"J.R.R. Tolkien - The History of Middle-Earth - 05" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tolkien J.R.R)

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PREFACE.

This fifth volume of The History of Middle-earth completes the
presentation and analysis of my father's writings on the subject of
the First Age up to the time at the end of 1937 and the beginning of
1938 when he set them for long aside. The book provides all the
evidence known to me for the understanding of his conceptions in
many essential matters at the time when The Lord of the Rings was
begun; and from the Annals of Valinor, the Annals of Beleriand,
the Ainulindale, and the Quenta Silmarillion given here it can
be quite closely determined which elements in the published
Silmarillion go back to that time, and which entered afterwards.
To make this a satisfactory work of reference for these purposes I
have thought it essential to give the texts of the later 193Os in their
entirety, even though in parts of the Annals the development from
the antecedent versions was no'. great; for the curious relations
between the Annals and the Quenta Silmarillion are a primary
feature of the history and here already appear, and it is clearly
better to have all the related texts within the same covers. Only in
the case of the prose form of the tale of Beren and Luthien have I
not done so, since that was preserved so little changed in the
published Silmarillion; here I have restricted myself to notes on
the changes that were made editorially.
I cannot, or at any rate I cannot yet, attempt the editing of my
father's strictly or narrowly linguistic writings, in view of their
extraordinary complexity and difficulty; but I include in this book
the general essay called The Lhammas or Account of Tongues,
and also the Etymologies, both belonging to this period. The
latter, a kind of etymological dictionary, provides historical
explanations of a very large number of words and names, and