Hello, everyone. I'm Grace Curry. And welcome to this lecture.
What is the Silmarillion? An introduction to Tokens mythology.
The Silmarillion Tokens, oldest and favourite, major work.
But she attempted to publish in some form or other first with The Hobbit in 1937.
And again, at the time of publishing The Lord of the Rings in the early 1950s, was a prequel to these works.
Although the Silmarillion lacks Hobbit's, it features heroic, fierce and at times treacherous elves and human heroes all caught in the web of deceit,
distrust and war stirred by a dark lord, even more powerful than Sarum.
Unlike his more famous books, Tolkan Silmarillion, as described by Barrowland Pfleger in her book Interrupted Music.
Symphonic in scope, a huge yet UN concluded chronicle of history and epic romance.
In this lecture, we are going to briefly look at tokens early life before discussing the mythology itself and its origins in the First World War.
It will then look at the identity of the Silmarillion in italics versus the Silmarillion in quotation marks,
the first referring to the 1977 publication.
And the other referencing the wider textual corpus of alternate draughts and related materials composed between 1914,
all the way up to Tolkien's death in nineteen seventy three.
The lecture will also cover the chronology of the various poetic and prose manuscripts that relate to the Silmarillion mythology.
As well as the publication dates of those materials and the history of Middle Earth series.
We'll also look at the editorial challenges that Tolkan son and editor Christopher was dealing with.
And how he managed to reproduce his father's manuscripts in a form that was not only coherent but scholarly.
First, a bit on Tolkan himself. John Ronald Rule Tolkan was born January 3rd, 1892 in Boone, Fontane, South Africa.
Then the Orange Free State. His father, Arthur Tolkan, was a bank clerk and died of rheumatic fever when John Ronald was only four.
His mother, Mabel, talkin nay, Suffield move.
John Ronald and his brother Hillary to England when John was two but died from complications from diabetes when John was twelve.
Tokens early education at King Edward School in Birmingham fuelled both strong friendships and stirred intellectual curiosity.
The transient joy of the encouragement and inspiration of three close school friends who adopt themselves.
The Tea Club and Bhairavi in Society or Tea CBS.
Ended in tragedy when two of the three died in the First World War.
Profound grief and an imagination fuelled by the myths and legends of the North.
Old Norse, old English, Finnish.
Led to the beginning of Tulka, this legend Darrian, which he initially composed in various military hospitals while recovering from trench fever,
contracted while serving as a signalling officer on the sun.
This early mythology, the precursor to his more famous works, The Hobbit, 1937, and The Lord of the Rings.
Nineteen fifty four to fifty five. Always remained the most important to token of all his literary creations.
It was a lifelong and ultimately unfinished labour.
In nineteen fifty five,
let her talk him looks back on his early desire to produce a body of more or less connected legend ranging from the Large and Kosma Organic.
To the level of romantic fairy story, the larger, founded on the lesser.
The lesser drawing splendour from the vast backlots, which I could dedicate simply to England, to my country.
These sentiments mirror a passage from Enforcers 1910 novel Howards End.
Why is not England a great mythology? Our folklore has never advanced beyond daintiness.
England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature for the great poet who shall voice her.
Looking back to the 1910s there, Lynn Pfleger observes that the imminence of war with its implied destruction of existing
culture fuelled if it did not create tokens desire to give his country and mythology.
Gergi Lee Naggie notes, the tokens tax and the background mythological system.
They succeed in creating are essentially similar to real world mythological corpora.
And the way they invoke their mythological system. Because of the basically similar relation of text to meth.
Tolkien's myth, like so many others, begins with a cousin Marghani.
In the new Lindh delay, the supreme being and primary creator ERU or L'Ouverture.
Composes music and directs the eye nor quasar angelic beings under Arrow to sing the world of Arda into existence.
The creation airy music is divided into three themes.
The last of which relates to the making of the children of Aluva tar.
Ls the first born and then. The first conflict of any kind comes in the clash of the opposing themes of the iron ore.
The first and main theme is song to bring the universe and world of Arda into existence.
Then the voices of the Einer like onto harps and loots and pipes and trumpets and vials and organs and
like onto countless choirs singing with words begin to fashion the theme of Aluva thaat to a great music.
And a sound a rose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the
depths and into the heights and the places of the dwelling of aloof guitar were filled to overflowing.
And the music and the echo of the music went out into the void.
And it was not void. Milker, the most powerful of the iron ore rebels against Aluva Tar and the others by propounding his own dark,
discordant musical theme, one that weaves discontent, war and violence into the nobler themes of the others.
Clashing musics of the iron ore loyal to error and those who attune their song
to milkers leads to the mixture of beauty and wonder on the one hand and woe,
strife and terror on the other. That play out in Arda.
I am providing here two different versions of the music of Milker.
The first is derived from the late text, but the second taken from the earliest draught is more detailed as to the nature of this theme.
In the 1977 Silmarillion Milkers, music is characterised as loud and vain and endlessly repeated.
It had little harmony,
but rather a clamorous unison as many trumpets sprang upon a few notes and did a seed to drown the other music by the violence of its voice.
The earliest description of milkers theme was very topical, given that the earliest draught,
because Marghani was composed in the immediate aftermath of the First World War.
It explains how through him, meaning milker has pain and misery been made in the clashing of overwhelming musics and with confusion of sound,
of cruelty and ravening and darkness.
Lonely Meyer and all you Trest sense of thought or thing, fowl, mists and violent flame, cold without mercy, been born and death without hope.
In his essay, You Lose Music. The Creation of Tokens Creation Myth.
John Ghaffar states this text to the war years around 1917 and observes an air of some battlefields in the descriptions of milkers theme.
To elaborate on his observation, I've underlined several instances in this passage that evoke specific attributes of World War One battlefields.
Lonely Meyer and putrid Essence recalls the mud and decay of soldiers and animals on the Western Front.
Foul mists could be an oblique reference to poison gas.
Violent flame evokes the effects of flame throwers and exploding ordinance.
The last description referring to Death Without Hope,
is especially poignant as part of a work composed months after the deaths of two close friends on some.
Robert Gillson and Jeffrey Basch Smith, former members of the team CBS from King Edward School,
who represented the earliest audience for Tolkien's mythological verse, were the Proteau Silmarillion lyrics of 1914 through 1916.
After initial struggles in the fledgling world between the violent power hungry milker and the other Valois and the establishment of a divine island,
Homeland and Valan are the first born of the children of Aluva TAR.
The elves also called gnomes and fairies in earlier versions.
Awake on the shores of Middle Earth. Many follow the valour to Vallina and become the greatest, wisest and most powerful of the elves,
while others remain in middle earth called the great lands and early draughts.
Later, the race of men awakens and fight alongside the elves in the later wars.
The Silmarillion is essentially a history of the elfs, although it features several prominent mortal heroes as well.
Tokens elves are not the miniature htwe inhabitants of the fairy in worlds of Shakespeare and a Victorian and Edwardian children's literature.
But more to the magisterial, to Atha down in the Irish myth and the light elves of the Old Norse, Ed does.
The Silmarillion elves are human in height and are stronger and more beautiful than mortal's.
In the 1977 Silmarillion, they are divided into three main peoples.
The nolder, the most skilled and learnt of the Alps. The van, you're the fairest and wisest and the two, Larry, who are seafarer's and shipbuilders.
Much like the historical period in which Tolkan lived with its two major world wars in the first half of the 20th century.
Middle Earth also has two major cycles of conflict in its history.
The war of the jewels in the first stage. The subject of the Silmarillion.
And the war of the ring in the third age, the subject of the Lord of the Rings.
The origin of the first war came when the most skilled and learnt amongst the nolder or deep elves, the Smith,
Fay and Haw, crafted three gems that contained the light of the two magical trees that lit Vallina.
Milkers theft of these jewels and murder of Fay Indorse father drives Fay and or into a mad rage and a disastrous old.
Fan or Suares to pursue with vengeance and hatred to the ends of the world.
Valla Demon elf or man as yet unborn or any creature, great or small, good or evil,
that time should bring forth unto the end of days who so should hold or take or keep a soul merill from their possession.
Or is joined in this oath by his seven sons. And afterwards leads along with his valiant half brother, Finn Gulf,
and a large contingent of the nolder to make an incursion against Milker and his forces in Middle Earth.
So begins the centuries long conflict between the most powerful elves and their kingdoms and milkers armies of orcs,
dragons and battle rocks, the ladder creatures that have much in common with the fire giants of Norse mythology.
In the midst of this war cycle and the related history are the three great tales centring on moral heroes.
The love story of the mortal baron who falls in love with the half elf, half Maya, Princess Ruthian.
The tragedy of the troubled antihero Turin Turin Embar,
who kills the mightiest of milkers dragons in the manner of Sickert the full song from EdTech Legend.
And finally, the account of Toure,
whose fate becomes entwined with the doom of Gandal and the most powerful of the three major Elvan kingdoms of Middle Earth.
And the Kamelot equivalent of Thomkins mythology. So from a textual stand.
Over the years, the Silmarillion has been regarded with some wariness was it a true authorial creation or an editorial composition?
It did not reflect the intent of the original author. The early concerns immediately after publication continued to be echoed many decades later.
More recent assessments of the Silmarillion have characterised it as a collaborative effort between Tolkan and his third son.
And as a mediated text.
Douglas Kane in his monograph, Arda Reconstructed, which is dedicated to the detective work of how the 1977 Silmarillion was assembled.
Observes that the work pushes the limits of editorial intervention.
And amongst other things, Cain complains about reductions made from the source draughts.
Anxieties over the extent of Christopher Tomkins editorial intervention stirred critical debates over the candidacy of the 1977 publication.
Fairline Pfleger feels that the 1977 text gives a misleading impression of coherence and finality, as if it were a definitive canonical text,
whereas the mass of material from which that volume was taken is a jumble of overlapping and often competing stories.
Annells and Lexicons. Despite such assertions, Allan Turner observes that the book stands as the canonical work.
The standard against which all variations are measured. By virtue of its status as the first and most unified form of the mythology.
Niels EVAR Agwai goes as far as to say that for most readers,
the 1977 Silmarillion is the standard authoritative source of information about the older days.
For a number of scholars, the shadow of the editor loomed large over this long awaited,
yet controversial product, which was only a small piece of Tolkien's life work on the project.
In the introduction to the Book of Lost Tales, an earlier version of the mythology Christopher Tolkan regretted,
as he put it, leaving no suggestion of what it the 1977 Silmarillion is.
And how within the imagined world it came to be.
Christopher Tolkan responded directly to such concerns by publishing a few of the earlier draughts of
individual stories in The Unfinished Tales published in 1980 and shown here in the bottom right hand corner.
Rest appeared in the 12 volume history of Middle Earth series.
Over half of which was dedicated to Silmarillion material.
David Bratman explains in his overview of the collection how the history in the title,
The History of Middle Earth refers to both the internal history of the secondary world, of the legendary and the external history of the author.
Writing about it. It provides the reader with options to use the draughts either as a resource and encyclopaedia.
Or as a narrative. The title Silmarillion in quotation marks is the scholarly designation for the textual
variance preserved in these volumes which trace the development of an unfinished opus.
The Silmarillion corpus was composed and first intense and then sporadic fits over the course of 60 years.
Tolkan began writing in earnest during the winter of 1916 and 17,
although a collection of lyrics featuring figures or places from the mythology were composed as early as 1914.
And some of these are preserved in the Book of Lost Tales. Elizabeth Weddington in her book The Evolution of Tolkien's Mythology,
identifies six stages of composition for the developing corpus and the substrata of this complex
textual tradition are preserved in the posthumously published volumes edited from often paleo,
graphically difficult manuscripts. In his forward to the 1977 Silmarillion,
Christopher explains how the same legends came to be retold in longer and shorter forms and in different styles.
My father came to conceive of the Silmarillion as a compilation compendious narrative made long afterwards
from sources of great diversity poems and ADLs and oral tales that had survived an age long tradition.
Christopher also describes this corpus as a vast repository and labyrinth of story poetry,
a philosophy and a philology with everything from forays into heroic verse in the ancient English alliterative metre.
Exercises in severe historical analysis of his own extremely difficult languages.
Volumes one through five and nine through 12.
Of the history of Middle Earth consist of verse and prose, redactions in various states of completion of tokens,
mythology spanning the 1910s and twenties and thirties, and later the 1950s and 1960s.
Volume six through nine are predominantly concerned with alternate draughts of the Lord of the Rings,
with the exception of one Silmarillion related text. The Notion Club papers, which appears in Volume nine.
The unfinished tales of numinous and middle earth already briefly mentioned, well,
not part of the 12 volume series serves the same function as the Silmarillion focussed volumes of the history of Middle Earth.
Two techs relate directly to the Silmarillion, the tale of the Children of Heren, which is the longest prose account of the story of Turin.
Also of tour and his coming to Gandal in a fragmentary later version of the Tale of the Fall of Goblin.
The unfinished tales also feature stories from the second and third ages covering materials pertaining to the Silmarillion and the Lord of the Rings.
The introduction to the volume presents Christopher's earliest responses to critiques on his editorial practise.
He explains how he produced the 1977 publication in order to be of the same order as the writings published by my father himself.
A completed and cohesive entity rather than a complex of divergent texts interlinked by commentary.
This last description characterises the nature of the then forthcoming publications.
The Book of Lost Tales Volumes one and two, composed between 1916 and 1920,
is a collection of prose tales that represents a considerable but not yet complete account of the first stage legend, Darrian.
Tokens tales are organised within a semi historic sized frame narrative in which the mortal wander Ariel,
or one who dreams alone, also called Engle a name which, according to Tokens early notes, relates to the room and gown.
In southern Denmark. Finds a hidden civilisation of ancient fairies or elves.
The island of Tall Dressier, originally conceived as ancient England.
In a later reconceived frame, narrative aerialists transformed into the Anglo-Saxon traveller ALF winner, whose name is old English for L friend.
The inhabitants of a grand magical cottage on tolerances to recount stories of their glorious past before mortals dominated the world.
This collection was never finished.
Trailing off with a variety of fragmentary tales, some of which appear in the next volume, along with outlines and notes.
These two volumes represent what Elizabeth Wittington identifies as tokens, first of six stages of Silmarillion composition.
The serialised format and framing story of the Book of Lost Tales recalls the format of such classics as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,
Catch Yeo's to Cameron and More Contemporary for Tolkan, William Morris's 1868 Romance Earthly Paradise,
a collection of tales told by a group of travellers gathered on an island.
The work was given as a gift by another officer. We'll token was on the some.
The Lost Tales contains all three of the great tales that would recur and verse and prose redactions throughout the Silmarillion Corpus.
The Love Story of the Elf. Later a mortal Derren and Elf Princess Luthan in the tale of two new VEO.
The tragedy of the ill fated mortal warrior turned to a bar, int. bar and the follow.
The account of the fall of the renowned Elvan city of Lin in the tale of the fall of condoling, as well as early versions of the surrounding history.
With the exception of the frame story, the cottage of lost play, these three tales are also the oldest in the collection,
all composed during or in the immediate aftermath of the First World War.
There is arguably a case to be made regarding the earliest mythological poems
and prose draughts as war literature based on the time of their composition,
especially the 1917 war themed narrative, The Tale of the Fall of Gonda Lin,
which recounts the demise of the greatest of the Elf City states through treason and invasion.
In his biographical study, Tolkan and the Great War, John Garthe notes the kinship between the magical mechanical dragons that assail the
city walls and the tanks that began to appear on the Western Front during the year.
Tolkien was composing his epic narrative.
The earliest the cows for tokens, composition of early languages, notes and possible summaries were various military venues in England and France.
In letters addressed to Christopher during his service in the Second World War,
Tolkan explained how he first began to write the history of the Nome's meaning the Silmarillion or the Lost Tales in army huts crowded,
filled with the noise of gramophones. In another letter from the same year,
he outlined the various unlikely locations for jotting down the earliest concepts and excerpts for his developing history.
These include grimy canteen's lectures and cold fox bell tents and even some in dugouts under shell fire.
He continues to reinforce these origins many years later, citing camps and hospitals between 1915 and 1918 as places of literary invention.
Is 19 17 tale of the Fall of Gonda, Lynn was a product of his medical leave taken after the battle of some.
After abandoning the Book of Lost Tales around 1920,
Tolkan embarked on the lengthy project of developing what he called the vast backlogs of his ancient history slash mythology.
In the 1920s and 1930s, he alternately resorted to poetry and prose summaries,
delays of Blerick and Volume three represents along with the next volume in the series.
The second stage of Tolkien's work on the mythology. It contains two narrative poems.
The lay of Lethlean, composed between twenty and nineteen thirty one,
a verse version of the story of Barran and Luthan as first told in the tale of two Neuville and the Lay of the Children of Heren, abandoned in 1925.
The Story of Turin tour, Barr told in verse. His volume also features shorter verse relating to the mythology as listed here.
And most of these are unfinished or fragmentary pieces.
Volume for the shaping of Middle Earth is a continuation of the second stage of the
textual corpus and begins with prose fragments continuing the Book of Lost Tales.
More significant are the two prose versions of the mythology which dispense with the mediator figure of Ariel and the frame narrative.
The first sketch of the mythology from 1926 is just that a sketch or prose outline of the key events of the first stage, a highly condensed form.
It was originally intended to provide background for poetic recasting of the tale of two Newville
and turn bar on the follow look for assessment by Tolkien's former tutor from King Edward School.
Although the original intent was not to rewrite the Book of Lost Tales.
This reformulation of the old bludgeoned Darrian material inspired a permanent restructuring based on its model.
The sketch is followed by a longer, more formal prose text.
The Quinta Nolder wow from nineteen thirty, which expands considerably on its predecessor.
Volume four also includes the earliest annals of Valinda and the earliest annals of Clarient from the early 1930s.
And both are formatted as chronicles, listing highly abbreviated accounts of historical events by deep.
In the manner of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and other similar analysts histories from the Middle Ages.
Within Tokens World, these works were supposed to be histories composed by chroniclers, living in either Valinda or Boolarra and.
Volume five. The Lost Road and other writings is home to texts written during the composition of
The Hobbit and before the lengthy and all consuming project of the Lord of the Rings,
which very nearly suspended all activity relating to the early mythology for many years.
This book features the first version of the Atlantis influence narrative, the fall of New INOR from the 1930s.
And the unfinished modern time travel story, The Lost Road, which formed a frame around another version of the new Menora in material.
Additionally, there is a fourth prose version of Thomkins mythology, the unfinished Quintus Silmarillion,
from the mid to late 1930s, whose composition coincided with that of The Hobbit.
And in fact, Tolkan unsuccessfully attempted to publish the incomplete Quintus Silmarillion, along with other related texts.
In 1937. More Chronical style material is present from the late 1930s, along with the new Linda Lay,
the cosmological myth that was to function like a prologue in the 1977 Silmarillion
had replaced the earlier caused Marghani found in the Book of Lost Tales.
They're called The Music of the Iron or.
The 10th and 11th volumes of the series More Goths Ring and the War of the Jewels each include portions of the later Quenton Silmarillion,
a rewrite of the nineteen thirties text of the same name, a token refurbished and expanded in stages, but left unfinished.
This late version was the base text for the 1977 publication.
More Goths Ring contains two phases of later Quenton material. Phase one from the early 1950s and phase two from around 1958.
It also preserves another version of the Ayna, Linda Lee.
The annals of Amman from the early 1950s and some miscellaneous material relating to the mythology.
The War of the Jewels, in addition to further later CUENTA chapters, also features the great annals from the late 1950s,
which consisted of two closely related works and was also used extensively in the 1977 Silmarillion.
It also has the wanderings of Heren, which follows the post captivity exile of Turin,
Turin, Barr's father, but was not included in the 1977 Silmarillion.
The final volume in the series, The Peoples of Middle Earth,
contains tokens latest writings mainly from the 1960s, along with some from the last few months of his life.
These include the remainder of the late CUENTA texts, some linguistic essays as listed here.
A work purported to be by an Elvish scribe, chronicler of Gonda Lynn Pingle of.
Who is also the attributed author of The Annals of Valaria and and co-author of The Annals of Aman.
It also features more incomplete stories. Christopher Tolkan passed away on January 16th, 2020,
and he leaves behind a remarkable legacy of dedicated editorial scholarship that which
readers and scholars would have a much more limited perspective of Gera are tokens,
writings. During the last decade of his life,
Christopher assembled textual variants of the three great tales of the mythology in
order to enable those interested in the development of the narratives concerning Turin,
Baron, Ruthian and Toure to have a clear understanding of what was gained, lost and modified over time in the different versions.
While most of the texts provided had been previously published in the history of Middle Earth Series,
Christopher thought it best to produce volumes that allowed for comparative analysis of the development,
in particular of the tales of Baron and Lucien and the fall of Gandelman.
The exception to the rule here is the children of Heren.
Which only contains the longest prose version of that tale and omits the other poetic and prose versions.
These three volumes provide a chance to experience the three great tales outside the context of the mythology,
as in the manner of Old Norse sagas or mediaeval romances. HarperCollins will be releasing a new volume of unpublished material.
The nature of Middle Earth scheduled for release June 24th, 2021.
The forthcoming book is going to be based on photocopied materials sent by Christopher Tolkan before his passing The Token linguist Carl
Hofstetter and will reproduce Tokens essays on his legend Darrian from the years 1959 through 1973 about the nature of Middle Earth.
Both in the metaphysical and natural historical census.
Some of these will relate to the Silmarillion and the unfinished tales and will be a useful resource to read alongside the wider Silmarillion Corpus.
Here I've listed the key texts for the legendary, um,
if you were interested in reading the whole history, the best place to start is the 1977 Silmarillion.
Anyone wishing to delve further could then read the rest of the versions in the order of production.
The Book of Lost Tales, the first two volumes of the series, the sketch in the Shaping of Middle Earth, the two 1930s Quintus.
The earlier one in the shaping of Metallurgic. And the slightly later won in the Lost Road.
And finally, the late Quinter, which is spread across more Goths Ring and the War of the Jewels.
Well, the last work may seem redundant with the 1977 text.
It does contain extended passages and bits of dialogue that were reduced or excised
for the Silmarillion and can be useful for textual comparison or character study.
This is only a limited sampling of the secondary literature dealing with the Silmarillion anthology.
The work's listed here are ones that deal with either the textual history or the creative development of the legend Darrian.
Berlin, Pfleger spoke, interrupted music traces not only the development of a key literary influences on Takins legend Darrian and is
noteworthy for being one of a limited number of book length literary studies exclusively dedicated to the Silmarillion.
Worthy of special mention. Are the books by John Garthe? His biographical study, Tolkan and the Great War,
traces the earliest developments of the mythology during the First World War and the impact of tokens,
early school friends from the team, CBS on his writing.
Garth's other book, The Worlds of J.R., Our Token,
features illuminating details relating to the early mythology and its links with real locations in England and Europe.
It has much to say about places that inspired character and place names in the Silmarillion Corpus as well as in The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.
And these are accompanied by beautiful illustrations and photographs.
So how far did Tolkan succeed in his original goal of creating a native mythology?
We'll leave you with some of the literary assessments featured in periodicals from around the world
that were quoted on the back cover of the 2008 HarperCollins paperback edition of The Silmarillion.
The Financial Times says that the Silmarillion Times rises to the greatness of true myth.
The Toronto Globe and Mail calls it a grim, tragic, brooding and beautiful book shot through with heroism and hope.
Most tellingly, The Guardian asks how given little over half a century, did one man become the creative equivalent of a people?
So it seems, at least in the view of one writer at The Guardian, Token achieved his early goal of creating a mythology for his own country.
The cover shown here is not the 2008 edition, but another showing, Ted Narced,
miss beautiful portrayal of Mangler, the last surviving son of Fan, or who,
after briefly recapturing one of the Sohmer LS,
casts it away into the sea as his moral failings have now made him unworthy of the holy Jewelz made by his own father.
I hope this lecture has intrigued you enough to pursue tokens earliest literary creations,
which are striking counterparts to his more famous works and our well deserving of both scholarly attention and general interest.
The collective corpus is more than a mere ancient backdrop to The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.
It is of great literary value in its own right and has been gaining greater recognition over the past few decades.
Thanks to Christopher Tokens tireless and dedicated scholarship,
the Silmarillion Corpus will continue to provide a more expansive view of tokens, imagination and inspirations.
Thank you all for listening.