this, but, Text VI.A has the year of its composition right in the text itself (p. 39):

Men had then existed for 448 VYs + 22 SYs: i.e., 64,534 Sun Years, which, though doubtless insufficient scientifically (since that is only – we being in 1960 of the 7th Age – 16,000 years ago: total about 80,000), is adequate for purposes of the Silmarillion, etc.

- emphasis mine