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Arda Reconstructed: The Creation of the Published Silmarillion
In Arda Reconstructed: The Creation of the Published Silmarillion, Douglas C. Kane reveals a tapestry woven by Christopher Tolkien from different portions of his father's work that is often quite mind-boggling, with inserts that seemed initially to have been editorial inventions shown to have come from some remote portion of Tolkien's vast body of work. He demonstrates how material that was written over the course of more than thirty years was merged together to create a single, coherent text. He also makes a frank appraisal of the material omitted by Christopher Tolkien (and in a couple of egregious cases the material invented by him) and how these omissions and insertions may have distorted his father's vision of what he considered--even more then The Lord of the Rings--to be his most important work. It is a fascinating portrait of a unique collaboration that reached beyond the grave.
- GenresFantasy
280 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 12, 2018
I’ve long been curious about precisely which texts in the The History of Middle-Earth series Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay mined to construct the published version of The Silmarillion. Arda Reconstructed answers that question in painstaking detail. It’s interesting to see how Christopher Tolkien and Kay wove together The Silmarillion from often disparate strands.
I love the published version of The Silmarillion. Kane takes the position that most deviations from JRR Tolkien’s texts should not have been made, which I find to be too critical of what must have been lots of difficult decisions for Christopher Tolkien. Furthermore, we should allow Christopher Tolkien and Kay some creative license as editors and judge the work more on its merits as a piece of writing than judge it by its fidelity to Tolkien’s drafts.
However, I do appreciate when Kane mentions text that Christopher Tolkien said was mistakenly omitted from The Silmarillion and I agree with some of Kane’s criticism; for example, the second chapter of the "Quenta Silmarillion" has always seemed out of place in the narrative and now I know why. Most strikingly, it’s unfortunate that Christopher Tolkien reduced the roles of women in the mythology, especially when the works that Tolkien published in his lifetime have a dearth of women.
If you read this book, I would recommend reading a chapter of The Silmarillion and then reading the relevant chapter from this book, which is organized into chapters that match those in The Silmarillion.
Arda Reconstructed is a very deeply researched book and I appreciate all the time and work that Kane must’ve put into comparing the published version of The Silmarillion with the texts in The History of Middle-Earth series. I’ve tried to read through the volumes of The History of Middle-Earth without any guide and it’s daunting. What I find most valuable about Arda Reconstructed is that it gives me the ability to read a chapter from The Silmarillion, read Kane’s meticulous analysis, and then find the corresponding source materials in The History of Middle-Earth and decide for myself which version of the myth I prefer.
I love the published version of The Silmarillion. Kane takes the position that most deviations from JRR Tolkien’s texts should not have been made, which I find to be too critical of what must have been lots of difficult decisions for Christopher Tolkien. Furthermore, we should allow Christopher Tolkien and Kay some creative license as editors and judge the work more on its merits as a piece of writing than judge it by its fidelity to Tolkien’s drafts.
However, I do appreciate when Kane mentions text that Christopher Tolkien said was mistakenly omitted from The Silmarillion and I agree with some of Kane’s criticism; for example, the second chapter of the "Quenta Silmarillion" has always seemed out of place in the narrative and now I know why. Most strikingly, it’s unfortunate that Christopher Tolkien reduced the roles of women in the mythology, especially when the works that Tolkien published in his lifetime have a dearth of women.
If you read this book, I would recommend reading a chapter of The Silmarillion and then reading the relevant chapter from this book, which is organized into chapters that match those in The Silmarillion.
Arda Reconstructed is a very deeply researched book and I appreciate all the time and work that Kane must’ve put into comparing the published version of The Silmarillion with the texts in The History of Middle-Earth series. I’ve tried to read through the volumes of The History of Middle-Earth without any guide and it’s daunting. What I find most valuable about Arda Reconstructed is that it gives me the ability to read a chapter from The Silmarillion, read Kane’s meticulous analysis, and then find the corresponding source materials in The History of Middle-Earth and decide for myself which version of the myth I prefer.
February 7, 2022
Doug Kane does yeoman's work sorting out the source texts in the published Silmarillion, almost down to each sentence, and in doing this, he sifts the results somewhat to highlight a few of Christopher Tolkien's tendencies.
In general, Kane can come across as negative about Christopher's choices, though even his own text makes clear that this is a case of "look, the Silmarillion was an enormous amount of work, and we should give CT credit for producing a B+ document--but it could have been an A+, and I don't always understand why." Kane's most loaded argument is that Christopher's editorial decisions--intentionally or not--had the effect of removing or reducing female roles.
What I find most valuable about Kane's work is the data: the line by line work sorting out where Christopher took something from the Quenta Silmarillion--early or late--or from the Annals or from the Quenta Noldorinwa or where something had to be invented. He's provided an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to build off this knowledge and I can only try to imagine the laborious cutting, pasting, comparing, CTRL-Fing that must have been necessary to produce all this work.
My own thought, having finished this book, is the Christopher Tolkien's goal: where he seems to largely reduce complexity through large stretches of the book while inexplicably opting for greater complexity in others, is that Christopher (for better or worse, and I generally side with Kane that it is worse) was aiming for a homogeneity in the text. My chief reason for thinking this is that Christopher's introduction specifically warns against this (i.e. I think it is a telling sign that this preoccupied him, while also maybe being an admission this could only be carried so far), but I do hav another:
Namely, the fact that it seems to me that the cases of chosing the complex texts tend to come from the parts of the story that, from the beginning, had the least detail: i.e. the great gap from the Exile of the Noldoli until the Nirnaeth: the never-written Gilfanon's Tale, which is the part of the story that would continue to be ever-more expanded from the 1920s until the last productive years of the 1950s. It seems to me that Christopher found the tales present in The Book of Lost Tales to be, even wholly rewritten years later, richer and fuller than the tales missing there, and that his practice in curating the Silmarillion was an attempt to smooth this over: choose the most complex parts for the "gaps" while choosing the shorter versions for the tales that were already denser. Raising the valleys and lowering the peaks, so to speak.
All told, I am grateful to Kane for doing all this work and I agree with him that the Silmarillion could have been better--thanks to the hindsight that forty-five years and the HoME affords.
In general, Kane can come across as negative about Christopher's choices, though even his own text makes clear that this is a case of "look, the Silmarillion was an enormous amount of work, and we should give CT credit for producing a B+ document--but it could have been an A+, and I don't always understand why." Kane's most loaded argument is that Christopher's editorial decisions--intentionally or not--had the effect of removing or reducing female roles.
What I find most valuable about Kane's work is the data: the line by line work sorting out where Christopher took something from the Quenta Silmarillion--early or late--or from the Annals or from the Quenta Noldorinwa or where something had to be invented. He's provided an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to build off this knowledge and I can only try to imagine the laborious cutting, pasting, comparing, CTRL-Fing that must have been necessary to produce all this work.
My own thought, having finished this book, is the Christopher Tolkien's goal: where he seems to largely reduce complexity through large stretches of the book while inexplicably opting for greater complexity in others, is that Christopher (for better or worse, and I generally side with Kane that it is worse) was aiming for a homogeneity in the text. My chief reason for thinking this is that Christopher's introduction specifically warns against this (i.e. I think it is a telling sign that this preoccupied him, while also maybe being an admission this could only be carried so far), but I do hav another:
Namely, the fact that it seems to me that the cases of chosing the complex texts tend to come from the parts of the story that, from the beginning, had the least detail: i.e. the great gap from the Exile of the Noldoli until the Nirnaeth: the never-written Gilfanon's Tale, which is the part of the story that would continue to be ever-more expanded from the 1920s until the last productive years of the 1950s. It seems to me that Christopher found the tales present in The Book of Lost Tales to be, even wholly rewritten years later, richer and fuller than the tales missing there, and that his practice in curating the Silmarillion was an attempt to smooth this over: choose the most complex parts for the "gaps" while choosing the shorter versions for the tales that were already denser. Raising the valleys and lowering the peaks, so to speak.
All told, I am grateful to Kane for doing all this work and I agree with him that the Silmarillion could have been better--thanks to the hindsight that forty-five years and the HoME affords.
December 8, 2018
If you are a true Tolkien afficionado, one of those readers who (like me) wants to see the bones that went into the soup; if you read “The Silmarillion” and wanted to know more, or were interested in exactly how the book was constructed from the huge amount of source material the author left and his son Christopher assembled; if you have ever read (or tried to read!) the twelve volumes of “The History of Middle Earth”, and wondered about how much remained to be told in the published story, and why some apparently important tales didn’t make it in; then “Arda Reconstructed” is a book you should read.
This book is definitely not a casual read, not if you really want to trace the construction of the published text. It’s difficult even compared to “The Silmarillion” itself. It is literally a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of virtually every chapter of the work, with discussion of what material made the cut, what didn’t, what was changed, and what was flat-out invented by Christopher in order to reconcile conflicting versions of various events. Detailed references to the History (including tables) are included, showing how the many variant versions of each tale were chosen, cut, pasted, rewritten or otherwise treated in order to arrived at a publishable text. And some of the details of the analysis are remarkable. For example, Tolkien had indicated that he wanted the “Second Prophecy of Mandos” to be included at the end of “The Silmarillion”, yet Christopher decided not to include it. The reasoning behind this choice is explained quite well, as are the multitude of other editorial decisions that were made.
The author of “Arda Reconstructed” is not shy about expressing his opinions concerning many of Christopher’s editorial decisions. I agreed with quite a few of his views. However, some of his opinions became grating. In particular, his constant harping about the revisions or deletions of various female characters makes him come across as a whining male feminist.
Overall, “Arda Reconstructed” is a valuable contribution to Tolkien scholarship. After finishing the book, I found myself wishing that the Tolkien estate would authorize “The Silmarillion (Revised Edition)”, which would include many of the changes and additions the author discusses.
This book is definitely not a casual read, not if you really want to trace the construction of the published text. It’s difficult even compared to “The Silmarillion” itself. It is literally a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of virtually every chapter of the work, with discussion of what material made the cut, what didn’t, what was changed, and what was flat-out invented by Christopher in order to reconcile conflicting versions of various events. Detailed references to the History (including tables) are included, showing how the many variant versions of each tale were chosen, cut, pasted, rewritten or otherwise treated in order to arrived at a publishable text. And some of the details of the analysis are remarkable. For example, Tolkien had indicated that he wanted the “Second Prophecy of Mandos” to be included at the end of “The Silmarillion”, yet Christopher decided not to include it. The reasoning behind this choice is explained quite well, as are the multitude of other editorial decisions that were made.
The author of “Arda Reconstructed” is not shy about expressing his opinions concerning many of Christopher’s editorial decisions. I agreed with quite a few of his views. However, some of his opinions became grating. In particular, his constant harping about the revisions or deletions of various female characters makes him come across as a whining male feminist.
Overall, “Arda Reconstructed” is a valuable contribution to Tolkien scholarship. After finishing the book, I found myself wishing that the Tolkien estate would authorize “The Silmarillion (Revised Edition)”, which would include many of the changes and additions the author discusses.
May 2, 2009
Excellent book - a definate for the Tolkien lover lbrary. A very in-depth concise analysis of how Christopher Tolkien constructed the publish Sillmarillion from the various versions of Tolkien's first age work (most for the post Lord of the Rings era) - what he choose to use and, if more interstingly, what he left out. The charts for each chapter are very interesting and has got me interested in re-reading the later History of Middle Earth books (again). A very important work for Tolkien scholarship
January 7, 2023
This is a commentary digging into Christopher Tolkien's process of assembling the published Silmarillion from his father's many drafts (as later published in History of Middle-Earth): Why did Christopher pick these particular texts (or often, paragraphs from texts), why did he leave out these references, et cetera. Kane steps through each chapter of Silmarillion, presenting data points paragraph-by-paragraph, and occasionally proposing some generalizations and expressing aesthetic opinions.
I enthusiastically agree with most of Kane's aesthetic opinions. The Tale of the Sun and Moon as published hits just the right notes, the longer and more lively version of the Darkening of Valinor should've been published, and it is a shame the Second Prophecy of Mandos was entirely left out.
Two of his generalizations, I think, are proven: Christopher Tolkien seemed overenthusiastic to cut philosophical digressions and descriptions. His third is at least defensible: This cutting disproportionately affected female characters (from as Miriel Serende, whose talents are diminished; to Findis, who's cut completely).
All in all, I recommend this book to anyone who's loved tracing the different versions of Tolkien's text through History of Middle-Earth. This's the final piece of textual history that Christopher Tolkien (perhaps properly) stepped back from doing for himself.
I enthusiastically agree with most of Kane's aesthetic opinions. The Tale of the Sun and Moon as published hits just the right notes, the longer and more lively version of the Darkening of Valinor should've been published, and it is a shame the Second Prophecy of Mandos was entirely left out.
Two of his generalizations, I think, are proven: Christopher Tolkien seemed overenthusiastic to cut philosophical digressions and descriptions. His third is at least defensible: This cutting disproportionately affected female characters (from as Miriel Serende, whose talents are diminished; to Findis, who's cut completely).
All in all, I recommend this book to anyone who's loved tracing the different versions of Tolkien's text through History of Middle-Earth. This's the final piece of textual history that Christopher Tolkien (perhaps properly) stepped back from doing for himself.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews