Well,
HeronIstarion, here is another ent lumbering up the long and winding davem to the forded hedge, to get
A-windil of the discussion. Just think--or not--of the lines possible with my nick.
Actually, I would refute
davem's claim that 'lustful' relationships are non-canonical. Let's look again at what he posted:
Quote:
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'Marriage, save for rare ill chances or strange fates, was the natural course of life for all the Eldar', Marriage is chiefly of the body, for it is achieved by bodily union, & its first operation is the begetting of the bodies of children...And the union of bodies in marriage is unique, & no other union resembles it' & 'Seldom is any tale told of deeds of lust amongst them'. (Laws & Customs Among the Eldar)
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This reads
Seldom is any tale told of deeds of lust amongst them. 'Seldom' does not mean 'never' and the restriction refers to tales, not the behaviour itself. The gist of the sentence is that tales are not told about it, not that it never occurs. Silence on a subject does not mean the subject ceases to exist or never exists. As we all know from the revelations of the twentieth century, child abuse exists even when codes of silence surround it. Rape exists even when shame forces victims and families to maintain a code of silence which amounts to denial--a hypocrisy some might say.
How and why did this change of perception, this sudden 'seeing', happen in real life in the Twentieth Century? And the seeing involves much more than just child abuse or rape or genocide (The Jews in WWII, the Blacks in the Congo, the Amerinds in North America, the witches in late medieval Europe, the gypsies in Europe also, to name just a few). The 'seeing' is a recognition that outside the histories we receive are the lives of "others" who have been pushed to the peripheries. How and why does this new vision come about? What is the creative process whereby people can look at history (and texts) and see for the first time?
I would agree with
Aiwendil that the text's the thing wherein we may catch the conscious of interpreting. But rather than focus exclusively on a static text, I would prefer to think of reading as a process or interplay, an active act of the mind in communication with words on the page. Interpretation engages the imagination and there, through some strange alchemy, new vision appears. This was, for me, the great tragedy of the elves. They looked back stagnantly and nostalgically rather than imaginatively.
Let me turn this away from referring to the historical world, our world, in order to forestall any of this strain which says that Middle-earth is entirely self-referential. (I don't buy that argument--since
Fordim has suggested we bring in the vocabulary of the marketplace--but for now I will simply sidestep it for my main interest here.)
When Tolkien read texts, what was it that simmered in that cauldron of his mind, to create his inspired readings? What was it that enabled him to see the literary and narrative value of dragons and story in
Beowulf when others around him saw in the text only an ancient language to be retrived labouriously by conning grammars and lexicons? What was it that gave him his insight in
The Battle of Maldon which led to his essay on chivalry and
The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beorhthelm's Son? We can see now in these early texts what others could not because of Tolkien's vision. How does this happen?
And if Tolkien could do it, why must we deny the possibility that others may do it for his texts?
(Note, I am not saying that we must allow slash fanfics in our RPGs here, for I accept the right of interpretive communities to set their own guidelines. Well, here they were first carved in internet stone by the Barrow Wight, but they have since been discussed, debated, explored and largely reaffirmed more fully by the community. This is what, after all, a discussion board is for.)
What I am asking here, in this dancing on the head of the pin called the Canonicity rag, is how to account for new interpretations. And how to 'authorise' them.
How and where and when do we see newly and how do we determine which new visions to accept? Unless our discussion can account for Tolkien finding new visions in his reading--I will go even further--unless we can account for how
Child produced that brilliant reading of history in "A Knife in the Dark" and how we have come to acknowledge her vision--we limit, proscribe, restrict our minds. Somewhere in this author--text--reader triad we have to account for imagination.
Yours not-Lothlorienly,
Bethberry