I have been working on consolidating versions of the Children of Hurin and writing essays related to it as a personal project and this talk is a condensed one based on a Second Breakfast Smial presentation I gave following Oxonmoot 2020.
The goal is to have readers consider how Tolkien presented himself as a translator of history, that one version of a story may be perspective based and not ‘more correct’ than another, to meet the authors and translators of the stories including Dirhavel (Unfinished Tales), Aelfwine (War of the Jewels), Penegold the Wise of Gondolin (Shaping of Middle Earth), Eltas (The Book of Lost Tales 2) and to consider how these stories are similar and different particularly the endings.
In this talk I plan to address some high-level topics:
- My Approach to Reading Tolkien
- The Standard Story Structure
- The Versions/Volumes of the Children of Hurin & the Authors and Translators of Each
- The Story Endings:
- Deaths of the Family Members Due to the Curse
- The Wanderings of Hurin
