Inside Middle-earth — The Five Parts of The Silmarillion and their Value
A structure that fluctuates between history and religion.
One of the peculiarities of Tolkien’s work is how much it explores itself through the constant revisions the author of The Lord of the Rings made of his writings, whether they were the most incipient (when he was still fighting in World War I) or even those he wrote in the last years of his life.
Tolkien’s academic training influenced his obsession with revisiting the foundational myths of his literary universe and seeking the best way to explain everything that existed in his imagination.
At the same time, there was the phenomenon that the writings themselves demanded an evolution. This transformation resulted in many rewritings and various manuscripts of the same events.
The Silmarillion was the great field of these rewritings, existing today several versions that are not the definitive ones imagined by Tolkien since he died when he was still rewriting many passages of his foundational work.
His son Christopher was the one who gathered those writings and tried to give them a specific order, resulting in The Silmarillion, which, unfortunately, Tolkien himself could not see published.
