A LOST TALE, A FOUND INFLUENCE: EARENDEL AND TINÚVIEL

Flieger asserts that in this essay I propose to fit together two examples of J.R.R. Tolkien's story-telling art. United chiefly by their difference, each is a trial venture into the art of mythmaking: one an experiment in omission, the other in commission. Each offers a different window into the workshop where the artist practiced his craft. A point to remember is that Tolkien was writing with hindsight. The long perspective of "once upon a time" gives the impression of a fait accompli, whereas the "more or less connected legend" he referred to was actually in a constant flux of revision, and was still unfinished when he died in 1973. Christopher Tolkien's 1983-1996 History of Middle-Earth, with its painstaking unpacking of his father's constantly revised material, did much to undo this impression, and his publication in separate volumes of The Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, and The Fall of Gondolin, presenting from 2007 to 2018 the great tales from earliest to latest.