Quote:
Originally Posted by Galin
For the record I am not saying [in my last post] that there are no cases where we can say X is 'greatest' based on the text, but I was responding to two examples where there was, in my opinion, missing or comparative text [the Galadriel as Queen matter for example]
Can you explain what you mean here in more detail, maybe including examples to help mark the external time frame?
If I recall correctly, in general the old scenario [let's say with the start of the 'Silmarillion', after The Book of Lost Tales and the poetry of the 1920s] Elfwine was to be a studious scribe, trying not to alter the tales as he heard them from Elvish Eresseans. This is more 'direct' than the later scenario.
My example of Annals of Aman and my conjecturing about Rumil's only possible 'bias' actually reflects the later scenario, with the transmission through Numenor and the Mannish Kindoms down to Imladris, allowing for more 'mistakes' and purposed variations.
But in any case we are essentially dealing with draft texts here: what would Tolkien's Silmarillon contain versus his Annals? It seems as if the existing Annals of the 1950s had grown and morphed into another Silmarillion, and thus could be 'absorbed' into the Silmarillion, with The Tale of Years taking over for the Annals [thus Christopher Tolkien took plenty of passages from the Annals, Aman and Grey, for the constructed Silmarillion].
What was to be 'intentional' inconsistency, when there is plenty of 'natural inconsistency' in the external evolution of a complex tale, is very hard to say.
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In one of his earlier letters he mentions the problem with 'translations'. As studious as Elfwine was there was bound to be mistakes.
The change to the myths being Mannish seemed to come from Tolkien's desire to put the myths even more in align with Catholic theology.
An example of this is in the 50's he gets a letter about whether the orcs being irredeemable is heretical. At the time he dismisses the concern and says it is of little importance to his story. Yes later on he definitely changes his mind on the importance of orcs being redeemable. He writes philosophical reasons on what the orcs are and whether they can be redeemed. In the end settling on the notion that the it's possible that Eru could redeem them.
The use of the stories having a Mannish origin is more to clear up things he could not quite translate. The lates 50s when he started making significant edits and the revisions to Quenta Silmarillion is when I noticed a change.
With his desire to write a more 'accurate' cosmology of Arda, seems to have come with it a desire to write a more 'accurate' history. Once you begin to translate the truth about the Two Trees it is inevitable, that you will begin to write about the 'truth' of Feanor.
The use of the Mannish myths seems to be a way of keeping the older stories, which in my opinion were more beautiful.
The essays he writes such as Glorfindel, where he reasons and comes to a conclusion about who Glorfindel was and why he was sent back; look to me like someone trying to find the 'true story.'