Lays
 

<font face="Verdana"><table><TR><TD><FONT SIZE="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Haunting Spirit
Posts: 73</TD><TD></TD></TR></TABLE>
How are the lays from LoB going to be incorporated into this project, if at all?

I think it would be great if important dialogue or profound declarations could be used in the poetic form. I have in mind particularly the colloquy between Beren and Thingol from The Lay of Leithian. It gives me those pleasant Tolkien tingles.

Feanor's oath in the abandoned Flight of the Noldoli would be nice, but I doubt the principles of the project or the laws of the poetic style it is written in would allow the modification it would require.

Obviously any contradictions with later material should be considered, and it might just feel wrong to have a small section of poetry in a predominantly prose story.

Anyway, I was just curious.

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<font face="Verdana"><table><TR><TD><FONT SIZE="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Moderator
Posts: 64</TD><TD></TD></TR></TABLE>
Re: Lays

Good question. I agree that it would be nice to use the lays -I'm quite fond of them. I think in places where the lays give more information than the prose versions (e.g. Thingol and Beren), they should definitely be used. As for the insertion of poetry into prose: there are two cases we'll be dealing with.

First is the insertion of a decent chunk of poetry, in which case I think there's nothing wrong with the sudden change. This is not so much a literary project as a canonical one - if the best source for the canon on a certain section is poetry, I don't think we need worry about inserting it. I can't off the top of my head think of a place where we'd want to insert a really long section of poetry, but I don't think there's anything wrong with it in principle.

Second is the insertion of just a little bit of detail from the poems. In some cases this will be just a word or two of description, which presents no problem. In other cases we'll have dialogue to deal with. This does present a problem: the dialogue in the poems is assumed to be somewhat stylized; we don't expect that Beren and Thingol really conversed in rhymed octosyllabic couplets. It would serve no purpose to retain the exact form of the dialogue when made into prose, as the dialogue from the poem cannot be considered 'true' or 'canon' to begin with. The question of what to do with it falls under the category of stylistic changes, a topic so far not definitively addressed - but I'd say some editorialization would probably be acceptable here.

For Feanor's oath I think it would be better to go with the Annals of Aman, which also give an exact form. But I think that the Lays will prove useful for Beren and Luthien.

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<font face="Verdana"><table><TR><TD><FONT SIZE="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Seeker of the Straight Path
Posts: 699</TD><TD></TD></TR></TABLE>
Re: Lays

In the 77 Sil. CRRT uses a few lines from the lays during the scene of Finrod's confrontation w/ Sauron. We read it for years not realizing it was an editorial gloss. It works quite well and providesone possible model for incorporating material from the lays.

The prerequisites for using the lay material would I think be similar to the gen'priciples for editing the Silmarillion' that is eceryone will have a slightly differet take on it! But in general I think aesthics wil have to play a larger role.
I agree w/ aiwendil in the insertion of small points of detail presenting little problem.

For larger sections [at least 2 lines?] inserting them into the text in italics and offset as per the finrod duel, is quite pleasing and I think rather common practice. At least in biblical texts.


lindil

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