Oxonmoot 2024

While Sauron’s most famous First Age appearance in the tale of Beren and Lúthien remained relatively unchanged from Sauron’s introduction in the 1920s until Tolkien’s death, his role in the Legendarium expanded significantly across Tolkien’s lifetime as Sauron became the primary antagonist of two additional Ages of Middle-earth. Utilizing the work of Christopher Tolkien, John D. Rateliff, Douglas Charles Kane, and Joe Abbott, I will examine how this expansion ultimately lead to developments in Sauron’s backstory, characterization, and presentation such that we can, I believe, identify at least two major “Saurons” at work in the wider corpus of Tolkien’s Legendarium—“Saurons” who remained in some ways unsynthesized at the time of Tolkien’s death. I will also explore how competing and unsynthesized aspects of each of these “Saurons” can be identified in otherwise abandoned characters (above and beyond the well-recognized Tevildo) introduced as early as “The Book of Lost Tales.”