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mindil · 07-12-2020, 01:32 PM

I've been reading HOME pretty thoroughly and I was hoping to learn how Tolkien devised Arwen. She was not part of the story until Book 5, as far as I can tell, after Elladan and Elrohir were invented, when they belatedly were acknowledged to have come with the northern Dunadain to Rohan. At first, their nameless sister had sent the standard, and then she slowly gained significance (first as Finduilas, a sort of Jane-Doe stand-in name for Elven women).

By mid book 6, it is clear that Elrond's daughter is going to be Aragorn's queen, and Tolkien must have gone back and retrofitted her into a few spots in earlier chapters. But C. R. Tolkien doesn't discuss this retrofitting at all; he minimally mentions it. True enough, he apologizes in HoME XII that he shortchanged the final changes to the earlier chapters; he should have continued HoME IX with lots of those details, but instead he just rushed into a wrap of the History of LoTR (he doesn't say why) and moved on to the Notion Club Papers. And so I hoped he'd make amends in the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen - but no. It's even more minimalist than the earlier material.

CRT's approach is so heavily linguistic it sometimes boggles the mind. Changes of one letter in a name get strict attention, but changes in characters can get none at all. Is there anything about JRRT's *feelings* about Arwen's invention anywhere in the large corpus of Tolkien studies? Anything about his thoughts about her needing to be in the story, about A&A's relationship?

And apropos relationships, is there any record of JRRT's evolving feelings about Aragorn and Eowyn's relationship? CRT is as cursory about that as about A&A. JRRT put very nice work into describing A&E's feelings - he must have had some feelings about their relationship himself. Are they recorded or speculated about anywhere? -- Note: I'm not interested in speculations about what A&E were feeling in the story, but rather facts and guesses about what JRRT himself was feeling about his story when he wrote about them.

Any leads? Any clues?

07-12-2020, 01:32 PM	#1
mindil Animated Skeleton Join Date: Mar 2017 Posts: 47	Details in HOME about inventing Arwen? I've been reading HOME pretty thoroughly and I was hoping to learn how Tolkien devised Arwen. She was not part of the story until Book 5, as far as I can tell, after Elladan and Elrohir were invented, when they belatedly were acknowledged to have come with the northern Dunadain to Rohan. At first, their nameless sister had sent the standard, and then she slowly gained significance (first as Finduilas, a sort of Jane-Doe stand-in name for Elven women). By mid book 6, it is clear that Elrond's daughter is going to be Aragorn's queen, and Tolkien must have gone back and retrofitted her into a few spots in earlier chapters. But C. R. Tolkien doesn't discuss this retrofitting at all; he minimally mentions it. True enough, he apologizes in HoME XII that he shortchanged the final changes to the earlier chapters; he should have continued HoME IX with lots of those details, but instead he just rushed into a wrap of the History of LoTR (he doesn't say why) and moved on to the Notion Club Papers. And so I hoped he'd make amends in the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen - but no. It's even more minimalist than the earlier material. CRT's approach is so heavily linguistic it sometimes boggles the mind. Changes of one letter in a name get strict attention, but changes in characters can get none at all. Is there anything about JRRT's feelings about Arwen's invention anywhere in the large corpus of Tolkien studies? Anything about his thoughts about her needing to be in the story, about A&A's relationship? And apropos relationships, is there any record of JRRT's evolving feelings about Aragorn and Eowyn's relationship? CRT is as cursory about that as about A&A. JRRT put very nice work into describing A&E's feelings - he must have had some feelings about their relationship himself. Are they recorded or speculated about anywhere? -- Note: I'm not interested in speculations about what A&E were feeling in the story, but rather facts and guesses about what JRRT himself was feeling about his story when he wrote about them. Any leads? Any clues?