The Round World version is one of the variants of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, published in the final volumes of The History of Middle-earth. In this version, the Earth was always round, and Arda was the name for the whole solar system instead of just the Earth.
In the Round World version the Sun and the Moon were not the fruit of the Two Trees, but actually preceded the creation of the Trees. Instead, the Trees preserved the light of the Sun before it was tainted by Melkor when he ravished Arien.
While this version emerged in the late stage of Tolkien's legendarium, he never entirely decided which version - Flat or Round - to choose as 'real', and while Tolkien was eventually more inclined to use the Round World version, it was never as complete as the Flat World version, and so the latter was chosen by Christopher Tolkien for the published Silmarillion.
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or version:
“After the planet becomes theirs, many millions of years will have to pass before a beetle particularly loved by God, at the end of its calculations will find written on a sheet of paper in letters of fire that energy is equal to the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light. The new kings of the world will live tranquilly for a long time, confining themselves to devouring each other and being parasites among each other on a cottage industry scale.”
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)
“It is never the thing but the version of the thing:
The fragrance of the woman not her self,
Her self in her manner not the solid block,
The day in its color not perpending time,
Time in its weather, our most sovereign lord,
The weather in words and words in sounds of sound.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)