The Chronology of The Lord of the Rings
The Chronology of The Lord of the Rings is a 130-page scholarly article published in Tolkien Studies 19 Supplement on 31 July 2022, edited and commentated by William Cloud Hicklin.
The article presents J.R.R. Tolkien's full set of manuscripts of the time-scheme, or "Chronology", that underlies the planning of The Lord of the Rings. There are multiple versions of the time-schemes, the final version contains 14 pages. It is this version that is fully transcribed, and provided with extensive notes in the article. Hicklin also provided an introduction and an in-depth commentary that traces the evolution of the Chronology.
Some excerpts from the Chronology have been quoted in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion (2005). Photocopies of the Chronology's final-version manuscripts were afterwards published in The Art of the Manuscript (2022). But many of the draft-version manuscripts are presented exclusively in this work.
Manuscript pages
In the final-version Chronology, 9 out of 14 pages are in grids, 5 are linear.
The time period covered in each page is as follows:
- page 1: 22 September, S.R. 1418 - 15 October
- page 2: 16 October - 15 January, S.R. 1419
- page 3: 15 January - 22 January
- page 4: 23 January - 16 February
- page 5: 17 February - 25 February
- page 6: 26 February - 29 February
- page 7: 30 February - 3 March
- page 13: 14 August - 22 September
New information
The Chronology provides new insights that do not appear in the published books. For example, concerning the fate of Shagrat, Orc Captain of the Tower of Cirith Ungol, it is stated that on Saturday March 17th,
- "Shagrat brings the mithril coat and other spoils to Barad-dȗr; but is slain by Sauron".
Another hidden fact shows that, while the Fellowship is resting in Lothlórien on Tuesday, January 24th, Gollum lurks on the borders of that country; and there he is captured by Uglúk and the Isengarders. The Chronology entry reads under the heading Gollum:
- "Gollum captured by Uglúk, but escapes after revealing that Hobbits of Shire were with Gandalf, and enough is said to make Uglúk certain that Ring was with the Company".
While under the heading of Enemies it reads:
- "Isengarders capture Gollum, and torment him for news. Uglúk sends news to Isengard of Hobbits; but not of the Ring".[1]
Editors' introduction
This special issue, published between our regular annual volumes, is entirely devoted to a single scholarly work: William Cloud Hicklin’s textual edition and commentary of “The Chronology of The Lord of the Rings.” The sheer size, as well as the importance, of this work suggested this special treatment of it. Our grateful thanks go to Mr. Hicklin for giving us the opportunity to add to the mosaic of Middle-earth this essential and heretofore missing piece. It is a look behind the scenes at the painstaking planning that went into one of the most salient features of Tolkien’s great work: that back-and-forth switching among interconnecting narratives which Richard C. West called its “interlace” structure. The word describes a medieval narrative device meant to mirror “the flux of events . . . where everything is happening at once” (West 79). Such attention to detail gives reality to a world, especially a fantastical sub-created one that has to command belief instead of relying on it.
External links
References
- ↑ Fliss, William M. (2017), "Things That Were, and Things That Are, and Things That Yet May Be: The J.R.R. Tolkien Manuscript Collection at Marquette University", marquette.edu (accessed 19 April 2024)
