[Aiwendil]

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Principles of editing the Silmarillion

&lt;&lt;re: #4 - this would mean that CRT's Ruin of Doriath would stand over the [what I see as hopelessly obsolete] II/IV versons of Doriath ? using the princple of &quot;Material in a lower level that specifically corrects material in a higher level may take precedence over the higher level. &gt;&gt;

I don't think this falls into that category. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that what jallanite had in mind here was such stuff as the hair color issue. At any rate, I don't think that CRT's corrections can be thus validated. This is especially true in certain places where CRT later corrects himself in HoME - for instance, The Ruin of Doriath. That's why I suggested the first level be the published Hobbit, LotR, etc. and the second level be the latest usable texts by JRRT. I think with the Ruin of Doriath we clearly must use The Wanderings of Hurin, and probably some of the Tale of Years from XI. But perhaps we shouldn't even start to think about that chapter before we get there.

&lt;&lt;I would be inclined for our pilot project to attempt [at least initially] to not go that far w/ editing , for maximum credibility. I say we reserve this degree of editing to a larger council , if they agree it is truly necesarry to produce a significantly better edition. If in the course of our FoG we discover that we are really losing something, then i would be willing to reconsider, but I am for going at it w/ the idea of JRRT's [and the 77/01] only. &gt;&gt;

I agree about the style issue, at least for the present. However, I think it would really be cutting off our options to not allow ourselves to rearrange a few words here and there in the process of combining different texts. There could conceivably be situations where we wouldn't be able to use a certain text simply because there's no way we can grammatically combine it with another one.

However, I would add a perhaps obvious rule that nonetheless must be considered: when combining texts, even if we retain the exact words, we must be careful not to distort the MEANING of either text. To take an extreme (and absurd) example: we could probably construct a completely different story simply by snipping individual words from all of the texts. We must be sure not to take anything he wrote out of context.

&lt;&lt;Vol.III would cert. be the place for it - but I think better [for someone/s] to do an entire Myth's Transformed Silmarillion than to start including the endless possible variants [of which MT along w/ the later Galadriel/Celeborn versions are by far the most comprehensive]&gt;&gt;

Agreed. While we're on the subject of Myths Transformed, however, might I suggest that even though we're not adopting the dramatically different cosmological myths, there might be some things from it that we can use? For example, Melkor's dispersion of power into Arda - it violates none of the established canon, it's clearly his latest thought on the subject, and it is (at least to me) quite aesthetically pleasing - though I'm not sure how we might incorporate it into the text.

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