The Silmarillion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Silmarillion |
|---|
| Ainulindalë |
| Valaquenta |
| Quenta Silmarillion |
| Akallabêth |
| Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age |
 Cover design for the 2nd illustrated edition of The Silmarillion, as illustrated by Ted Nasmith. |
|
| Author | J. R. R. Tolkien |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy fiction |
| Publisher | Allen & Unwin |
| Released | 1977 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 221 pp |
The Silmarillion is a collection of J. R. R. Tolkien's works, edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien, with assistance from Guy Gavriel Kay, who would later become a noted fantasy fiction writer. It tells of the ages prior to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Contents |
[edit] Overview
The Silmarillion comprises five parts:
- Ainulindalë ("The Music of the Ainur") – the creation of Eä, the world
- Valaquenta ("Account of the Valar") – a description of the Valar and Maiar, the supernatural powers in Eä
- Quenta Silmarillion ("The History of the Silmarils") - the history of the events before and during the First Age, which forms the bulk of the collection
- Akallabêth ("The Downfall of Númenor") – the history of the Downfall of Númenor and its people, which takes place in the Second Age
- Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age – a brief account of the circumstances which led to and were presented in The Lord of the Rings
This five-part work is also informally associated by some readers with Bilbo's three-volume Translations from the Elvish, mentioned in The Lord of the Rings.
These five parts were initially separate works, but it was the elder Tolkien's express wish that they be published together. Because J. R. R. Tolkien died before he could fully rewrite the various legends, Christopher scavenged material from his father's older writings to fill out the book. In a few cases, he devised completely new material.
The Silmarillion, along with other collections of Tolkien's works, such as Unfinished Tales, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and The Road Goes Ever On, form a comprehensive, yet incomplete narrative that describes the universe of Middle-earth within which The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place. The History of Middle-earth is a twelve-volume examination of the processes which led to the publication of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion through looking into J. R. R. Tolkien's initial rough drafts and through commentary by Christopher Tolkien.
The Silmarillion is a complex work that explores a wide array of themes inspired by many ancient, medieval, and modern sources, including the Finnish Kalevala, Hebrew Bible, Norse sagas, Greek mythology, Celtic mythology, and World War I. For instance, the meaning of the name of the supreme being, Eru Ilúvatar (Father of All) is borrowed from Norse mythology. The archaic style and gravitas of the Ainulindalë resembles that of the Old Testament. The island civilization of Númenor is reminiscent of Atlantis—one of the names Tolkien gave that land was Atalantë, although he gave it an Elvish etymology. Among the notable chapters in the book are:
- "The Music of the Ainur"
- "Of Beren and Lúthien"
- "Túrin Turambar" (closely associated with "Narn i Hîn Húrin: The Tale of the Children of Húrin" in Unfinished Tales)
- "Of Tuor and The Fall of Gondolin"
- "Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath"
[edit] Synopsis
The book begins with the Ainulindalë, which describes the making of the world by Eru creating the world by singing with the Valar and Maiar. However, Melkor corrupts the song out of his prideful self-assertion. Afterwards, a vision of the world is described, along with the Valar's reaction. However, this shortly disappears, and the Valar have to create the world themselves. This is made more difficult by Melkor destroying all the work the Valar do, or corrupting it to be evil. The next book, the Valaquenta simply describes the Valar and Maiar, both good and bad, so that the reader has an idea of what they're like. Next is the main part of the Silmarillion - the Quenta Silmarillion, which describes the deeds of the elves as they seek to regain the Silmarils they lost.
[edit] Development of the text
The earliest drafts of The Silmarillion stories date back to as early as 1925, when Tolkien wrote a 'Sketch of the Mythology'. However, the concepts for characters, themes, and specific stories were developed starting in 1917 when Tolkien, then a British officer returned from France during World War I, was laid up in a military hospital and at home with trench fever. At the time, he called his collection of nascent stories The Book of Lost Tales (which became the name for the first two volumes of The History of Middle-earth). These stories were to comprise an English mythology, intended to explain the origins of English history and culture.
Many years after the war, encouraged by the success of The Hobbit, Tolkien submitted an incomplete but more fully developed version of The Silmarillion to his publisher, George Allen & Unwin, but they rejected the work as being obscure and "too Celtic". The publisher instead asked Tolkien to write a sequel to The Hobbit, which became his significant novel The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien never abandoned The Silmarillion, however. In fact, he regarded it as the most important of his works (according to the preface to The Silmarillion), seeing in its tales the genesis of Middle-earth and later events as told in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He renewed work on The Silmarillion after completing The Lord of the Rings, and he greatly desired to publish the two works together. But when it became clear that would not be possible, Tolkien turned his full attention back to preparing The Lord of the Rings for publication.
In the late 1950s he again began work on The Silmarillion, but much of his writing from this time was more concerned with the theological and philosophical underpinnings of the work than with narratives themselves. During this time he wrote extensively on such topics as the nature of evil in Arda, the origin of Orcs, the customs of the Elves, the nature and means of Elvish rebirth, and the "flat" world and the story of the Sun and Moon. By this time, serious doubt had entered about some of the fundamental aspects of the work that went back to the earliest versions of the stories, and it seems that Tolkien felt the need to solve these problems before he could produce the "final" version of The Silmarillion. In any event, with one or two exceptions, he never did much work on the narratives in the remaining years of his life.
[edit] After Tolkien's death
For several years after his father's death, Christopher Tolkien compiled a Silmarillion narrative. Christopher's intentions seem to have been mostly to use the latest writings of his father's that he could, and to keep as much internal consistency (and consistency with The Lord of the Rings) as possible. As explained in The History of Middle-earth, Christopher drew upon numerous sources for his narrative, relying on post-Lord of the Rings works where possible, but ultimately reaching back as far as the 1917 Book of Lost Tales to fill in portions of the narrative which his father had planned to write but never addressed. In one later chapter of the "Quenta Silmarillion" which had not been touched since the early 1930s he had to construct a narrative practically from scratch. The final result, which included genealogies, maps, an index, and the first-ever released Elvish word list, was published in 1977.
Due to Christopher's extensive explanations (in The History of Middle-earth) of how he compiled the published work, much of The Silmarillion has been debated by readers. Christopher's task is generally accepted as very difficult given the state of his father's texts at the time of his death: some critical texts were no longer in the Tolkien family's possession, and Christopher's task compelled him to rush through much of the material. Christopher reveals in later volumes of The History of Middle-earth many divergent ideas which do not agree with the published version. Christopher Tolkien has suggested that, had he taken more time and had access to all the texts, he might have produced a substantially different work. But he was compelled by considerable pressure and demand from his father's readers and publishers to produce something publishable as quickly as possible. Some contend that parts of the Silmarillion are more a product of the son than of the father, and as such its place in the Middle-earth canon is hotly debated.
In October 1996, Christopher Tolkien commissioned illustrator Ted Nasmith to create full-page full-colour artwork for the first illustrated edition of The Silmarillion. It was published in 1998, and followed in 2004 by a second edition (ISBN 0-618-39111-8) featuring corrections and additional artwork by Nasmith.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Christopher Tolkien published most of his father's Middle-earth-related writings as the 12-volume History of Middle-earth series.
In addition to the source material and earlier drafts of several portions of The Lord of the Rings, these books greatly expand on the original material published in The Silmarillion, and in many cases diverge from it. There is much that Tolkien intended to revise but only sketched out in notes, and some new texts surfaced after the publication of The Silmarillion. These books also make it clear just how unfinished the later parts of the Silmarillion really were: some parts were never rewritten after the primitive Lost Tales.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Chronology of The Silmarillion
- "The World of Tolkien" by John Gardner; a book review of The Silmarillion, published in The New York Times (October 23, 1977)
| J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium | |
|---|---|
| Published during his lifetime: | The Hobbit • The Lord of the Rings • The Adventures of Tom Bombadil • The Road Goes Ever On |
| Posthumous publications: | The Silmarillion • Unfinished Tales • The History of Middle-earth (12 volumes) • Bilbo's Last Song • The Children of Húrin • The History of The Hobbit |
| Lists of articles: | By category • By name • Writings • Characters • Peoples • Rivers • Realms • Ages |
