"Rings of Power" trailer analysis

[Galin]

Originally Posted by mhagain

( . . . ) And these were never rewritten.

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


_______

*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!