Tolkien's round world dilemma

No version of the Ainulindalë was published during Tolkien's lifetime, but a heavily edited version^[4] later formed the first chapter of the 1977 The Silmarillion edited by Tolkien's son Christopher.^{[T 1]} The earliest version (named "The Music of the Ainur", not Ainulindalë) was published in 1984 in The Book of Lost Tales volume 1.^{[T 2][6]} The Old Flat World Version was included in the 1987 The Lost Road and Other Writings. Both the Round World Version and the New Flat World Version were included in the 1993 Morgoth's Ring.^{[T 3]} The latter is a more faithful reproduction of Tolkien's manuscript than the edited version in The Silmarillion.^[1]

Tolkien wrote a Round World Version of the

Christopher Tolkien described the Round World Version as "de-mythologised", as it abolishes many elements of

In the Round World Akallabêth, the Earth is in fact round from the beginning, and the Elves teach the Númenóreans that it is so; but one of Sauron's deceptions is to tell the Númenóreans that it is flat. As a result, when the survivors of the Downfall explore the Earth in search of their lost home, thus finding proof that the world is round, they then believe that it had been made so only after Númenor was drowned.[T 7] During the Downfall, Valinor is not removed from the physical world (as in the Flat World version); instead, its landmass simply becomes America. It is instead those who dwell there, the Valar and the Elves, who since the Downfall live only in memory: thus the End of Arda is moved ahead by Eru, as far as the Elves are concerned.^{[T 8]}

According to the

According to the lawyer and author on Tolkien Douglas Kane, the fundamental problem Tolkien had with the Flat World Version was that the Númenóreans, the ancestors of Men, were the means by which the legends of the earliest days were transmitted to later generations. Tolkien believed that the Númenóreans would understand that a flat Earth was impossible.[4]

The Tolkien scholar John D. Rateliff takes a different view of the problem, writing that Tolkien had changed his mind about what an ordinary reader would be able to believe, or the extent to which that reader might be able to suspend their disbelief, in the face of a medieval cosmology. Rateliff wrote that^[13]

Tolkien had come to believe that the average reader's astronomical knowledge by the middle of the twentieth century was sufficient that the idea of a flat earth—circled by a little sun and moon that were glowing fruits and flowers from magical trees carried in flying boats, each of which, steered by an angel, sails in the sky from east to west before travelling back beneath the earth by night—simply [wouldn't] do.^[13]

Christopher Tolkien wrote in Morgoth's Ring that his father had decided to reconstruct his mythology to a Round World model because he had

come to believe that such a vast upheaval was a necessity, that the cosmos of the old myth was no longer valid; and at the same time he was impelled to try to construct a more secure 'theoretical' or 'systematic' basis for elements in the legendarium that were not to be dislodged.

— Christopher Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring^[14]

The Inklings scholar David Bratman identifies a third possible reason for moving to a Round World model: that "Tolkien's attitude to his creation" had shifted.^[15] He suggests that Tolkien had grown "more analytical with details in general", giving as example the work he did late in his life, documented in The Nature of Middle-earth, in which he laboriously compares the Elvish and human life cycles.^[15] Bratman describes as an "absolutely crushing moment" the time when Tolkien made up his mind that

his beautiful mythological image of Valinor being separated from the mortal lands when the shape of the world was changed was not feasible—what happened to it physically? So it must have lost its Valinorian magic and become America.

— David Bratman, "Notes of an Inklings Scholar"^{[15][T 12]}

In Bratman's view, the cause of this change was that he had gradually and perhaps unwittingly turned the mythological legendarium into an annalistic history "modeled on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles".^[15] The further back the exact historical dates went, the more acute the crisis became; and the dates could go very far back into what had been vague mythological time, because Elves like Elrond could remember events thousands of years before the events of the War of the Ring. And Tolkien had written The Lord of the Rings in a far more modern style than the Silmarillion, supported by extensive "historical" Appendices including exact chronologies.^[15]

The Flat World Version, Tolkien had come to feel, was thus essentially unacceptable, whether internally or externally, requiring replacement.

The Round World Version thus represents a major, concrete part of Tolkien's attempt to entirely rewrite the mythology of Middle-earth.[17] Rateliff comments that Tolkien had an "extremely good" grasp of the "cascading effects" of making such a change in his legendarium; and that this change was uniquely awkward, as it stood at the junction of the myths from Valinor and the legends of Beleriand. Tolkien saw that he would have to rewrite the early tales that set out his cosmology, and stop work on the legends until the cosmology had been made fully consistent. In Rateliff's view, Tolkien "became convinced that he had to make changes he simply couldn't bring himself to make"^[13] and became stuck; this problem was compounded by his publisher's rejection of The Silmarillion in 1951. Even if Tolkien could have resolved one of these issues, Rateliff writes, the two together "probably" ensured that no version of The Silmarillion would be published in his lifetime.^[13]

Tolkien gave the Round World Version of the Akallabêth the name The Drowning of Anadûnê; this was eventually published in

With their questionings, their certainties giving way to doubt, their contradictory resolutions, these writings are to be read with a sense of [Tolkien's] intellectual and imaginative stress in the face of such a dismantling and reconstitution, believed to be an inescapable necessity, but never achieved.

— Christopher Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring^[14]

Kristine Larsen likens Tolkien's struggles to reconcile cosmology with his mythology to the Renaissance astronomer Tycho Brahe's attempts to reconcile his observations with his model of the Solar System.^[20] She quotes Christopher Tolkien's description of his father's struggles as "a prolonged interior debate",^[14][20] and his judgement that:

It may be... that he came to perceive from such experimental writing as this text that the old structure was too comprehensive, too interlocked in all its parts, indeed its roots too deep, to withstand such a devastating surgery.

— Christopher Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring^[21]

In Larsen's view, Tolkien was neither able to "ignore the simple logic of a heliocentric cosmology", nor to switch over to it "as it would break much of what was so poetic in his fictional cosmology."^[22]

However, Christopher Tolkien also pointed out in Morgoth's Ring that the Round World version was referred to in his father's commentary to the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, as well as incorporated into his last work on Chapter 6 of the Silmarillion.^{[T 9]} In the two further volumes of The History of Middle-earth that he released, he pointed out further references to the Round World and its associated transmission framework in several late texts: the 1959–60 text Quendi and Eldar,^{[T 14]} the c. 1963 text Of the Ents and the Eagles,^{[T 15]} the c. 1968 The Shibboleth of Fëanor^{[T 16]} and The Problem of Ros,^{[T 17]} and the c. 1972–73 Glorfindel II.^{[T 18]} Carl Hostetter, in his editorial comments to the late 1960s text Dark and Light presented in The Nature of Middle-earth (discussing Elvish conceptions of astronomy before they met the Valar), also noted that the Round World changes were "obviously long-lived".^{[T 11]} Douglas Kane also considered the Of the Ents and the Eagles reference as being "of particular interest", even though he agreed with Christopher Tolkien's decision to use a Flat World for the published Silmarillion.^[23]

In 2024 Vyacheslav Stepanov, writing in Palantir, the journal of the St. Petersburg Tolkien Society, pointed to such examples and added that the Round World was incorporated into the narratives as late as the c. 1972–73 text Círdan. Considering the extended period over which these revisions were done, right up to the year of Tolkien's death, Stepanov argued that Tolkien had in fact solved the problem to his satisfaction and decided in favour of the Round World.^[24]

While preparing The Silmarillion for its 1977 publication, Christopher Tolkien was aware that his father had intended to update it to a new Round World Version. He considered editing the manuscripts to comply with this wish. In other respects, he had edited the stories to make them internally self-consistent, and consistent with the already published canon.^[4] He later published several edited versions of his father's Silmarillion stories in the 12-volume The History of Middle-earth.^[4]

Christopher decided against such a cosmological update for several reasons. What his father had left of the Round World Silmarillion was no more than an outline of his intentions. The earlier Round World Version was no longer viable, because by this stage it differed too greatly from already published works. The Silmarillion would either need major rework, or the change would have to be allowed to introduce new inconsistencies.^[4]

Kristine Larsen argues that Christopher's "uncharacteristically scant" commentary on the Round World revisions in Morgoth's Ring is related to his own rejection of that cosmology. While she agrees with Christopher that the Flat World cosmology is "beautiful", she nonetheless finds it "unfortunate" that these cosmological reworkings did not receive a full analysis. She points to various astronomical implications of the Round World texts (including the possible existence of extraterrestrial life in the legendarium) that Christopher did not comment on.^[25]

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