Beren And Lúthien: Chapter Analysis

But this book does not offer a single page of original and unpublished work. What then is the need, now, for such a book? (Beren and Lúthien 11)

That, as a Danish prince once said, is the question. There are, indeed, no words of J. R. R. Tolkien here that have not already appeared in The Silmarillion or The History of Middle-earth, and there are many which have been left out. As Christopher points out in the preface, this particular tale changed dramatically over the years, becoming more and more drawn into the overarching history of the Silmarils, and “to follow the story of Beren and Lúthien, as a single and well-defined narrative, in The History of Middle-earth is therefore not easy” (12). Nevertheless, Tolkien once called this “the chief of the stories of the Silmarillion” (12), and so Christopher has undertaken to give Beren and Lúthien a ‘single and well-defined’ book. In order to understand what Christopher is about, one only needs to look at the ‘Contents’ page of the book. The reader is given a ‘List of Plates,’ a ‘Preface,’ ‘Notes on the Elder Days,’ and then ‘BEREN AND LÚTHIEN.’ One might think from the Contents that ‘BEREN AND …show more content…
After briefly reviewing the ways in which their story became enmeshed with the greater story of the Noldor and the Silmarils, Christopher gives a separate account of the development of ‘The Fate of Beren and Lúthien.’ He discusses Tolkien’s earliest ideas about the death and potential rebirth of elves in order to explain the special dispensation granted to elven Beren and Tinúviel in “The Tale of Tinúviel.” In “The Quenta Noldorinwa,” the fate is imposed by Mandos on Beren the Man and Lúthien daughter of Melian, but later Silmarillion drafts turn that fate into a choice — first for Beren and Lúthien together, later for Lúthien alone. The ‘Choice of Lúthien’ is echoed in the choice of Arwen, and so it is valuable to be able to see its development set out in one