Xenite.Org News

Suite101 article for July 27, 2002 -- Middle-earth revised, again

July 30, 2002 at 01:31:55

Was The Silmarillion really the only unwritten chapter left in the history of Middle-earth, or have we all overlooked another project, just as broad in scope, which Tolkien left unfinished at his death?

The July Suite101 article on Tolkien and Middle-earth re-examines a collection of essays which have received attention only individually.

Middle-earth revised, again

In Letter 187 (dated to approximately April 1956, 20 months after The Fellowship of the Ring was published in August 1954), J.R.R. Tolkien told H. Cotton Minchin "as 'research students' always discover, however long they are allowed, and careful their work and notes, there is always a rush at the end, when the last date suddenly approaches on which their thesis must be presented. So it was with this book, and the maps...."

He was speaking, of course, about The Lord of the Rings, and the maps associated with the text. In the course of the letter, Tolkien described parts of the project which had to be abandoned:

I am, however, primarily a philologist and to some extent a calligrapher .... And my son after me. To us far and away the most absorbing interest is the Elvish tongues, and the nomenclature based on them; and the alphabets. My plans for the 'specialist volume' were largely linguistic. An index of names was to be produced, which by etymological interpretation would also provide quite a large Elvish vocabulary; this is of course a first requirement. I worked at it for months, and indexed the first two vols. (it was the chief cause of the delay of Vol iii) until it became clear that size and cost were ruinous. Reluctantly also I had to abandon, under pressure from the 'production department', the 'facsimiles' of the three pages of the Book of Mazarbul, burned tattered and blood-stained, which I had spent much time on producing or forging. Without them the opening of Book Two, ch. 5 (which was meant to have the facsimiles and a transcript alongside) is defective, and the Runes of the Appendices unnecessary.

Well, two of the facsimile pages (nos. 1 and 3) have now been published in J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator. I have yet to see the second page reproduced. And much material which JRRT had worked on through the years has also been brought forth since 1980, the year in which Christopher Tolkien first published Unfinished Tales. There is now far more information available about Middle-earth, in the form of paintings and doodles, essays and notes, maps, and linguistic analysis than Tolkien ever dreamed could be possibly published.

But what do we have to show for all that? We can research Middle-earth to our hearts' content, but do all these things bring us any closer to realizing what Tolkien had in mind than just The Lord of the Rings itself? A question was recently posed to me which is seldom asked any more: "Which books are considered unimpeachable resources?"

That is not an easy question to answer. The answer depends on who is doing the considering and what the scope of the research is concerned with. The question above was posed to me after I had said, "People just don't seem to understand that there are clear and definite divisions between the various mythologies."

Well, anyone who wants to take exception with that statement will certainly find plenty of support for doing so. And that just underscores the first point I made: "People just don't seem to understand". Which, by implication, means I think I do understand...something. Of course I think that. And so does everyone who disagrees with me. It's the rest of the readership out, vaguely wraithlike in their undefined demographic, who self-admittedly don't have a clue and are earnestly seeking good solid information.

The problem is that there really is no good solid information. Not on Middle-earth. Or darned little of it.

What exactly is Middle-earth anyway? If you were to have asked Tolkien, he would have told you that "Middle-earth is just archaic English for [irreproducable characters] the inhabited world of men. It lay then as it does. In fact, just as it does, round and inescapable." (Letter 152), or "the inhabited lands of men 'between the seas'" (Letter 165), "the abiding place of Men, the objectively real world, in use specifically opposed to imaginary worlds (Fairyland) or unseen worlds (as Heaven and Hell)" (Letter 183).

Read the full article here.