The Children of Húrin
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| Author | J. R. R. Tolkien & Christopher Tolkien |
|---|---|
| Publisher | HarperCollins in the UK Houghton Mifflin in the USA |
| Released | 2007 |
The Children of Húrin (2007) is a forthcoming completion of a tale by J. R. R. Tolkien. Begun in 1918 and revised several times, 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.
Contents |
[edit] Overview (non-spoiler)
The book is scheduled for publication on 16 April 2007,<ref name="news1">"Unfinished Tolkien work to be published", Yahoo! News, 2006-09-18. Retrieved on 2006-09-18. (in English)</ref><ref name="news2">"Son completes unfinished Tolkien", BBC, 2006-09-19. Retrieved on 2006-09-19. (in English)</ref> by HarperCollins in the United Kingdom and by Houghton Mifflin in the United States.
The story deals with a hero of the First Age, Húrin, of the race of Men, who is cursed by the Dark Lord Morgoth, and the effect this curse has on his children Túrin Turambar and Nienor.
- The Children of Húrin takes the reader back to a time long before The Lord of the Rings, in an area of Middle-earth that was to be drowned before ever Hobbits appeared, and when the great enemy was still the fallen Vala, Morgoth, and Sauron only his lieutenant. This heroic romance is the tale of the Man, Húrin, who dared to defy Morgoth's force of evil, and his family's tragic destiny, as it follows his son Túrin Turambar's travails through the lost world of Beleriand.(The Tolkien Estate)
[edit] Plot summary
The story is dark and gloomy, with much less of a positive ending than The 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 wrong things without their intending it. Both the Elves and the Petty-dwarves in the story include some much worse characters than the noble Elves and Dwarves of The Lord of the Rings.
The tale has echoes of the Finnish Kalevala story, with which Tolkien was very familiar. In Tolkien's work, however, The Children of Húrin forms part of a set, along with the tales of Beren and of Túrin's cousin Tuor. Tuor and Túrin have separate fates that oddly complement each other. It seems likely that Tolkien meant something significant when he had Tuor see Túrin during their joint wanderings.<ref name="Turin">"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).</ref> Morgoth directs much of his malice against Túrin and seems to overlook Tuor, the indirect cause of his eventual fall.
The relationship between the siblings Túrin and Nienor has a few elements similar to that of Siegmund and Sieglinde in the story of Die Walküre.
[edit] 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.
[edit] References
<references/>
[edit] External links
- Interview about the book with Adam Tolkien, in Spanish but with an English version at the bottom of the page.
- Statement about the book by the Tolkien Estate
- HarperCollins page for Tolkien's books
| Published during his lifetime: | The Hobbit • The Lord of the Rings • The Adventures of Tom Bombadil • The Road Goes Ever On |
| Posthumous publications: | The Silmarillion • Unfinished Tales • The History of Middle-earth (12 volumes) • Bilbo's Last Song • The Children of Húrin |
|---|---|
| Lists of articles: | By category • By name • Writings • Characters • Peoples • Rivers • Realms • Ages |
