The Unwritten Pages of Arda: Genealogical Silence, Oral Memory, and Historiographical Depth in Tolkien and Ferdowsi

Abstract

This article argues that genealogical gaps in J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium and Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh are not narrative defects or failures of transmission but formal signs of oral‑historical memory. Drawing on oral‑tradition theory and the long‑standing Iranian debate over Ferdowsi’s sources, the study traces how absence functions as a historiographical device that produces temporal depth, dynastic legitimacy, and interpretive openness. I analyse three types of silence—kings named only by regnal years, kings named without recorded deeds, and contradictory lineages—in Tolkien’s Appendices and Ferdowsi’s dynastic narratives. These gaps are contextualised through medieval Anglo‑Saxon and Irish genealogical practices that Tolkien knew professionally and through the Persian tension between the written Khwadāy‑nāmag and the living naqqāl tradition. The comparison reveals a shared logic: incomplete memory strengthens authority by inviting readers and listeners to become co‑creators of the past. In an age that equates documentation with truth, Tolkien and Ferdowsi offer a counter‑wisdom: the most durable history is not the history that records everything but the history that trusts the listener to complete it. This study thus contributes to comparative epic studies by demonstrating that genealogical silence, far from being a textual flaw, constitutes a formal rhetoric of historical authenticity that crosses cultural and chronological boundaries.