A suggestion by Dawn

[drcodemilich.livejournal.com]

Hey... Um the easiest way to put this is that I am in a history course that requires me to write a 10 page paper, so I chose to write about how J.R.R. Tolkien's work on Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion was impacted by his experience in the trenches. STOP... I am familiar with the fact that he denied this and I am also aware fully that this is a controversial subject; however, I wanted to write about LOTR and the Silmarillion having to do with WW1. I simply need some sources that could lead me into the right direction that are analyzing his work. I am not completely familiar with the Silmarillion so it is my weakest point. It would be great if I could have tips on how to organize my thoughts as to fit the timeline of Tolkien's potential experiences and other's experiences in the trenches with the explanation and analysis of his writing... basically this means I need help fitting a square in a small circle slot. Any kind of suggestions about anything to do with it or sources like interviews, analysis, critics etc. would be awesome. Also if anyone were to be interested a potential interview with someone who is qualified as a scholarly individual with a great understanding of either LOTR or the Silmarillion it would be paradisaical. Thanks to Dawn for the suggestion and if this was not the right place to put this please say so.

-Thanks,
drcodemilich

Comments

[hhimring]

You definitely need to get your hands on that book by John Garth that the others have already mentioned, if you can. He is the acknowledged academic authority on the subject of Tolkien and WWI, as far as I am aware, although he focusses mostly on LOTR rather than on the Silmarillion. He is also still writing and publishing some of it online--but I guess, because of the movie, recent comments are more likely to be on The Hobbit.
As far as I am aware, Tolkien did not deny he was impacted by his experience in the trenches--he merely denied that his work was an allegory of any particular war (and more specifically that LOTR was an allegory of the Second World War, as some people were assuming at the time).
You might perhaps want to have a look at the Fall of Gondolin in the Book of Lost Tales II in History of Middle-Earth. This is an early draft of a later chapter of the Silmarillion and is a detailed description of an attack on a city written a relatively short time after Tolkien returned from the trenches--perhaps the closest you can get in time to events.

[drcodemilich.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the suggestion close to his impact. This will help greatly. Is this it just to confirm http://www.amazon.com/Book-Lost-Tales-History-Middle-Earth/dp/034537522X

[hhimring]

Yes, that's the book. I don't think the pagination will be the same as in my copy (it's a different edition), but the Fall of Gondolin is Chapter III. The notes explain that the original draft goes back to 1916/17 (although it is partly illegible) and that some details of this battle were never written out so fully again as in the early drafts (the published Silmarillion contains what is basically only a summary of this battle).
The most well-known and relevant detail here is the dragons--because in this early version they are half-machine (they seem rather more animal-like in later versions) and it has been suggested that this relates to the war machinery of WWI (although I forget who first suggested this--not Tolkien himself, almost certainly). But there may be more to find, perhaps.

[drcodemilich.livejournal.com]

Out of interest I was looking at the dead marshes and no man's land in WW1 and realized that there I would want a part of Dagorlad (Battle Plains) and more importantly of how it fits as a battle of the "War of the last Alliance". Any idea which of the 12 volumes of the History of Middle-Earth it is in?

[hhimring]

I have to confess I'm not really sure what you are asking me here (and also I'm less familiar with this particular material than the First Age).

If you are looking for earlier drafts of the crossing of the Dead Marshes, these should be in the volume "The War of the Ring" in the section "The Ring Goes East".
If you are looking for earlier versions of the account of the first battle of Dagorlad in Appendix A, that should be in "Peoples of Middle-earth".
The first mention of that battle in LOTR is actually in the Council of Elrond chapter, but I don't know whether it was already mentioned in the earlier drafts. If so, these would be in "The Story Continued" in "The Return of the Shadow", I think. (Also, there's the poem about Gil-Galad, but I'm not sure where that first came in.)

If you want a table of contents of HoME, you can Google the "Mellonath Daeron" page on the Forodrim website (that's what I've just been using; I'm not linking because it would probably trigger a spam filter).

Hope this helps!

[drcodemilich.livejournal.com]

Thanks!