The Silmarillion: Who Speaks? by Dawn Felagund

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Dialogue by Chapter

Ainulindalë 13.3%, Valaquenta 0, Of the Beginning of Days 2.2%, Of Aulë and Yavanna 56.8% ("Of Aule and Yavanna is the chattiest chapter with 57% dialogue and "This chapter is completely manufactured by Christopher," according to Douglas Charles Kane in "Arda Reconstructed," with credit to polutropos for catching this!), Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor 5.1%, Of Thingol and Melian 0, Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalië 0, Of Fëanor and the Unchaining of Melkor 2.8%, Of the Silmarils and the Unrest of the Noldor 15.4%, Of the Darkening of Valinor 4.8%, Of the Flight of the Noldor 24.5%, Of the Sindar 0.8%, Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor 2.4%, Of Men 0, Of the Return of the Noldor 5.5%, Of Beleriand and Its Realms 0, Of the Noldor in Beleriand 46.3%, Of Maeglin 27.6%, Of the Coming of Men into the West 16.7%, Of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin 2.6%, Of Beren and Lúthien 11.6%, Of the Fifth Battle: Nirnaeth Arnoediad 5.1%, Of Túrin Turambar 14.4%, Of the Ruin of Doriath 11.6%, Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin 0, Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath 10.8%, Akallabêth 14.0%, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age 5.5%. Averages: Median is 5.3% and mean is 11% dialogue.

Dialogue does not occur evenly across The Silmarillion. While a little over 5% of the words in The Silmarillion as a whole are used in dialogue, this is very unevenly distributed across the chapters, with some chapters about half dialogue and six chapters containing no dialogue at all.

There is a lot more work to be done to tease out trends and patterns that might have some meaning, but just glancing at the graph above, some of those patterns do begin to emerge. First, dialogue increases as The Silmarillion progresses. In the second half of the book (calculated by chapter, not page or word count), only two chapters have no dialogue and only four chapters (inclusive of those two without dialogue) fall below the median of 5.3% dialogue. Put another way:

  • In the first half of chapters, 71% of chapters are below the median.
  • In the second half of chapters, 29% of chapters are below the median.

Why is this? My tentative theory is that we see the book moving from the realm of the mythic—from events that are passed down through the oral tradition and ancient written traditions—and into the historical, where the narrator has a greater array of sources, including eyewitness testimony, and begins to write with greater immediacy rather than the arm's-length style of myth and ancient history.

What I am curious about: As I dig deeper into these data, will I see this theory bear out in which episodes or characters/groups are granted actual dialogue? In other words, will characters and peoples lost to the mists of time speak less, as I would expect? Or will the type of dialogue (e.g., a formal speech that may have been preserved vs. an extempore conversation that would not) vary based on narrative distance? I have documented in the past that the narrator of The Silmarillion uses the "it is said/told/sung" construction more with characters who are less accessible, so there is evidence that Tolkien manipulated writing style based on what his narrators' access to various sources. Does he use dialogue similarly to communicate that "mythic distance"?

There are also chapters that are more expository in purpose (Valaquenta, "Of Beleriand and Its Realms") that do not contain dialogue. Without digging deeper into the chapters themselves, most of those without dialogue that aren't similarly expository are chapters where the material would be less accessible to Pengolodh as a narrator. Whether this bears added scrutiny remains to be seen!

Finally, in discussing these data on the SWG's Discord, polutropos noticed something interesting, which is that the chapter with the most dialogue—"Of Aulë and Yavanna," where almost 57% of the words of the chapter are given over to dialogue—was not in fact written by Tolkien. As document by Douglas Charles Kane in his book Arda Reconstructed, "This chapter is completely manufactured by Christopher, though using his father's own writings" (page 54). Where Kane usually includes a chart pointing to the source for each bit of The Silmarillion, his chapter on "Of Aulë and Yavanna" contains no such chart because, while he is able to document where ideas came from, Christopher actually wrote the chapter.

Interestingly, "Of the Noldor in Beleriand" is the chapter with the second most dialogue and, according to Kane, "The changes made in this chapter are among the smallest anywhere in the published text" (page 154). So Tolkien does sometimes write dialogue-heavy chapters—though without data to back me up (yet! it's coming!), most of that dialogue appears to come in the form of lengthier speeches, not necessarily the debate/conversation format of Of Aulë and Yavanna."

The biggest impact of the dialogue-heavy "Of Aulë and Yavanna," I suspect, will emerge as I dig more into the data on gender and who speak in The Silmarillion. Yavanna is one of the women who speaks the most in The Silmarillion, but almost all of her dialogue occurs in this chapter. If this chapter is constructed by Christopher, how does that impact the amount of speech women are permitted by Tolkien? Polutropos' observation spurred me to plan to document the source of the various dialogue sections: Are they original to Tolkien's writings or added? Kane, interestingly, is critical of Christopher Tolkien in Arda Reconstructed for what he perceives as Christopher removing women characters from the text. In this instance, we see a significant example of the opposite: a woman's role is not only expanded, but she is given an opportunity to speak.

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