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The Silmarillion, Vol. 1
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The Silmarillion tells of the Elder Days, of the First Age of Tolkien's World, when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle Earth, and the High Elves made war upon them for the recovery of the Silmarils, the jewels containing the pure light of Valinor.  It is to this ancient drama that the characters in The Lord of the Rings so often look back to.Before the world began, the startling beauty of the Holy Ones awakened into song.  The sound, like countless choirs, became an ever-changing melody.  It was the music of the Ainur that set the world spinning within the endless habitation of space.  Music filled the earth with air and fire and water; stone and silver and gold; vast halls and spaces.  And Music it was that caused the Children of Invatar, Men and Elves, to be born.Of the Elven races, it was the Noldor, the most skilled of Elves in Earthlore, who first achieved the power of making gems.  And it was the great Elf FÙanor who made the Silmarils, the fairest of all gems, long since lost.  Kept within the Silmarils was the glory of the light of the Two Trees of Valinor, long after the Trees themselves were poisoned by the greed of the first Dark Lord Morgoth.  These three great living jewels were hallowed so no mortal flesh nor anything evil may touch them.  But deep within His fortress underground, the Dark Lord lusted after them.  The peaceful days of Valinor were numbered, and despite the revolt of the Elves, the Dark Lord triumphed.  As was His wish, Elves and Men became estranged.  Those of the Elven race waned and faded and men usurped the sunlight....The Silmarillion, considered to be Tolkien's most important work, is the story of the creation of the world and the happenings of the First Age, clearly setting the stage for all his other works. With a superb performance by Martin Shaw, this first installment of three volumes will thrill and delight Tolkien fans of all ages, and listeners will treasure this extraordinary presentation for years to come.

Audio CD

Publisher: Random House Audio; Abridged edition (July 1, 1998)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0553455826

ISBN-13: 978-0553455823

Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 0.9 x 4.9 inches

Shipping Weight: 6.7 ounces

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #4,755,085 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #40 in Books > Books on CD > Authors, A-Z > ( T ) > Tolkien, J.R.R. #1006 in Books > Books on CD > Literature & Fiction > Religious #1007 in Books > Books on CD > Religion & Spirituality > Fiction

In the Tolkien canon, THE SILMARILLION is the most highly contested of all his works. Constructed as a prehistoric history of the Universe, the book has the cultural significance of the Bible in Tolkien's universe. It is Tolkien's primary work, but it's also his most troublesome, in more ways than one. One thing you need to know. In Tolkien scholarship, there are two primary ways to refer to the "Silmarillion". One is the Silmarillion, the legendarium proper, and then the 1977 SILMARILLION, which may or may not be what Tolkien envisioned.THE SILMARILLION, the book Tolkien spent all of his adult life writing, was, sadly, incomplete when Tolkien died at the age of eighty one in 1973. Naturally, this begs the question why did it take him decades to write the book, and it still be unfinished after all that time? Well, to understand that, you need to understand two things: the scope of the project, and how Tolkien worked.The scope of the book was a complete imaginary history, a totally self-contained mythology, all written and developed for his home country, England (my home country as well). Imagine the Greek and Roman mythologies, all those myths and gods, developed by one man. Imagine Homer completely inventing all the gods for his stories. Imagine how hard that would be to come up with your own mythological traditions as such. No wonder Tolkien had such a hard time completing the work.Now, the scope (which is extremely ambitious for any artist) was compounded by how Tolkien worked. First, he was a philologist first and foremost, and so before the stories he invented languages. All of these languages (which would have taken a life-time to develop on their own) had their own history, and are so interlocked with the mythology that you cannot remove them.

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