Myths Transformed
the late revision-essays on the Orcs, the Sun, and the shape of Arda (Morgoth's Ring, HoME 10)
Nature
Myths Transformed gathers the late notebook-essays in which Tolkien set out to rethink the very foundations of the mythology: the origin of the Orcs, the nature and courses of the Sun and Moon, and the shape of Arda itself. The tone is of a scholar revising the tenets of his own scripture — nearly every old belief is turned over in the hand, and the changes touch the heart of the Silmarillion.
Contents
The new view of the beginning: Melkor marred all things from the first making of Arda — the world was “a marred world” from its birth; The Sun and the Moon: the old “flat world” and the tale of the Sun as the last fruit of the Trees are reconsidered; the Sun becomes an independent light, and the world a round one; The Orcs: late speculations on how they were made — from captured Elves, from Men, or from beasts tormented into an evil likeness of the embodied peoples — and the note that they breed as other creatures; The re-casting of the old stories as mytho-historical rather than literal record.
Composition
Drawn from Tolkien’s loose notes and essays of c. 1959–1960, Myths Transformed was published as Part Three of Morgoth’s Ring (1993, HoME 10), with Christopher Tolkien’s commentary on how far the revisions would have reshaped the published Silmarillion. It is the fullest evidence of the late turn in Tolkien’s own mythology.