Quote:
Originally Posted by mhagain
( . . . ) And these were never rewritten.
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I argue that Tolkien eventually realized that they didn't have to be, although interestingly, if I recall correctly, he did add a reference to the Dome of Varda to LQ2 -- but again, there's no explicit-ness there (on purpose I would say).
The reference is there to be picked up on, but it doesn't have to hit the reader over the head. I read the "Death of Ambarussa" text (as no one calls it), as a Western Elvish tradition of a pre-existing sun . . .
. . . and I see no reason why it can't stand in the fuller Legendarium alongside the
Quenta Silmarillion tradition with its time without a sun, and see no reason why it can't stand alongside the reference to the "Sunless Year"
in The Lord of the Rings, or alongside Appendix F (Trolls):
"Unlike the older race of the Twilight they could endure the Sun . . ."
Okay, so what exactly is the Twilight here, when
not informed by the tradition of The Silmarillion?
Also in my opinion, the "natural default interpretation" of the world and its sun -- when considering everything Tolkien himself published -- is that the world was always round, and the Sun pre-existing -- and all I mean by that is that it's just a natural thing for modern readers to think* without anything
explicit to necessarily think otherwise.
Or if I'm wrong, I'll speak for myself at least: I don't think I ever imagined Tolkien's world as "once flat" or "once sunless" until the constructed Silmarillion was published.
Or maybe I'm just too thick headed
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*I note
A Guide To Middle-Earth by Robert Foster, the edition published
before the constructed Silmarillion was published:
Twilight:
"Figurative name for the Undying Lands, derived from their darkened state after the Rebellions of Morgoth and the Noldor.
Twilight:
"A period early in the First Age of Middle-earth, perhaps the domination of Morgoth."
But in Foster's revised, post-Silmarillion Guide, the two entries for Twilight are quite different of course!