Where Will ‘Children of Hurin’ Take Tolkien Studies?

As we wait for April 17, 2007 (the announced publication of The Children of Hurin) to arrive, I have recently begun looking at some of the online advance publicity about the book. I’m a little concerned by what I see, although I realize that advance publicity may not be very representative of what the book actually is.

One of my concerns arises from comments published last year in Fantasy Mundo’s interview with Adam Tolkien. In the English-language section Alejandro Serrano asks if there is new material in the book. The emphasis provided in this citation is mine.

Alejandro Serrano: First of all we want to know if there will be new material in Children of Húrin or the text that will be published is essentially the same that appears in other books. This is something that many of we ask ourselves.

Adam Tolkien: This is a more difficult question than it seems: As you know versions and pieces of the story of Hurin and his descendants have been published in various works (Silmarillion Unfinished Tales Lost Tales Lays of Beleriand etc). The text of “The Children of Hurin” is in part compiled from these extant texts and particularly that which appears in Unfinished Tales.

But it is a new reworking of the complete story. Many parts of the text will be – if not identical – recognizable to the knowledgeable reader but there are also pieces that have never appeared before.

Also the format of the text as a standalone and complete text with no editorial commentary to interrupt the tale should in itself and in my opinion considerably tranform the reading experience.

Christopher Tolkien believes there may be many readers who have found the Silmarillion too difficult and distanced in style to be attracted to the story and who have not wished to make their way through the painstaking editorial content that makes for the main interest of the History of Middle Earth.

What concerns me most is where Adam says “it is a new reworking of the complete story.” Now I think Christopher Tolkien has a fine narrative style but it seems to me that Adam has basically said this book will not be his grandfather’s work.

On the one hand if that is the case Christopher is at least being more open and forthright about his authorial role than he was in 1977 when he published The Silmarillion as by J.R.R. Tolkien. Though many of the passages in that book were written by J.R.R. Tolkien the book itself was not written by J.R.R. Tolkien. The Silmarillion is a pastiche.

Regrettably for those people who care about canon and authenticity the ambiguous status of authorial responsibility for The Silmarillion has caused many years of unnecessary debate and grief. We could reasonaly say “Who could have foreseen the amount of discussion that would ensue in the first generation after the death of Tolkien?” And the answer is that no one foresaw that much commentary.

But here we are today trapped in a world of silly arguments about Balrogs and whether they should have run in the train of Glaurung or whether they should have been mentioned at all in the description of the Dagor Bragollach. There are people who want to know if Gothmog in The Lord of the Rings is somehow connected to the First Age Gothmog. I don’t expect these questions to be answered definitively.

In fact as I consider what Adam said when pressed about the authorial situation my concern only grows.

Adam Tolkien: The reply above should help answer this question. But the fact is that the text of “The Children of Hurin” is entirely in the author’s (So J.R.R. Tolkien) words – apart from very minor reworkings of a grammatical and stylistic nature.

The expression “entirely in the author’s … words” is ambiguous. I think the story could be told with a minimal amount of editorial intrusion but it shouldn’t take 30 years to produce that kind of amalgamation. The Silmarillion is almost “entirely in the author’s … words” (except for a few passages here and there some sentences a chapter or two and every other exception Christopher eventually documented in The History of Middle-earth).

In advance of the book’s publication the Tolkien Estate (apparently Adam to whom the domain registration is credited) published some content on its Web site (http://www.tolkienestate.com/). The overview of the Tolkien legendarium is brief and probably was not written by Christopher himself (it diverges in very small insignificant ways from some statements he has published in The History of Middle-earth).

The site does currently tell us that

The book will be published in April 2007 in the United Kingdom Canada Australia and New Zealand by HarperCollinsUK and in the United States by Houghton Mifflin. It will be illustrated with colour plates by the renowned artist Alan Lee and contain a map drawn by Christopher Tolkien of Beleriand as well as editorial notes on the text in Appendices.

So we can expect editorial notes and these notes will explain (hopefully) how the book was contrived. We should have a much clearer understanding of its canonical status with respect to JRRT’s intentions and completed (or unfinished) texts by reading those notes but we should also hold some reservation.

After 30 years Christopher Tolkien has had considerable time to evaluate the wisdom of his choices and contributions to his father’s literature in the 1970s. I don’t expect him to underestimate the value many people place upon the authentic works of J.R.R. Tolkien. But if we assume for the sake of discussion that a new work of literature is being produced how should we treat it?

Christopher is responsible for the publication of more than one pastiche of his father’s works. For example he included a very heavily edited (by his own admission) version of “The Wanderings of Hurin” in The War of the Jewels. He was more transparent in his handling of the works included in Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth but even there (or in post-scripts published elsewhere) he made the reader aware of some editorial intrusion into the texts.

We have multiple bodies of Tolkien literature: pre-LoTR materials not really part of the Middle-earth mythology but which contributed directly toward the construction of that mythology; and posthumous collaborations that extend the mythology with somewhat less authority than would have been conferred by JRRT’s own hand; and the works that Tolkien himself published within his lifetime.

My anticipation is that a new wave of Tolkien canon debates is about to open. Time will tell.”