Tolkien's legendarium
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the legendarium. For the book, see Tolkien's Legendarium.
The phrase Tolkien's legendarium is commonly used among individuals who study J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional universe of Eä as a reference to the many works related to the universe and its legends. These are sometimes better known as his Middle-earth writings.
Tolkien used the term legendarium, meaning "a collection of legends", in reference to his works several times in letters he wrote:
- On The Silmarillion: "This legendarium ends with a vision of the end of the world, its breaking and remaking, and the recovery of the Silmarilli and the 'light before the Sun' ...." (Letter to Milton Waldman, describing The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, written c.1951)[1]
- "... my legendarium, especially the 'Downfall of Númenor' which lies immediately behind The Lord of the Rings, is based on my view: that Men are essentially mortal and must not try to become 'immortal' in the flesh." (Letter written in 1954)[2]
- "Actually in the imagination of this story we are now living on a physically round Earth. But the whole 'legendarium' contains a transition from a flat world ... to a globe ...." (Letter written in 1954)[3]
- "But the beginning of the legendarium, of which the Trilogy is part (the conclusion), was an attempt to reorganise some of the Kalevala ...." (Letter written in 1955)[4]
The term's use in Tolkien scholarship ranges from the title of a book on the subject (Tolkien's Legendarium), to Christopher Tolkien's introduction to The History of Middle-earth series, where he talks about the "primary 'legendarium'", to the following description in the J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: "The History of Middle-earth is a longitudinal study of the development and elaboration of Tolkien's legendarium through his transcribed manuscripts, with textual commentary by the editor, Christopher Tolkien."
[edit] References
Carpenter, Humphrey and Tolkien, Christopher (eds.) (1981). The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-31555-7.
