Quote:
Originally Posted by Findegil
See my posting from 07-25-2018: Our working assuomptiun was that Borlas is 148 years old when he speaks to Saelon in FA 138. Thus our interpretation of the text was an intro that links it back to LotR many years before the 'real action' would start. Some what like The Long expected Party in LotR, but with a much longer time gap to come.
About the 2,700 year Fourth Age: we actually used the qoute you provided from TY 4 in the chapter The End of the Third Age. But clearly the project will not give the assumption that these means the Fourth Age was 2,700 years long. At least not here. And I think even in the proposed 'Tale of the Years'-like part, one of the biggest issues will be such caclulations based un assumptions. In this special case you assume a generation would in average last 25 years. But we know that Tolkien was more familiar with the tarditional 30 years per generation, and that at least the first view generations would be longlasting Númenoreans. With such uncertainties fixing any date would mean to create a fact in Middle-earth. And that is exactly the one thing this project tries to avoid.
Respectfully
Findegil
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1) As to Borlas: even 'only' 148 years is still too much (since not even the Stewards, who were also descendants of Anarion, lived to such an age since the days of Hador, the 7th ruling Steward - who was also the last Gondorian to live to the age of 150, until Aragorn and his descendants).
Not only that, but do we actually have any strong evidence that your idea of a 'prologue Borlas' was ever Tolkien's intention?
IMO, the most probable interpretation of the 1972 letter was Tolkien misremembering what he wrote more than 15 years prior to his writing the letter, and conflated 'c. 100 years after the fall of Barad-dur' with 'c. 100 years after Aragorn's death'.
However, IF we're going to keep the far later date of FoA 220 (as per the above letter), the most logical and painless choice would be to simply change 'Borlas, son of Beregond' to 'Borlas, a descendant of Beregond' - and remove any reference to Borlas being alive during the end of the Third Age, as stated in my previous reply.
2) As to the 'c. 2,700 long Fourth Age': I agree - it's too speculative, especially since we already have the 'hundred generations of Men after Eldarion' included in the 'End of the Third Age' text. No need to make explicit what can (and should) be up to the reader's interpretation.
I would like to point out one thing, though - the '30 years per generation' doesn't work, since that would make the Fourth Age last c. 3,200 years (i.e. it would be longer than the Third Age); and since Tolkien decided that each successive Age should be shorter (as was already evident before: First Age lasted c. 4,900 years, the Second lasted 3,441 years, and the Third lasted 3,021 years), I still think the c. 2,700 years is the most likely duration.
But that's neither here nor there, and should belong to some other forum discussions.