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PotbellyHairyfoot

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Events Generally considered to be Canon
on: January 30, 2016 07:44

We have a thread for works considered canon, but what about events that take place outside of LOTR and The Hobbit' Can events only covered in other works be considered canon?
For example, would you consider the Description of Numenor to be canon? What about the tales connected to Numenor?
How about the description of the events leading to Aragorn sailing up the Anduin to relieve Minas Tirith?
The Battle of the Fords of Isen?

I'd like to make a list of events generally considered to have actually taken place as described in the Sil, Unfinished Tales, HOME etc.

[Edited on 02/02/2016 by PotbellyHairyfoot]

Evil~Shieldmaiden

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on: January 30, 2016 10:46

As Christopher Tolkien gathered the information from his father's notes and writings, I tend to consider The History of Middle-earth, The Book of Lost Tales, Tales From the Perilous Realm, and The Unfinished Tales as canon although, admittedly, they can be rather confusing and contradictory:

IMHO, if you're going to really understand The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, these books provide excellent resource material, especially some biographical information; which is sadly lacking in the three main books. Tolkien's letters are also an excellent source of information.

Gandolorin

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on: January 31, 2016 03:29

The Book of Lost Tales parts 1 and 2 are very certainly no longer canon in their settings, having been rejected by JRRT himself for obvious reasons. For the rest of what has been published regarding Middle-earth since RoTK (which I have called a massive extension of the Appendices elsewhere - including the Silmarillion), I would consider it canon and apocryphal (there are many apocryphal gospels around that never made it into what is now the New Testament). Stretching apocryphal close to or perhaps past its breaking point, even BoLT 1 and 2 could fit in.

Evil~Shieldmaiden

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on: January 31, 2016 08:12

I bow to your superior knowledge on this subject, Gando. I have to confess it's been a while since I read The Book of Lost Tales - Pts 1 and 2.

I would also recommend the Silmarillion Guide in Elrond's Library as an excellent source of information. (I would place a link here, but I can't figure out how to do it.

anyone?

Gandolorin

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on: February 01, 2016 04:35

Evil~Shieldmaiden said:... it's been a while since I read The Book of Lost Tales - Pts 1 and 2.

Same here. But I remember that he tried to make England identical to Tol Eressëa (so where does that leave the Picts, Scots and Welsh?) The biggest problem (if you leave geography aside) was identifying the English with the Anglo-Saxons. So how did the builders of Stonehenge, the Celts, and the Romans ever get there before Hengist and Horsa?
On a humorous note, I would suggest that JRRT abandoned the idea after Ulmo and Ossë went ballistic after he explained the details of all this island-shifting involved.

PotbellyHairyfoot

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on: February 01, 2016 05:04

I tend to look at an event and if it doesn't conflict with what we know from the original works. I see no problem with considering it as canon.
When there is more than one version, I'll pick the one I like most, just for myself, but I don't really see a way to decide what is canon.

I like to think that Christopher Tolkien was carefully expanding the canon details when publishing, and let us know when there were issues.
Right now I'm skimming the Unfinished Tales and I think that I can consider it to be pretty much a collection of canonical (is that a word) tales.
I do see some conflicts but i can usually reason around them. For example, when Pippin looked at the palantir, it was luckily arranged so that he could peer through it. That or there was some force (similar to a magnetic field) that caused the palantiri to naturally align themselves unless deliberately forced out of position.

[Edited on 02/01/2016 by PotbellyHairyfoot]

Gandolorin

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on: February 02, 2016 03:38

As I wrote above, BoLT 1 and 2 were quite firmly rejected by JRRT as far as the setting goes. But as CRT notes again and again, wording in the tales told in the rejected setting occasionally / often survived into published works. This is what ultimately made the Silmarillion published by CRT so difficult to compile. Fitting scenes into surroundings they were not really originally written for, being written in different decades and with different conceptions, shifting right up to JRRT's death. So, especially in comparison with the highly polished LoTR, the Sil , never mind UT and HoME, will look like a rough, ill-fitting conglomerate.
On a humorous note, I will repeat what I have posted elsewhere here on CoE: had JRRT been granted the life-span of Elros - 500 years - our far descendants in the 2380s might still be drumming their fingers on diverse surfaces, waiting for the ultimately canonical version of the Silmarillion!

Elthir

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on: February 11, 2016 12:26

I think canon would need to be considered before considering canonical events... so in my opinion: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The Road Goes Ever On, and the map section of the Pauline Baynes Map are all canon. That is, author published or author "authorized" publications (Tolkien helped with the map).

Not only do I think that these are the works that "most" people would agree upon, or have agreed upon (in my experience), as being canon, but I think even Tolkien himself treats these works differently, as he must.

All else is private material from Tolkien's point of view, much of it abandoned, unfinished (in various degrees) and still subject to "easy revision" (revision that has no real impact on the inner reality of the subcreated, secondary world), and even subject to memory loss. I break the following paragraph for my emphasis...

'These late writings are notable for the many wholly new elements that entered the 'legendarium'; and also for the number of departures from earlier work on the Matter of the Elder Days.

It may be suggested that whereas my father set great store by consistency at all points with The Lord of the Rings and the Appendices, so little concerning the First Age had appeared in print that he was under far less constraint. I am inclined to think, however, that the primary explanation of these differences lies rather in his writing largely from memory.

The histories of the First Age would always remain in a somewhat fluid state so long as they were not fixed in published work; and he certainly did not have all the relevant manuscripts clearly arranged and set out before him. But it remains in any case an open question, whether (to give a single example) in the essay Of Dwarves and Men he had definitely rejected the greatly elaborated account of the houses of the Edain that had entered the Quenta Silmarillion in about 1958, or whether it had passed from his mind.'

Christopher Tolkien, Foreword, The Peoples of Middle-Earth

The Silmarillion would remain in a "somewhat" fluid state because Tolkien had himself published some things concerning the Elder Days. Arguably he had become emotionally attached to various notions, but generally speaking, as a whole this text could be revised in major and minor ways without undermining the "spell" cast on the reader, again the spell concerning the inner consistency of reality writers naturally strive for.

Do the legends have to be wholly consistent? No, and it's my belief they were not meant to be, but in my opinion that measure is up to Tolkien himself. All the more importantly, I think, since Tolkien desired a measure of inconsistency, that we readers not "over pepper" his soup.

I don't believe Christopher Tolkien published all these private draft works to undermine author published accounts. I do believe he probably expected that readers would add to what they believe is part of the legendarium... "true" in that sense. For example a poem about a troll baking bread for a Hobbit is part of the legendarium... meaning it's just as canon as Gandalf's Elvish name being Mithrandir... it just might arguably not be "true" as much as a product of Hobbit whimsy, however.

late for an important date

So what of the piles of posthumously published draft material? When something conflicts, or arguably conflicts, with author published material, I leave it by the wayside. No matter how late it is, it's no more "true" for me than Strider's name also being "Trotter" (as it was in The Lord of the Rings drafts).

I think the next weight of measure is lateness of date, where dating can be known. Christopher Tolkien, as expected, always tried to clarify this as best he could, and for me this is simple common sense with respect to the natural creative process: a writer writes A, revises to B... even if B is written five minutes later, or five years later, unless there is compelling evidence (subjective as that is) to say otherwise, then idea B is "what really happened".

Granted, "memory" may (or may not) be an issue here, as Christopher Tolkien notes above, but to my mind it hardly matters much unless already published material is involved. For example Tolkien is "free" to forget Feanor had seven sons and the inner consistency of reality is not undermined... how can it be if the reader has no idea there ever were seven sons.

Of course (still in theory) we might find seven sons in posthumously published draft material, but that's not what the author himself chose to let you know (again if in theory he published five). If the reader has already imagined that Feanor has seven sons however, because some author published account already said so, then even Tolkien -- though obviously he still can decide to change seven to five -- still "must" treat this matter differently, or drop the revision all together...

... a perfect example being Tolkien's late essay on how the word ros, if Beorian, fits into the history... but here Tolkien remembered that he had already published that ros was a Sindarin word, not a Mannish word, and so he wrote "most of this fails upon the essay.

Even a late essay largely failed because a detail (and a detail some readers would likely never have noticed) had already been published. Sindarin ros was a "fact" already on bookshelves for a once and future readership, and Tolkien decided that this was not an area where he wanted inconsistency.

But the important point for me is, if ros as a Sindarin word had never been published, then the consideration "to revise or not" would hardly need to be asked. If nobody believed ros was Sindarin in the first place, who cares if Tolkien forgot he had once stated so in draft texts.

Why would Tolkien even need to care? It would have no impact.

There are other considerations here of course, but for now, these are some of my opinions.

Gandolorin

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on: February 11, 2016 04:09

I would also consider The Silmarillion canon. To limit what the author has authorized as canon flies in the face of the history of the holy books of the three Abrahamic religions, books taken extremely - and occasionally, excessively, often quite selectively - seriously by their respective adherents. Neither the Hebrew Tanakh, nor the Christian New Testament, nor the Muslim Quran were given their written canonical form by their original authors. So who are we to quibble that The Silmarillion does not bear the stamp of imprimatur by the great man JRRT himself?

The Sil plus HoME bear the most resemblance to the New Testament, which has quite a few apocryphal writings surrounding it (though the Ainulindalë, and perhaps the Valaquenta, has usually been compared to the Old Testament - mostly Genesis, I would guess). The difference is that source material and apocryphal writings - and of course the commentaries by CRT (perhaps vaguely to be compared to the Talmud and the Hadith) far exceed the canonical text in volume.

I find HoME so fascinating because here we can read, follow the development of a mythology in a way we never could for any mythologies that have actually developed in real life. The Middle High German Nibelungenlied is a case in point, with some scraps of history, combining at least two mythological traditions previously unconnected. JRRT's The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrun edited by CRT actually draws on older sources than those finding their way into the Nibelungenlied. And of course Beowulf caused generations of critics fits as they pined for more historical background that they felt the author could have given but skimmed over to concentrate on those childish monsters - at least until JRRT set them straight with his legendary 1936 lecture.

Elthir

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on: February 11, 2016 11:34

For myself I can't agree with considering the constructed Silmarillion canon, nor do I find Christopher Tolkien treating it as canon, or "the" version. In his Foreword to The War of the Jewels he states that ".... the published work is not in any way a completion, but a construction devised out of existing materials" and even says that there are "aspects of the work that I view with regret"

But it's not only not a completion "in any way" but we are not dealing with holy books nor even the primary world here, but an artistic creation from one mind. I think it's legitimate enough to compare the Subcreated World of the Legendarium to Primary World works, in one way at least...

... but in what way or sense can we compare these things and, in my opinion, still give Tolkien's art its due respect? I think a comparison to Primary World legends and myths, like the Volsunga Saga or the Arthurian cycle is legitimate when one considers those Tolkienian texts that were arguably meant by the author to represent different perspectives, different authors and variant "truths"... just like certain Primary World works do.

For example The Akallabeth is arguably a mixed version of the fall of Numenor [a mixed Mannish and Elvish source, see Christopher Tolkien's commentary in Sauron Defeated] while The Drowning of Anadune is a Mannish version, with purposed differences built in. However The Fall of Numenor, as written before The Lord of the Rings was even begun, is an abandoned draft, no more "true" (as intended by Tolkien) than Strider's "alternate" title was Trotter.

To add the abandoned early version of the fall of Numenor is peppering Tolkien's soup for him in a way that, in my opinion, takes no consideration for the true artistic process behind these works. Trotter is out, Strider is in.

Or for another example, both competing versions of the history of the Elessar [Unfinished Tales] are "true", in that both are part of the internal legendarium; and the third reference to the green jewel in Quenta Silmarillion is but another rejected version if it pre-dates the "double tale" in Unfinished Tales*. Or that is, the reader has no great reason to think otherwise, in any case.

*which if I recall correctly, it does

[Edited on 02/12/2016 by Elthir]

tarcolan

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on: February 12, 2016 02:56

Link to the
Silmarillion Guide in Elrond's Library

Hangman Helper program

Gandolorin

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on: February 12, 2016 06:35

Elthir, what we are posting here is comparable to theological professors arguing about, for the normal adherents to the three Abrahamic religions, arcane to incomprehensible fine points. I feel confident in stating that The Silmarillion (past the 2 million mark in sales at least 15 years ago) has far, far outsold the twelve books of HoME. For 99.9 % of the readers of JRRT's books, they know of (fewer have read all three) the Big Three: LoTR, Hobbit, Silmarillion. Try trotting the name Trotter (sorry, I couldn't resist) past an immensely large portion of those who have read LoTR, and what response do you think you will get? And this is LoTR!

For the Silmarillion, my feeling is vaguely ambivalent regarding the proportion of "mere" adherents to "theological professors". For pretty much everyone who hat commented on it, it is the book that separates the - wheat from the chaff, men from the boys, choose your own comparison.

I see two possibilities. A majority of those who have battled their way through it feel elated, but also exhausted by the effort. They may even - probably - re-read it later. But enough is enough.

(And there are those who never got through it, or were put off by it.)

Or a majority, and even they will certainly have felt a bit of exhaustion, had their appetite whetted for more Appendices to LoTR (which is what I have called the Sil, UT, HoME and later books). My Book of Lost Tales parts 1 and 2 paperbacks stem from 1986, and I collected the following ten books all over Europe (an vacation in Ireland produced a big haul) up to "The Peoples of Middle-earth" of 1996.

My guess is that the first possibility with "enough is enough" is the far more likely. In that sense, whatever one of us, or even CRT, states, several million readers of The Silmarillion will give us an "ahh - whatever" look and shrug. To them, The Silmarillion is canon.

Elthir

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on: February 12, 2016 08:24

Well I don't believe it is comparable, for the reasons I already stated above. Primary World Religious texts and mythic fiction from the mind of one man are hardly the same thing in my opinion.

And you're probably right, many people have read the constructed Silmarillion and little to nothing of other sources, so they will say "whatever" and shrug. Yes they might, but I fail to see how that makes the 1977 Silmarillion "canon" when the author of the book never intended it to be, nor was it written by the one mind that invented Middle-earth.

Christopher Tolkien has provided readers with the true state of the Silmarillion (in shortened form, his personal version is longer), at least as best he can. It's out there for folks to read. If they prefer the constructed "reader's version", which has a different impact on the reader, very well, but that doesn't alter its nature.

If Guy Kay put together a more popular version with the Tolkien Estate on board, would that supersede the 1977 version? As the legends of the Elder Days truly exist they are not finished, some parts not even being updated by the author beyond the Qenta Noldorinwa of 1930!

Not to mention the outright invention concerning Thingol's death and the Nauglamir, parts of which have no foundation in any text Tolkien himself wrote (as Christopher Tolkien admits, and regrets).

That many people don't know or care about what's in The History of Middle-Earth series, or other sources, isn't a very good way to answer this question in my opinion.

[Edited on 02/12/2016 by Elthir]

Gandolorin

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on: February 12, 2016 11:15

As regards Primary World Religious texts, I have 16 books by the Swiss-born Catholic theologian Hans Küng, whom I consider to be the greatest Christian theologian of the second half of the 20th century and at least ten years beyond that. Now that puts me at total odds with the Roman Curia, my opinion of whom is not fit for a PG-13 site. For any further discussion of this, I would suggest we switch to the PM function of this site.

As for "mythic fiction from the mind of one man", no man (or woman) has done anything remotely comparable to what JRRT did. To quote from the blurb on the back of my 1986 reprint Silmarillion, "How, given little over half a century of work, did one man become the creative equivalent of a people." The Guardian.

"Primary World Religious texts and mythic fiction from the mind of one man are hardly the same thing in my opinion." Agreed, with the comments from above. His mythic fiction was far better, IMO (and I accept the fact that this statement of mine may very well have set him spinning in his grave at Wolvercote Catholic cemetery near Oxford).

Elthir

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on: February 12, 2016 10:25

I don't see any need to switch to PM, as we are on topic having a nice civil conversation.

And yes, if one text puts you at odds with the other to some degree (your recent religious example), that's fine... again it's comparable to a flat world text [or seemingly so] in the mixed tradition of the Akallabeth, versus the round world text of the Mannish Drowning of Anadune...

... or comparable to the Mannish Silmarillion myth of the Sun and Moon hailing from Two Trees at the awakening of Men, versus the Elfin's child tale of the awakening of the Quendi, in which the Sun exists before the Elves awaken [The Peoples of Middle-Earth].

Tolkien intended to construct a legendarium that reflects Primary World texts that don't entirely match up. I think this is also a factor, if to a lesser degree, when we compare what is stated in the Annalistic traditions, The Annals of Aman and The Grey Annals versus the Quenta Silmarillion which covers the same historical ground (even though they appeared to merge in style, and Christopher Tolkien drew from both traditions to construct his Silmarillion).

But that's very different from stating that the constructed Silmarilion is canon, while these texts from The History of Middle-Earth, or other posthumously published sources, are not...

... and actually it seems to me that doing so, in one sense, undermines the very idea of diversity of perspective and authorship that Tolkien had in mind. I have argued that in the 1960s Tolkien "ratified" The Drowning of Anadune as it stood, as it illustrated exactly the kind of "garbled" diversity the Legendarium needed to make it seem more real.

Of course one could claim the same thing about my characterization, but that's because I mark off author-published works as a notable distinction, necessary to weed out conflicting draft texts that have no evidence of being purposed variations. When weighing in what to add to my personal legendarium however, I embrace the diversity, but not without considering the full art of Subcreation.

But others [seem to] go so much the opposite route as to include almost everything Tolkien put to paper, which is clearly not the author's intent, and essentially invents contradiction [seemingly sometimes rationalized by the very sweeping "just like certain primary world legends" or similar] in large heaps where none was ever really intended.

There's a fine art to what Tolkien was doing in creating a legendarium that seemed to hail from a people, and to not try to recognize, and make distinct, just what was rejected draft from purposed diversity... well in my opinion one might as well toss in that Aragorn "really" had two names, in one "tradition" Trotter, in another "Strider".

That too takes no consideration of draft text versus author published text, it's just arguably more obvious as Tolkien himself published one but not the other.

Published

If Tolkien had himself published his Silmarillion, I think most people would consider it canonical.

[Edited on 02/13/2016 by Elthir]

Gandolorin

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on: February 14, 2016 04:06

Elthir said:I don't see any need to switch to PM, as we are on topic having a nice civil conversation.

Yes, but discussing Primary World Religious texts would be off-topic. And Hans Küng's criticisms of parts of these text, more so the commentary surrounding them, might offend adherents who view any criticism of their Primary World dogmas as heretical. A view I reject severely.

As to JRRT canon, a hypothetical question: supposing CRT had published The Silmarillion as is, but had left it at that, and the information he elaborated in HoME (in a wider sense than "just" the twelve books) had never become known, would there be any discussion of The Silmarillion being canon or not? My vote is for no.

Elthir

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on: February 14, 2016 09:57

Fair enough, but for myself I never intended to go into the particulars of the religious texts, in PM or here, as to my mind the general comparison has aspects of "apples and origins".

Late pun alert

As to your question, I would say certainly yes given Christopher Tolkien's own commentary in his Silmarillion Foreword, including references to the difficulties of the concluding chapters, which "... were in some respects in serious disharmony with more developed conceptions in other parts of the book."

In any case questions arose, and I think naturally so given the brevity of the Foreword as well as what it reveals. Christopher Tolkien quoted Professor Randel Helms, in Tolkien and the Silmarils, where he (R. Helms) asks which version will the critic approach as the real story?

And in my opinion the question would arise in forums like these too, and I think some would, at the very least, question the canonicity of the work -- possibly even more so than today, given that if all else were author-published texts, how much more would the posthumously published Silmarillion stick out by comparison?

Some seem to question the canonicity of The Hobbit even, given the bare fact that they know it began as a tale for Tolkien's children, and wasn't originally intended to be part of "Middle-earth".

Back to the Elder Days, granted the theoretical discussions couldn't go very far without The History of Middle-Earth sources in the larger sense, but even if so, to toss up the hands and shrug because people would never know the true state of the work doesn't seem (to me) like a great reason to stamp canon on the constructed Silmarillion.

It would essentially be the only version that readers could discuss in detail, yes (well, outside of the material already in print of course), but more generally speaking I think it would always have a dubious shadow cast over it.

And perhaps my argument that the Vanyar cannot be mostly golden haired would arguably go smoother, given what Tolkien himself published about the dark-haired Eldar.

[Edited on 02/15/2016 by Elthir]

Gandolorin

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on: February 15, 2016 05:50

Elthir said:... Some seem to question the canonicity of The Hobbit even, given the bare fact that they know it began as a tale for Tolkien's children, and wasn't originally intended to be part of "Middle-earth"...

Yes, when push comes to shove there really is only one canonical book: the long-gestating and brilliantly polished and consistent LoTR, never characterized more accurately than by C.S. Lewis's "Like lightning from a clear sky ...", from perhaps the unlikeliest and most unexpected of authors, with an unrivaled professional and private-hobby background. A book the likes of which we shall never see again, as the professional background is not taught nor studied anymore even in Oxbridge, and without this the private-hobby background can no longer germinate, never mind flourish.
OK, I'll fess up, this the smiley Evil~Shieldmaiden declares to by my "alter-ego":

As is obvious, your claim to it is at very least as strong as mine; though there is a word in the link which might give me back a slight lead: "/grandpa_".

But on the other hand, anyone claiming the Hobbit - and I mean first edition - "... wasn't originally intended to be part of "Middle-earth"... " is also asking for trouble: Elrond; the mention of Gondolin, Orcrist, Glamdring; Moria; Durin; the Necromancer ...

True, JRRT worked on TH to bring it into closer agreement with LoTR - the second edition is from 1951, three years before the LoTR was published - and apparently a bit of an accident.

But if you want to split split hairs, the 1966 second edition of the LoTR (third edition of TH in the same year) also involved some rewriting - that bothersome Primary World intruding with some copyright issues precipitated by the Ace Books pirate paperback version, if I remember correctly.

To repeat one of my favorite views (other CoE members are rolling their eyes and groaning at the repetition): JRRT really only has one work - a magnum opus if there ever was one - and everything else he ever wrote concerning Middle-earth is an expansion of the Appendices - including a "prequel" appendix as far as the publishing date goes; and contrary to the opinion Tom Shippey voiced in one of his books on JRRT about the term "prequel", the great man actually used the term himself at least once, without any signs of revulsion.

'nuff babbled for today!

[Edited on 02/15/2016 by Gandolorin]

Elthir

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on: February 15, 2016 10:00

Hmm, well as I say some seem to question the canonicity of The Hobbit ...

... not me though

And the argument baffles me actually, as the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings ratifies the original Hobbit as the translator's version of Bilbo's tale:

"This account Bilbo set down in his memoirs, and he seems never to have altered it himself, not even after the Council of Elrond. Evidently it still appeared in the original Red Book, as it did in several copies and abstracts."

The Fellowship of the Ring

To me it doesn't get much more canon than that, an "internal" reference to an internal version of the story! Bilbo's version conflicts with The Lord of the Rings? Yes, but so what. It's supposed to, if not originally from an external perspective.

Which version is true? Most people (if not all) would probably answer the version from The Lord of the Rings, but that in no way changes the internal nature of The Hobbit, the "author's" own published characterization of the original book.

The Lord of the Rings contains variations and seeming discord too, especially between first and second editions. Again no matter: once Tolkien publishes them the variations become internal for me, just like with the first, second, and third edition Hobbit.

In my opinion some confuse "canonicity" with internal truth, and I understand why, but I think we must keep the distinction. I already used the bread baking troll as an example...

... but for a different one from The Lord of the Rings: after leaving Moria Gimli appears to misremember that he had slain orcs at the breaking of the fellowship (which I would say seems more than likely given the description in the book), or Frodo misremembered his words when he wrote the account. Or some later scribe messed up. Or even if we blame "Tolkien as translator", which is at least an internal kind of blame, Gimli either did, or did not, slay orcs at that point; both things cannot be true within the world of Middle-earth.

My guess is Tolkien probably slipped up there. So for an arguably better example...

... do you (anyone) believe the Dwarvish tale that one of the Seven came from the Elves and not Sauron? No offense to the Dwarves, but that claim seems a bit misty to me. Externally, Tolkien, in my opinion, is again purposely playing with internal perspective and authorship. Why would the Elves give the Dwarves an Elven Ring of Power, one of the Great Rings even?

As a gift? Maybe.

If forced to decide, I would probably tip the scales that a certain version of this history became the preferred version among some Dwarves -- they weren't wholly duped by Sauron after all...

... not like all nine Men were

[Edited on 02/16/2016 by Elthir]

Gandolorin

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on: February 16, 2016 03:30

Elthir said:... but for a different one from The Lord of the Rings: after leaving Moria Gimli appears to misremember that he had slain orcs at the breaking of the fellowship ...

Now unless Gimli left Moria again at some later time and you mean this later occasion (of which I have no memory), he cannot remember anything about the breaking of the fellowship at Rauros, which at this time is still several weeks in the future! Moria is before, Rauros after Lórien.

Elthir

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on: February 16, 2016 11:43

Heheh... [cough] my explanation wasn't brightly worded

I'll try again. At some point Gimli says something like: I've hewed nothing but wood since Moria. Although technically he said this after leaving Moria, it was of course also after the breaking of the fellowship.

Anyway the point was that even The Lord of the Rings contains some mistakes, or let's say, things that make the reader go hmmm. And this brings up a perfect example: in 1958 Rhona Beare asked Tolkien why Glorfindel rides with "bridle and bit" and saddle, when Elves ride without these things. Tolkien answered:

Question 1: I could, I suppose, answer: "a trick-cyclist can ride a bicycle with handle-bars!" But actually bridle was casually and carelessly used for what I suppose should have been called a headstall. Or rather since bit was added (I 221) long ago (chapter 1, 12 was written very early) I had not considered the natural ways of Elves with animals (...) but Glor. would certainly not use a bit. I will change bridle and bit to headstall.

JRRT, letter 211

So which is arguably the better answer? The first is an internal approach at least (Elves can ride both ways), and requires no changes, though it might not do well enough for some to smooth over the matter. The second is to revise the text, which Tolkien did. And here, as far as I know, he did not attempt to explain the change internally.

But Glorfindel's saddle was retained in any case, and readers have been inventing internal explanations for this! In my opinion internal explanations are following Tolkien's usual lead, trying to maintain the inner consistency of reality. Though granted, sometimes the fan explanations can get strained, subjective as that is.

To my mind, in the end even Tolkien must be bound by his own "rules."

For another example: Ursula Le Guin published her Earthsea trilogy, and to simplify matters here, as I understand things, later she found her treatment of women in these stories lacking...

... she didn't revise the existing books however, though granted this would probably not have been as simple as telling her publishers she wanted to! And she didn't later "fill the reader in" from her blogs (once blogs existed anyway), and reveal that the trilogy was biased in some internal way, or something...

... she wrote and published more Earthsea books, opening up the world and explaining more of what was "really" going on. Like them or not, they are just as canonical as the earlier books in my opinion, if in some measure they change certain already held perceptions from the original trilogy.

In any event that's the way to do it in my opinion. I give Tolkien a "pass of sorts" since he was told he needed to revise his books due to the Ace Books controversy (although he could have simply added material, which he did) instead of niggling with other stuff too. He also gets a bit of a pass because he didn't know the internet was coming or how popular Tolkien scholarship would become, and probably expected fist editions, or the information in them, to soon enough be swamped and forgotten.

Still it's not a full pass. I think in some cases Tolkien undermined his own world with hard to explain revisions, and "translator's error" can arguably become a dry well at a certain point (again a subjective measure, admittedly)

In my opinion

[Edited on 02/17/2016 by Elthir]

Gandolorin

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on: February 17, 2016 04:05

Elthir, you just mentioned the one word to member when reading anything by JRRT: niggling! He described himself as a "natural niggler (alas!)", and he neither wrote "Leaf by Niggle" nor gave that work its title by accident. Taking this self-confessed defect of his into consideration, LoTR is even more of a masterpiece than most people realize.

Then there's your comment "Which version [of The Hobbit] is true? Most people (if not all) would probably answer the version from The Lord of the Rings ..." which no one in the Primary World has ever read. No existing edition of TH has the wording that Bilbo would have given his account of his adventure to Erebor (and back) in the Council of Elrond in the FoTR, as I firmly believe.

So for me there is THE canon book, LoTR. TH and Sil are tinged with apocryphal parts, and HoME (exceeding in the wider sense as it now does even the twelve official books) is apocryphal where it deviates form the Big Three. But I do not regard apocryphal texts as being without value, far from it. Both in Middle-earth and the Primary World, who / what / why / where / when decided which texts were to be canon and which others apocryphal is something we will never never know with remote certainty. For those so inclined, it opens room for their own imagination - something JRRT was also hoping for his creation, and I think his hope has been (and will continue to be) fulfilled.

Elthir

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on: February 17, 2016 05:51

Elthir, you just mentioned the one word to member when reading anything by JRRT: niggling! He described himself as a "natural niggler (alas!)", and he neither wrote "Leaf by Niggle" nor gave that work its title by accident. Taking this self-confessed defect of his into consideration, LoTR is even more of a masterpiece than most people realize.

And I would add, I would think it quite important for a "natural" niggler to truly decide what should be published versus what should not.

Then there's your comment "Which version [of The Hobbit] is true? Most people (if not all) would probably answer the version from The Lord of the Rings ..." which no one in the Primary World has ever read. No existing edition of TH has the wording that Bilbo would have given his account of his adventure to Erebor (and back) in the Council of Elrond in the FoTR, as I firmly believe.

Well obviously not in The Lord of the Rings itself but basically revealed there to explain the notable difference of the second edition Hobbit. For example, what reason does anyone have to question Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings regarding Bilbo and Gollum, or the Prologue section 4 Of The Finding Of The Ring... with, in my opinion, the easy implication that the section that needed fixing concerned the finding of the One.

That's why Tolkien revised The Hobbit for the 1951 edition (Ace Books came later, accounting for the third edition), and I would say that both the second and third edition tells the "true account (as an alternative), derived no doubt, from notes by Frodo or Sam, both of whom learned the truth" [Fellowship of the Ring, Prologue]. And then we have "chapter 80" being unfinished [They Grey Havens] which means to include the chapters of The Hobbit.

That's not meant to refer to the revised edition in real life? Again I see Tolkien accepting his versions of The Hobbit as canon. And if people toss any of them out because of "inconsistencies" that arguably need explaining, so does The Lord of the Rings have some.

And what about The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and The Road Goes Ever On? Why are these texts, published by JRRT himself after The Lord of the Rings, not just as canon as The Lord of the Rings?

Tolkien even takes up his guise as translator for the former, and the latter is not an "external" interpretation, opinion, or a statement about authorial intent. With respect to Middle-earth, the only thing external I can think of right now, that Tolkien published himself, is his revised Foreword to The Lord of the Rings, which I think was a mistake actually. The original Foreword was charming enough and internal, despite that Tolkien thought he should change it...

... but in the revised version he is not only external, but arguably in some places, trying to answer critics or tell folks what the book is not.

I've come to prefer the first Foreword. Thank goodness Tolkien published it

[Edited on 02/17/2016 by Elthir]

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