Post by Fredeghar Wayfarer on Aug 30, 2015 22:40:52 GMT -6
I recently found a copy of The Lost Road and Other Writings, part of the History of Middle-earth series. Like the other volumes, it's a bit of a hodgepodge of material that Christopher Tolkien edited and threw together into one book. There's a few versions of the Fall of Numenor, the Lost Road story itself, an early draft of The Silmarillion called the Annals of Beleriand, and the Etymologies, an early dictionary of Elvish words. I found some of it interesting and some of it a bit dry and tedious. Eventually, I want to read the rest of the HoME series but I have a love/hate relationship with Christopher Tolkien's commentary.
The Lost Road is the most interesting part, though unfortunately pretty short. It came about from a challenge that Tolkien and C.S. Lewis undertook. One of them would write a time travel story and the other a space travel story. Lewis' story became his Space Trilogy series. But Tolkien never finished his time travel story. It's a shame because there's some cool stuff in the little snippet we have. The idea was that it would follow a father and son as they experience visions of their past lives in various time periods -- ancient Numenor before the downfall, the Germanic Lombard era, and Anglo-Saxon England. A running theme in the story is the evolution of language and names. The characters' names in each era have the same meaning in different tongues - for example, Elendil, Aelfwine, and Auboin all meaning "Elf-friend."
While I liked it, I can see why Tolkien gave up on it. Parts of it get very technical with the linguistic jargon. You can tell he was reveling in the philology elements but only halfway knew what he was doing with the plot. And according to the commentary, he was more interested in the Numenor stuff than the other eras. The use of the name Aelfwine intrigued me. Is this meant to be the same Aelfwine that sails to Tol Eressea in The Book of Lost Tales and learns the history of the Elves? Is that why he felt such affinity with them? Because he was Elendil reborn?
The Annals of Beleriand I kind of skimmed through. It was good stuff but I've already read this material multiple times in The Silmarillion, the Lost Tales, and Unfinished Tales. Apart from some alternate names and spellings and fewer generations between the Fathers of Men and the main heroes, it's mostly the same stories. The Etymologies were fun to page through and learn more Elvish. However, this was early Elvish so what we know as Sindarin was then called Noldorin and was spoken by a different group of characters. So it's a bit confusing at times and parts of it are out of date.
Has anyone else read this book? What did you think?
The Lost Road is the most interesting part, though unfortunately pretty short. It came about from a challenge that Tolkien and C.S. Lewis undertook. One of them would write a time travel story and the other a space travel story. Lewis' story became his Space Trilogy series. But Tolkien never finished his time travel story. It's a shame because there's some cool stuff in the little snippet we have. The idea was that it would follow a father and son as they experience visions of their past lives in various time periods -- ancient Numenor before the downfall, the Germanic Lombard era, and Anglo-Saxon England. A running theme in the story is the evolution of language and names. The characters' names in each era have the same meaning in different tongues - for example, Elendil, Aelfwine, and Auboin all meaning "Elf-friend."
While I liked it, I can see why Tolkien gave up on it. Parts of it get very technical with the linguistic jargon. You can tell he was reveling in the philology elements but only halfway knew what he was doing with the plot. And according to the commentary, he was more interested in the Numenor stuff than the other eras. The use of the name Aelfwine intrigued me. Is this meant to be the same Aelfwine that sails to Tol Eressea in The Book of Lost Tales and learns the history of the Elves? Is that why he felt such affinity with them? Because he was Elendil reborn?
The Annals of Beleriand I kind of skimmed through. It was good stuff but I've already read this material multiple times in The Silmarillion, the Lost Tales, and Unfinished Tales. Apart from some alternate names and spellings and fewer generations between the Fathers of Men and the main heroes, it's mostly the same stories. The Etymologies were fun to page through and learn more Elvish. However, this was early Elvish so what we know as Sindarin was then called Noldorin and was spoken by a different group of characters. So it's a bit confusing at times and parts of it are out of date.
Has anyone else read this book? What did you think?