Davem wrote:
Quote:
|
Yes, but the texts refer to something beyond themselves
|
Do they really? In the philosophy of meaning there are two major schools of thought - the correspondence theory of truth, which holds that propositions "refer" to real things and their truth-value depends upon the state of the real things, and the coherence theory of truth, which holds that a proposition's truth-value depends on its logical consistency with a set of other true propositions.
Now, I don't mean to get into a debate on meaning. But I think that, whichever of the two views one holds
in general, one must view the statements in a work of fiction, especially in one so convoluted and self-contradictory as the Silmarillion, with a coherence theory in mind. For the statements in the texts cannot possibly refer to
real things; Middle-earth is fictional. But if they don't, in the most literal sense, refer to things, then what do they refer to? Perhaps, one might say, they refer to
imaginary things - that is, to things in the minds of various people. But of course, different people will imagine things differently; and it is strange in the extreme to say that Tolkien was in fact really writing about the neurons in my brain.
I think that the text does not refer to imaginary things. Rather the opposite. The text does not refer to anything except itself. It is we that refer to it when we imagine Middle-earth. Out of the mish-mash of texts and notes we can find vast networks of statements that cohere well, and from these we can formulate an imaginary world. Of course, there are different ways of choosing the set of coherent statements.
We imagine Middle-earth. That is what allows it to exist beyond the text; that is what allows fan fiction; that is what allows us to speculate on matters not discussed by Tolkien. But all of this begins with the text. And if two people, with their different minds and different images, are going to discuss "canon", then the place to which they must look is the text.
Whereas you say:
Quote:
|
The texts, illustrations, movies (for some), even the philosophical & religious speculation all 'constellate' around, or grow out of the 'thing' (whatever it really is) that we understand as Middle earth.
|
I would say the opposite. The "thing" - the imaginary world - grows out of the texts, illustrations, etc.