The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum - View Single Post - Second Prophecy of Mandos and Dagor Dagorath

William Cloud Hicklin · 08-27-2007, 07:49 PM

This is a very vexed question. Christopher Tolkien's opinion in Morgoth's Ring was that his father discarded the Second Prophecy by about 1958. Others are not so sure about this. Personally I believe that the abandonment of the Second Prophecy (or its mutation into a prophecy of the War of Wrath) are part and parcel of the unachieved impulse to fit the mythos into 'our' scientific world, in which (for the Catholic Tolkien) the Last Battle will be Armageddon, not Dagor Dagorath. Since it was not possible to work this intended reshaping into the published Silmarillion, IMO the Second Prophecy should have been allowed to stand. But that's just me.

08-27-2007, 07:49 PM	#2
William Cloud Hicklin Loremaster of Annúminas Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 2,324	This is a very vexed question. Christopher Tolkien's opinion in Morgoth's Ring was that his father discarded the Second Prophecy by about 1958. Others are not so sure about this. Personally I believe that the abandonment of the Second Prophecy (or its mutation into a prophecy of the War of Wrath) are part and parcel of the unachieved impulse to fit the mythos into 'our' scientific world, in which (for the Catholic Tolkien) the Last Battle will be Armageddon, not Dagor Dagorath. Since it was not possible to work this intended reshaping into the published Silmarillion, IMO the Second Prophecy should have been allowed to stand. But that's just me. __________________ The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.