0234: The Book of Lost Tales I » A Completely Different Silmarillion

How different was Tolkien’s earliest Silmarillion—and which of its most important ideas had not even taken shape yet? In Episode 234 of The Tolkien Road, John and Greta complete their survey of The Book of Lost Tales 1 with its final six chapters. Along the way: the awakening of the Elves, the Darkening of Valinor, the Flight of the Noldor, the Sun and Moon, the Hiding of Valinor, and the coming of Men. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS 00:00 — Introduction 01:36 — The Book of Lost Tales 1, Part 3 05:02 — Tolkien Quote of the Week 06:11 — Tolkien Transforming War Into Myth 07:37 — Revisiting the Book of Lost Tales 09:07 — Christopher Tolkien’s Monumental Task 10:15 — The Coming of the Elves and the Making of Kor 11:49 — The Frame Narrative Continues 12:27 — Why Frame Narratives Work 16:38 — How the Early Story Differs 17:26 — Melko Is Released Much Earlier 18:00 — Tolkien’s Early Poem “Kor” 21:23 — The Theft of Melko and the Darkening of Valinor 22:06 — Melko Corrupts the Noldoli 25:01 — The Silmarils Were Barely Important 26:39 — Why This Isn’t Yet “The Silmarillion” 27:23 — The Book of Lost Tales as a Rough Draft 29:58 — The Flight of the Noldoli 34:02 — There Is No Oath of Fëanor 34:30 — The Teleri Were the Solosimpi 34:56 — The Tale of the Sun and Moon 36:02 — Tolkien Knew It Needed Revision 40:52 — The Man in the Moon 41:57 — The Hiding of Valinor 44:25 — Tolkien Condemns the Valar’s Choice 45:08 — Gilfanon’s Tale 47:43 — Where Volume 1 Leaves Us 48:53 — One Volume Down, Eleven to Go 49:22 — Listener Correspondence 57:35 — What’s Coming Next ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE SILMARILS WEREN’T CENTRAL YET Melko’s corruption of the Noldoli looks surprisingly familiar. He spreads lies about the Valar and tells the Elves they are being denied their rightful freedom. But the Silmarils themselves are still relatively unimportant. Like the One Ring in The Hobbit, something that begins in the background will eventually move to the center of an entire mythology. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ NO OATH OF FËANOR The Flight of the Noldoli contains another enormous difference. There is no Oath of Fëanor. Considering how completely the Oath drives the tragedy of the published Silmarillion, its absence shows just how unfinished Tolkien’s conception still was. Even the Teleri have another name: the Solosimpi. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ TOLKIEN’S ROUGH DRAFT The Book of Lost Tales is essentially Tolkien discovering his mythology through writing. Ideas move into focus. Others disappear. Names change. Chronology changes. Entire narrative structures are abandoned. The finished mythology did not spring into existence fully formed. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE HIDING OF VALINOR In this early version, Tolkien treats the Valar’s decision to hide Valinor much more critically. Their failure to confront Melko is presented as a serious mistake. That explicit condemnation largely disappears from Tolkien’s later version of the mythology. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE BIG TAKEAWAY The Book of Lost Tales 1 shows Tolkien discovering The Silmarillion. The Silmarils were not always central. The Oath of Fëanor was not always there. The Cottage of Lost Play frame eventually disappeared. Yet the foundations of Middle-earth are already unmistakable. This is Tolkien’s mythology while it was still becoming itself. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SPECIAL THANKS • Kaitlyn of Tea with Tolkien • Liis U • Andrew T • John R • Ms. Anonymous Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-tolkien-road--5222755/support .