What If This Housecat Was Actually Really Big?

Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: Beren and Lúthien. One of what Tolkien considered his three ‘Great Tales’ at the heart of the legendarium material that eventually formed versions of The Silmarillion, the story of a man and an elf princess falling in love and going through many adventures of high peril, is arguably Tolkien at his most sweepingly romantic. Openly claimed by Tolkien to have elements inspired by his own courtship of his wife Edith, to the point where their gravestone features the names of the characters on it, it started in the early versions almost as a heightened fairy tale before steadily transforming into the even more epochal version in the final published form of the book. The tale is directly referenced by Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings and his own story of love with Arwen is clearly seen – by many of the characters, not necessarily first time readers – as an afterecho of that romance. What makes the early versions of the story so very fairytale-like, and how much of that can be ascribed to the presence of Tevildo, the Prince of Cats? How much did Tolkien’s valuing of the story as a connection to his own life get matched by Edith’s feelings, as much as we know them at all? When does Tolkien’s own somewhat uneven poetic gift really connect in this story, and how remarkable is it that the story went through various written forms? And just how awesome is Huan? (Answer: very.)