Thumbing through Tolkien's Letters, I rediscovered the following passage in a draft of a letter addressed to Peter Szabo Szentmihalyi (Letter #329):
Quote:
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One of my strongest opinions is that the investigation of an author's biography (or such other glimpses of his 'personality' as can be gleaned by the curious) is an entirely vain and false approach to his works - and especially to a work of narrative art, of which the object aimed at by the author was to be enjoyed as such: to be read with literary pleasure. So that any reader whom the author has (to his great satisfaction) succeeded in 'pleasing' (exciting, engrossing, moving etc.), should, if he wishes others to be similarly pleased, endeavour in his own words, with only the book itself as a source, to induce them to read it for literary pleasure.
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It seems to me that this sums up in even more strident terms the 'guidance' that Tolkien is giving his readers in the (Second) Foreword: "Here is my tale. I wrote it simply with the intention that you should derive pleasure from it. Go ahead. Read it and enjoy."
Whatever other (unexpressed) motives he may or may not have had in writing the book seem to me to be irrelevant in any analysis of the Foreword. What really matters is the message that it conveys to his readers. And that is simply that he wrote the story with the intention that they should enjoy it.