[William Cloud Hicklin]

The newspaper-wrapper ca. 1965 raises a very interesting issue of analysis. It's certainly more than speculation or guesswork to identify each version of the Atlantis-myth with the three 'traditions'- The Drowning of Anadune with its Adunaic nomenclature and Numenocentric POV is unquestionably the 'Mannish' tradition; and the Akallabeth, elsewhere ascribed to Elendil himself, is literally a 'blended' tradition, its text representing a shuffling together of DA and the Fall of Numenor, with additional material- CRT illustrates this orthographically in HME IX p. 295f. Significantly, this Elendil-version amends DA material to bring it back to the Flat-world perspective, which is understandable since Tolkien's early Round-world experiments ca. 1946-48 had been rejected by 1951 and the explicitly Flat-world Annals of Aman.

But what was Tolkien thinking in the mid-1960's? I think it inescapable that the Elvish tradition, presumptively correct, is Flat-world, as is the Dunedainic tradition made under the influence of Lindon and Rivendell, whereas the one Round-world version must be taken as garbled (and indeed the earlier versions of DA are deliberately 'confused'). There follows a very strong deduction or supposition that by the mid-1960's Toklien had evolved a very sophisticated 'theory of the tale': the Flat world was correct, and the Breaking really did happen; but Men outside Eldarin tutelage were so small-minded/unimaginative/divorced from the Valar that they refused to believe that such naked Divine intervention had really occurred (after all it violates 'scientific' thinking).




I should emphasise that flat-world/round-world is not inextricably tied to the other part of the astronomical myth, the Sun and Moon. There is little doubt at all that JRRT had decided conclusively to abandon the flower and fruit story and that the Heavenly Lights had existed ab initio- indeed in the Hobbit 3rd Ed (1966) he emended text in just such a way.