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Books, Texts by J. R. R. Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien, Novels
The Silmarillion
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The Silmarillion (ISBN 0-04-823139-8) is a collection of J.R.R. Tolkien's works
that were edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher, with the
assistance of fantasy fiction writer Guy Gavriel Kay.
It is the primary source for Middle-earth's ancient history and the First Age, and
for the downfall of the kingdom of Nmenor.

Contents[show]
ContentEdit
Silmarillion-cover
The Silmarillion is comprised of five parts:
The Ainulindal - The creation of E (Tolkien's universe) and Ainur by Eru Ilvatar
and the start of the corruption of Melkor
The Valaquenta - A brief description of the Valar and Maiar, the supernatural
beings
The Quenta Silmarillion - The history of the events before and during the First
Age, which forms the bulk of the collection
The Akallabth - The history of the Second Age
Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age
This five-part work is also known as Translations from the Elvish.
182
Second Edition Cover
These five parts were initially separate works, but it was the elder Tolkien's
express wish that they be published together. Additionally, the book incorporates
portions of several other documents not part of the original text, such as the
story of Maeglin. Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age along with the Akallabth
are wholly seperate and independent from the rest of the Silmarillion.
The Silmarillion, along with other posthumous collections of Tolkien's works, such
as Unfinished Tales and the The History of Middle-earth series, form a
comprehensive yet somewhat incomplete narrative that describes the universe within
which The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place.
The Silmarillion is a complex work that explores a wide array of themes inspired by
many ancient, medieval, and modern sources, including the Finnish Kalevala, the
Icelandic sagas, The Bible, Greek mythology, World War I, and Celtic myths. For
instance, the name of the supreme being, Ilvatar (Father of All) is clearly
borrowed from Finnish mythology. The archaic style and gravitas of the Ainulindal
resembles that of the Old Testament. And the island civilization of Nmenor is
reminiscent of Atlantis one of the names Tolkien gave that land was Atalant,
though he gave it an Elvish derivation.

Some of the notable stories in the book which summarise the four Great Tales are:

"Of Beren and Lthien"

"Of Trin Turambar"
"Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin"
"Of the Voyage of Erendil and the War of Wrath"
Development of the textEdit
The earliest drafts of The Silmarillion stories date back to as early as 1925, when
Tolkien wrote a 'Sketch of the Mythology'. However, the concepts for characters and
themes were developed for a previous mythology in 1917 when Tolkien, then a British
officer stationed in France during World War I was laid up in a military field
hospital with trench fever. At the time, he called his collection of nascent
stories The Book of Lost Tales. These stories comprised an English mythology
intended to explain the origins of English history and culture (as Greek mythology
explains the origins of Greek history and culture).
Many years after the war, encouraged by the success of The Hobbit, Tolkien
submitted an incomplete but more fully developed version of The Silmarillion to his
publisher, but they rejected the work as being obscure and "too Celtic". The
publisher, George Allen & Unwin, instead asked Tolkien to write a sequel to The
Hobbit, which became his significant novel The Lord of the Rings.

But Tolkien never abandoned The Silmarillion, he regarded it as the most important
of his work, seeing in its tales the genesis of Middle-earth and later events as
told in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He renewed work on The Silmarillion
after completing The Lord of the Rings but eventually turned to other texts more
closely associated with the events and characters depicted in The Lord of the
Rings. Near the end of his life in 1973, Tolkien began to substantially revise the
cosmology and its related myths, but he did not progress very far.

After Tolkien's deathEdit

For several years after his father's death, Christopher Tolkien compiled a
Silmarillion narrative which, at the time, he felt best approximated his father's
intentions. As explained in The History of Middle-earth, Christopher drew upon
numerous sources for his narrative, relying on post-LOTR works where possible, but
ultimately reaching back as far as the 1917 Book of Lost Tales to fill in portions
of the narrative which his father had planned to write but never addressed. On some
of the later parts of "Quenta Silmarillion", which were in the roughest state, he
worked with Guy Gavriel Kay (later a noted fantasy author himself) to construct a
narrative practically from scratch. The final result, which included genealogies,
maps, an index, and the first-ever released Elvish word list was published in 1977.
Due to Christopher's extensive explanations of how he compiled the published work,
much of The Silmarillion has been debated by the hardcore fans. Christopher's task
is generally accepted as very difficult given the state of his father's texts at
the time of his death: some critical texts were no longer in the Tolkien family's
possession, and Christopher's task compelled him to rush through much of the
material. Christopher reveals in later volumes of The History of Middle-earth many
divergent ideas which do not agree with the published version. Christopher Tolkien
has suggested that, had he taken more time and had access to all the texts, he
might have produced a substantially different work. But he was impelled by
considerable pressure and demand from his father's readers and publishers to
produce something publishable as quickly as possible. However, it is a severe
misapprehension to think that Christopher "wrote" The Silmarillion, which, except
in its concluding part, is almost entirely in his father's own words.

During the 1980's and 1990's, Christopher Tolkien published most of his father's
Middle-earth-related writings as the 12-volume History of Middle-earth series.

In addition to the source material and earlier drafts of several portions of The
Lord of the Rings, these books greatly expand on the original material published in
The Silmarillion, and in many cases diverge from it. Part of the reason for this is
that Christopher Tolkien heavily edited The Silmarillion to ready it for
publication, in places having to choose between contradictory versions of the text.
J.R.R. Tolkien also sketched ideas for radical transformations of the mythology
which never reached narrative form. These later books also reveal which parts of
The Silmarillion Tolkien developed more than others.

Miscellaneous informationEdit
In 1998, the German power metal band Blind Guardian produced Nightfall in Middle-
Earth, a concept album about key events from the Quenta Silmarillion.
More recently references and a character have appeared in the game Middle-earth:
Shadow of Mordor. In the story a ranger leading a garrison on the Black Gate is
killed along with his family, shortly after he is revived and a wraith Celebrimbor
takes host in his once dead body. As told in the last section of The Silmarilion,
Celebrimbor is killed after protecting his forged rings of power from Sauron. These
two sharing a body both seek revenge and redemption

Translations around the WorldEdit

Foreign Language Translated name
Afrikaans Die Silmarillion
Amharic ? ???????
Arabic ????????????
Armenian ???????????
Basque Silmarillion du
Belarusian Cyrillic ????????????
Bengali ??????????
Bulgarian Cyrillic ???????????
Catalan El Silmarllion
Chinese ????
Croatian U Silmarillionu
Dutch De Silmarillion
Esperanto Silmariliono
Filipino Ang Silmarilyon
French Le Silmarillion
Frisian De Silmarillion
Galician O Silmarillion
Georgian ????????????
German Das Silmarillion
Greek S??a???????
Gujarati ? ??????????
Haitian Creole A Silmarillion
Hebrew ???????????
Hindi ??????????
Hmong lub Silmarillion
Hungarian A szilmarilok
Indonesian Silmarillion itu
Italian Il Silmarillion
Japanese ????????
Kannada ?????????????
Kazakh Cyrillic ????????????
Korean ?????
Kurdish ?? ??????????? (Arabic script) li Silmarillion (Latin)
Kyrgyz Cyrillic ????????????
Lithuanian Silmariljonas
Luxembourgish De Silmarillion
Macedonian Cyrillic ?? ????????????
Malay Silmarillion itu
Maltese Il Silmarillion
Marathi ??????????
Mongolian Cyrillic ????????????
Nepalese ?? ?????????????
Pashto ? ????????????
Persian ???????????
Portuguese O Silmarillion
Punjabi ??????????
Russian ?????????????
Somalian O le Silmarillion
Serbian ??????????? (Cyrillic) Silmarilion (Latin)
Spanish El Silmarillion
Tajik Cyrillic ??? ????????????
Tamil ?? ????????????
Telugu ?? ????????????
Thai ?????????????????
Turkish Silmarillion
Ukrainian Cyrillic ????????????
Urdu ????????????
Uyghur ????????????
Uzbek ???????????? (Cyrillic) Silmarilion (Latin)
Vietnamese Cc Silmarillion
Welsh Y Silmarillion
Yiddish ?? ??????????????
J. R. R. Tolkien's - The Silmarillion
Ainulindal | Valaquenta | Quenta Silmarillion | Akallabth | Of the Rings of Power
and the Third Age
The History of Middle-earth
(earlier versions of the story of The Silmarillion)
J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium
Works published during his lifetime
The Hobbit | The Lord of the Rings | The Adventures of Tom Bombadil | The Road Goes
Ever On
Posthumous publications
The Silmarillion | Unfinished Tales | The History of Middle-earth (12 volumes) |
Bilbo's Last Song | The Children of Hrin

Lists of LOTR Wiki articles about Middle-earth

by category | name | writings | characters | peoples | rivers | realms | ages

Categories:
Books Texts by J. R. R. Tolkien J.R.R. Tolkien Novels Add category [Configure
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