Fordim Hedgethistle, I read with interest your opening post, and I have to say that I have always taken it as such:
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Given this idea (which, again, was Tolkien’s own) of the writer-as-historian, then does this not mean that we – the readers – are not only able, but compelled, to seek always to reinterpret the tales from our own standpoint rather than continually try to figure out what the ‘first’ historian made of them? Tolkien can give us important clues and hints into the history and – more significantly – the moral fabric of Middle-Earth, as he was the world’s greatest expert on the material. But in the end, it’s up to the reader to really figure it out for him or herself. That’s, I think, the real strength of Middle-Earth over other imagined worlds: it’s open-ended and incomplete; it’s contradictory; it doesn’t make sense – it’s just like our own (primary) world.
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Henceforth, I write bits and pieces of the 'missing' record, and have fun doing it. The limiting factor is to stay within the bounds of the defined world (no balrog/elf breeds, etc.). The world has should be taken on its own, without theological interference from our individual worlds.
Good thread! More later.