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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2022

« The Son behind the Father: Christopher Tolkien as a Writer »

Vincent Ferré

Résumé

This essay considers Christopher Tolkien’s achievement as a writer in his own right, and not only as an ‘editor’ of his father’s manuscripts, as he has often been presented. My hypothesis is that his own texts in the History of Middle-earth series, in The Silmarillion and in his last published volumes (The Fall of Gondolin, Beren and Lúthien) qualify as literature, for two main reasons. The first is his style and the choices he made in ‘constructing’ The Silmarillion as a narrative, which will be examined according to Gérard Genette’s conception of ‘conditional literarity’. The second is related to the presence of a fictional dimension in his writings: Christopher Tolkien had to invent elements when the narrative was deficient or threads were impossible to weave together. In such a prolific list of publications, from 1975 (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) to 2018 (The Fall of Gondolin), distinctions have to be made. In The Silmarillion (1977), Christopher Tolkien edited his father’s manuscripts but he also wrote some parts, especially in the last chapters of the volume. In the History of Middle-earth series (1983–96), he edited and commented on the original material according to ‘a general principle’ but he also created a sort of biography of a work in progress. This constitutes a common point with the third group of volumes – Beren and Lúthien (2017) and The Fall of Gondolin (2018) – in which he assembles a puzzle and guides the reader through a narrative.

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Dates et versions

halshs-03504172 , version 1 (28-12-2021)

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  • HAL Id : halshs-03504172 , version 1

Citer

Vincent Ferré. « The Son behind the Father: Christopher Tolkien as a Writer ». Richard Ovenden & Catherine McIlwaine (éd.). The Great Tales never End. Essays in memory of Christopher Tolkien, Bodleian Library Publishing, p. 53-69, 2022, The Great Tales never End. Essays in memory of Christopher Tolkien, 978-1851245659. ⟨halshs-03504172⟩

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