Talk:Sundering of the Elves

Sundering of the Elves has been listed as one of the Language and literature good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
September 9, 2022	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on October 2, 2022.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that Tolkien may have devised the sundering of the Elves to justify the existence of two distinct Elvish languages in his legendarium?

Laiquendi was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 06 January 2012 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Sundering of the Elves. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

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Question

Since almost all of the Elven characters in Tolkien's writings are from kindreds which are counted amongst the Eldar, shouldn't the Eldar be listed first along with the big diagram, and then the Avari section afterwards? Haleth (talk) 14:34, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps; or we get the Avari out of the way first... Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:40, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Backstory up, speculation down, please.

This article would greatly be helped by inserting the original darkness, then the addition of light, into the story, so people could really understand the world the elves lived in, and the significance of "the light", ie: which light.

It would also help to add the kinslaying and a bit of backstory about Morgoth. At this point, the elves are just whooping around pointlessly, which detracts.

I'm also not too keen on the speculation of "scholars" driving the narrative in the lead. Speculation belongs down in a speculation section. Who are we to make definitive statements about how JRR came up with all of this? Nobody, actually.

Sorry, I'd do it myself, but I have multiple concussion problems. Billyshiverstick (talk) 03:18, 2 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your thoughts. There are basically just two kinds if source for this topic: Tolkien as primary, establishing the fiction and occasionally his reasons, and scholars to establish notability and to analyse the structure and meaning, something that Tolkien largely and intentionally avoided. Scholarly analysis is thus integral to the article. The cited scholarship, especially of Shippey and Flieger, is widely accepted by other scholars. On "backstory", there is always a tension between the desire of fans to narrate every minute detail, and the necessity of giving a clear and uncluttered overview for the general reader. On "light", the Two Trees of Valinor are already linked, however. As for the lead, you should be aware that it is a summary of the rest of the article, so each section should be briefly summarized up in the lead section. Chiswick Chap (talk) 04:30, 2 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

But actually, I suspect you have this exactly the wrong way around. Tolkien's love of languages came first; he constructed his languages, Quenya, Sindarin, and all the rest: and then he constructed the Elves and their Sundering to explain how the languages could have come about; and finally, with all that "backstory" in position, he devised wars and the Kinslayings and heroes and pride and Silmarils to explain the long and complicated Sundering. But all of that comes afterwards, and is the subject matter of other articles. We don't usually have Postscripts or anything like that on Wikipedia, but perhaps we can fit something of that sort in here and there. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:39, 3 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Sketch Map of Beleriand.svg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:16, 14 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]