Reconstructing Arda: Of Feanor and the Unchaining of Melkor (Critical Essay‪)‬

ALTHOUGH J.R.R. TOLKIEN IS BEST KNOWN for having written The Lord of the Rings (and to a lesser extent, The Hobbit), The Silmarillion [Silm.] is arguably his most important work. He began working on the stories that provided the basis of what would become The Silmarillion in 1917, while he was fighting in World War I, and he continued revising them in some context or another throughout the rest of his life, until his death in 1973. These stories originally stemmed from two main sources: his interest in inventing languages, and his desire to create a mythology for England (Letters 144, 230-231). However, they eventually became the vehicle for his most profound reflections on such themes as death and immortality, and the perils of timeless beauty; pride and hubris, and the struggle between good and evil (as symbolized by the Silmarils, the holy jewels that alone preserved the "pure" Light, yet also generated so much of the strife described in these tales); and perhaps most importantly, the tension between fate and free will. Even more than The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion reflects the melding of Tolkien's abiding Catholic faith with his deep knowledge of and respect for ancient pagan myth (and language). Unfortunately, however, Tolkien never completed this work. He left behind a complex array of interrelated texts, none of which could be considered "finished." In addition to the Quenta Silmarillion (the History of the Silmarils) itself, there were also closely related texts that were written in annal form (a short chronological record of the events of successive years, although they often were extended into longer narrative passages). There were also a number of essays, commentaries, and other works that further developed what became known as Tolkien's legendarium, including extended prose and verse versions of the three "Great Tales" which formed the core of the mythology: the tales of Beren and Luthien, "The Fall of Gondolin," and "The Children of Hurin." (2) These works were left in varying states of completion. The earlier portions of the narrative underwent a significant amount of revision after The Lord of the Rings was published in the mid-1950s, whereas some of the later portions were never updated after 1930, or even earlier. Moreover, towards the end of his life, Tolkien contemplated a vast reworking of many critical elements of his mythology, but he never carried through on this plan.