Fordim Hedgethistle,
Wonderful extrapolation of what I meant. I think it is so important to ask open-ended, non-directive questions which stimulate real reflection and engage serious attention and thought.
I would also agree with your way of understanding Tolkien not as a closed system of meaning but as a text which opens itself to further understanding. Too often it seems to me that answers about Tolkien are set in stone, given absolute quantification by the Letters, The Silm, HOME, UT when in fact, I think, in my humble estimation, his work, like the best fantasy, is not a closed system.
But this is what I think the best teachers do, inspire students not to be satisfied with neat little answers but to extend the way of thought to other possibilities. I had always thought of The Appendices as "overflow", part of Tolkien's magnificent fecundity of imagination rather than as part and parcel of the 'scholarly' apparatus he implies elsewhere with his narrator. Thank you for making me think of them in a new light.
Now, if only your website link did not take me to the outer limit of something....
