A Journey Through Middle-earth

[Allyn Gibson]

as you follow the dynastic fights between the Noldor (High-Elves) you wonder: who is the rightful "High-King" (overlord of all Noldor) after Gil-Galad died?

apparently, the elves were so weak after the War of the Last Alliance that they just didn't bother having one again.

You need to look at the geopolitical situation in Middle-Earth at the end of the Second Age.

Numenor had taken Sauron prisoner, and under his influence man attacked and invaded the Undying Lands. The Valar destroyed Numenor, and made the world round, and now what was left of the elite of humanity had settled in Eriador and along the banks of the Anduin. Sauron had escaped back to Mordor, and he had raised an army to destroy the last of humanity. And when Isildur had a chance to destroy Sauron and his evil forever, he stepped back from that brink.

For the Elves that were left in Middle-Earth, there was no longer any reason to stay. Their leader, Gil-Galad, was dead. They had suffered heavy losses in the War of the Last Alliance for, ultimately, no reason. Sauron had suffered a defeat, but it was only a defeat. Sauron's evil was going to rise again, and based on past experience, man was susceptible to Sauron's corrupting influence. Man would grow in population and strength, and eventually Sauron would strike. Tolkien's Elrond would not have been as fatalistic as Jackson's Elrond about humanity's chances in a struggle against Sauron, but there was no reason for the Elves to fight and die for what would be, in all likelihood, a opeless cause. The Elves had an escape route, and it's one they took, until eventually they were isolated communities. They had no need of a High-King, when the individual communities were on their own.

Yes, this is a gross simplification, and the Elves weren't entirely uninvolved. They did drive Sauron from Dol Guldur at the time of The Hobbit. But they didn't do that for humanity's benefit; they did it because Dol Guldur's power threatened Lothlorien and Rivendell.

 

[Candlelight]

I am pretty sure the tour takes us there. We are hiring a car for three days at the end anyway. We plan to drive from Queenstown down to Invercargil and then back up to Christchurch through Dunedin.

I'll wave as you go passed.

 

[S. Gomez]

I finished The History of ‘The Hobbit’ last night. “Exhaustive” doesn’t even begin to cover it, I’d say! It was almost too much for one reading; I confess I skipped Tolkien’s notes on the times, itinerary, and phases of the moon during the Quest of Erebor. Revelations abounded, though, particularly regarding Tolkien’s attempt at rewriting The Hobbit to fit in not just more factually but stylistically with The Lord of The Rings (gasp!). I agree with Rateliff on this one: it’s just not as good.

One highly interesting aspect of the book was Rateliff’s challenge to the conventional wisdom that Tolkien never at all intended The Hobbit to tie into his mythology in the beginning. The manuscript does have a few more references to the ‘Silmarillion’ than the published book (like directly connecting the Necromancer to the tale of Beren and Tinuviel) and Rateliff does make some rather compelling arguments on other points. Although I can’t say I’m quite convinced, it is food for thought, and speaking as someone very familiar with the writing process I can easily imagine Tolkien at the very least thinking about bringing this story into the world he already created--probably because he discovered he really liked these hobbits he had come up with.

As you’ll be able to see, I’m already in the second stage of my journey… The Book Itself.

 

[Brendan Moody]

Yeah, after close to 1000 pages of exhaustive detail the notes on timelining schemes were too much for me as well.

I enjoyed the 1960 Hobbit rewrite for what it was. It could never and should never have replaced the original, and there were many other things Tolkien could have better spent his time on, but there's a part of me that would have enjoyed seeing him work out the rest of the story in more LotR-ish terms.

As I mentioned in another thread, I don't think much of Rateliff's presentation of the debate on whether The Hobbit was part of the legendarium from the beginning. It's a worthy topic for discussion, but Rateliff never seems to make much of a case apart from pointing out additional references in the draft text of The Hobbit. Which are interesting, but we already knew that The Hobbit contained references to the 'Silmarillion' material. That doesn't ipso facto mean that Tolkien originally planned The Hobbit as part of the 'Silmarillion' world, any more than references to Faerie in the West make Roverandom part of that world.

For me, it comes down to how implausible it seems that Tolkien wrote a comic children's story with a modern-sounding narrator as an extension of a fictional universe that, at the time, was comprised of epic poems, annals, and epitomizing histories in high narrative style. This is something I don't recall Rateliff dealing with. He does (on page 17) take a stab at explaining the real world geographical references in early drafts, but draws what strikes me as a false equivalence between the subtle allusions to the real world in the frame-story of The Book of Lost Tales and the blatant modern references in Hobbit drafts.

I can't recall at the moment whether Rateliff mentions a couple of Tolkien's letters that have bearing on this topic. One is his 14 December 1937 letter to G.E. Selby, in which he distinguishes the just-published Hobbit from "my own mythology (which is just touched on)... Elrond, Gondolin, and Esgaroth have escaped out of it." The other is a letter to Christopher Bretherton from July 1964, in which he recalls that "by the time The Hobbit appeared (1937) this 'matter of the Elder Days' was in coherent form. The Hobbit was not intended to have anything to do with it." He goes on to say that only during the writing of The Lord of the Rings did he consciously begin to connect the two fictional worlds. Christopher Tolkien gives fuller excerpts from both these letters at the end of his introduction to The Return of the Shadow, the sixth volume of The History of Middle-earth, in explaining why that series does not deal with the Hobbit drafts; the Bretherton letter is also no. 257 in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.

 

[S. Gomez]

I can't recall at the moment whether Rateliff mentions a couple of Tolkien's letters that have bearing on this topic. One is his 14 December 1937 letter to G.E. Selby, in which he distinguishes the just-published Hobbit from "my own mythology (which is just touched on)... Elrond, Gondolin, and Esgaroth have escaped out of it." The other is a letter to Christopher Bretherton from July 1964, in which he recalls that "by the time The Hobbit appeared (1937) this 'matter of the Elder Days' was in coherent form. The Hobbit was not intended to have anything to do with it." He goes on to say that only during the writing of The Lord of the Rings did he consciously begin to connect the two fictional worlds. Christopher Tolkien gives fuller excerpts from both these letters at the end of his introduction to The Return of the Shadow, the sixth volume of The History of Middle-earth, in explaining why that series does not deal with the Hobbit drafts; the Bretherton letter is also no. 257 in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.

He does give a letter Tolkien wrote in response to a letter printed in a paper called The Observer (it's Appendix II). A reader of the book wrote in asking about the origins of hobbits, and whether or not they had been taken from another story (a friend of the letter-writer recalled that there was). The relevant portion of the letter is also quoted elsewhere in Rateliff's book: "My tale is not consciously based on any other book--save one, and that is unpublished: the 'Silmarillion', a history of the Elves, to which frequent allusion is made." Exactly what Tolkien meant by this I can't claim to know. Like I said, I'm very much on the fence with this one, and complicating things is the fact that I've never read The History of Middle-earth series (yet!) so I don't think my comments would be of much worth in any debate.

 

[Brendan Moody]

Ah, right, the Observer letter. Looking back at an old entry in Rateliff's blog, I see that he holds this up as significant evidence for his position. My problem with that is that the relevant statement is in part a response to a question as to whether the cup theft is based on Beowulf. Tolkien says no, but suppose for a minute that he had said yes. If so, would we take that as a sign that Beowulf and The Hobbit are part of the same fictional universe? Probably not, and I think likewise that we shouldn't read this use of "based on" as Rateliff does. Tolkien seems to take it as meaning "inspired by," and indeed literary inspiration is the subject of much of Tolkien's letter and the earlier letter to which he replies.

It isn't an open-and-shut case either way, certainly- any letter reflects the beliefs of the moment, and Tolkien's position on the extent to which these works were related may have changed over time. It's a fascinating topic for discussion, anyway.

 

[S. Gomez]

It isn't an open-and-shut case either way, certainly- any letter reflects the beliefs of the moment, and Tolkien's position on the extent to which these works were related may have changed over time. It's a fascinating topic for discussion, anyway.

I'm certainly not going to disagree! By the way, could you give me a link to his blog? I tried the web address he gave in the introduction but it doesn't seem to be an actual website for him. There's quite an error in footnoting in the last appendix, and I want to see if he's provided an erratum.

 

[Brendan Moody]

There's a link to the blog right in that post, actually.

I don't think he's ever mentioned the footnote problem in Appendix IV directly, though I mentioned it in reply to a call for errata and he subsequently reported that all those errors had been sent to the publisher and would be corrected in future editions.

 

[S. Gomez]

^Goodness, I didn't even notice that. Sorry.

 

[Klaus]

Personally, as a reader and a writer, I find it entirely plausible that JRRT originally just threw in the references to Gondolin, et al, in The Hobbit as background color -- don't forget that it began as a story to be read to his children, who had heard bits of the early versions of the Elder Days' tales at his knee as well, thus giving it more meaning for them than for any other readers at the time -- and then decided over time and revisions to make the connection more solid.

 

[S. Gomez]

If you've never picked it up, let me recommend having The Lord of The Rings: A Reader's Companion by your side next time you read the book. It's basically The Annotated 'Lord of The Rings' with the notes in a seperate volume (can you imagine the size of the book if the story and the notes were together? Yikes.) I'm only about to start Chapter 4 of the book now, and I've already learned a ton that I didn't know before.

 

[Klaus]

ty, I will, haven't picked that one up... I'm reasoning from the biographies and what I recall from the History of Middle-Earth series. I'm the only person I know who has all 12 of those in hardcover lol, geek alert! ]

 

[S. Gomez]

^I want all those in hardcover! I'll have to settle for the paperbacks, though. I'm ordering the first three from Amazon very soon (here's hoping the covers actually match in real life, unlike the website).

 

[Klaus]

I bought them as they came out over the years...

 

[S. Gomez]

Yeah, I'm a little young to have been able to do that.

 

[Brendan Moody]

^Me too. I only have the last six in hardcover- the others are a mix of mass market paperback, book club hardcover, and trade paperback. Which offends my mild OCD, but not enough that I've gone looking for replacements yet.

I meant to read The Lord of the Rings alongside the reader's companion the last time I started, but I took enough time with LotR itself that the reader's companion had to go back to the library. (And I'm still working on LotR- taking an extended hiatus between FotR and TTT.) I'm planning to buy the reader's companion sometime, along with the J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide by the same authors, but it's definitely not a casual investment.

 

[S. Gomez]

^I think the Companion And Guide stretches a bit over the line I'm not prepared to cross in Tolkien studies. I don't need a chronology of everything that happened to him regarding The Lord of The Rings. The same authors also have a Descriptive Bibliography out, and I'm just like . Their J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist And Illustrator is fantastic, though, and there are some beautiful pieces that I would never have seen otherwise.

I think the volume of The History of Middle-earth that I'm looking forward to most is The Lays of Beleriand (which I'm fortunately getting in the first "batch"). Tolkien was a good poet, and the glimpses I've had of those two long poems promises that they'll live up to expectations, even in their unfinished state.

 

[Brendan Moody]

I'd love to have the descriptive bibliography, as it happens- I'm big on the details of minor textual changes between editions, and it looks this is the best single source of that kind of information.

The poems in The Lays of Beleriand are great. I've long felt that Tolkien's skills as a poet are overlooked. If there's a single incomplete work I wish he'd finished, it's the Lay of Leithian in its 1960s form.

 

[Klaus]

I've also had fun a couple of times with the somewhat-laborious project of reading Silmarillion and supplementing the appropriate parts with the chunks in Unfinished Tales. Kinda cool.

 

[S. Gomez]

^I had a thought along similar lines once. Never got a chance to do it, though (and I won't be doing it this time around).

I finished Book I last night. It's always felt like a completely different story to me (but then so much happens throughout The Lord of The Rings that each book feels like a completely different story), and it's entirely appropriate to the overall effect. And once again the Black Riders are frightening as anything I've ever read. I remember one time when I got to those chapters in my bedtime reading. I was scared to go to sleep!