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Revision as of 13:48, 22 September 2006
The Children of Húrin is an unfinished tale by J. R. R. Tolkien. Begun in 1918, the tale was never completed by Tolkien before his death. Tolkien's son, Christopher Tolkien, has now completed the tale for publication for the first time as an independent work.
The book is scheduled for publication in 2007, most likely after March, by HarperCollins in the United Kingdom and by Houghton Mifflin in the United States.
The story deals with a Mannish hero of the First Age, Húrin, who is cursed by the Dark Lord Morgoth, and the effect this curse has on his children Túrin Turambar and Nienor.
Synopsis
The story is dark and gloomy, with much less of a positive ending than Lord of the Rings. The Children of Húrin are brave but sometimes rash. Morgoth's traps are subtle and he can trick them into doing the wrong things without intending it. Both elves and dwarves include some much worse characters than the noble elves and dwarves of Lord of the Rings.
The tale has echoes of the Finnish Kalevala story, which Tolkien was certainly familiar with. But in Tolkien's work, it forms part of a set, along with that of Beren and with Túrin's cousin Tuor. Tuor and Túrin have separate fates that oddly compliment each other. It seems likely that Tolkien meant something significant when he had Tuor see Turin during their joint wanderings. Morgoth directs much of his malice against Túrin and seems to overlook Tuor, the indirect cause of his eventual fall.
Concept and creation
A brief version of the story formed the base of chapter XXI of The Silmarillion, setting the tale in the context of the wars of Beleriand. Although based on the same texts used to complete the new book, the Silmarillion account leaves out the greater part of the tale. (The Silmarillion also includes an essay Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, which tells the story of The Lord of the Rings in compressed form, which could serve as a basis for comparison.)
Other incomplete versions have been published in other works:
- The Narn i Chîn Húrin in Unfinished Tales.
- Items in the History of Middle-earth series, notably:
- The Lay of the Children of Húrin, an early narrative poem.
- Prose versions of the Lay (or Húrinssaga), eventually leading to earlier and alternate versions of the Narn, and thus also to the Children of Húrin.
- The Wanderings of Húrin, a prose continuation of the Narn (not included in the other texts).
None of these writings form a complete and mature narrative. It is likely that the new work will draw heavily on these sources.
References
- "Unfinished Tolkien work to be published". Yahoo! News. 2006-09-18. Retrieved 2006-09-18.
- "Son completes unfinished Tolkien". BBC. 2006-09-19. Retrieved 2006-09-19.
- "As they waited, one came through the trees, and they saw he was a tall Man, armed, clad in black, with a long sword drawn; and they wondered, for the blade of the sword was also black, but the edges shon bright and cold. Woe was graven in his face... But they knew not that Nargothrond had fallen, and this was Túrin son of Húrin, the Blacksword. Thus only for a moment, and never again, did the paths of those kinsmen, Túrin and Tuor, draw together" ("Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin", Unfinished Tales).