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Originally Posted by H-I
Just a minor point, for I believe the status of being published is less definitive to the canonicity issue then it may seem. It is very much circumstantial affair - if there were no shortages of paper in the post-war England, or if prior to the war the reader of the publishing house have seen the whole bulk of materials sent in, not the fragments of lays only, or if the post offices worked less or more bona fide and lost or did not loose (this latter we do not know, of course) one or more letters in correspondence of Tolkien with his publishers, if, if, if, if etc,
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This is a good point - something I speculated on in the latest Chapter by Chapter thread, where as
Awendilpoints out CT says in HoME 7 that Bilbo's song of Earendil that appears in the published text is not the final version, the one that Tolkien intended to publish, its just that when it came time to send the poem to the publisher the final text was mislaid. So, if in the new 50th anniversary edition due out in November (which is supposed to be a definitive version, overseen by CT, & according to the publishers the LotR asTolkien would have wished it to appear) the final version of the poem replaces the one we've had for 50 years, which would be the 'canonical' version? It will include the facsimilies of the pages of the Book of Mazarbul which Tolkien wished included, but were left out for cost reasons - should they be included, as Tolkien originally wanted them in, or excluded, as Tolkien didn't publish an edition including them in his lifetime. And what about smaller errors in the text - ie, in the scene where Aragorn, Legolas & Gimli are pursuing the Uruk Hai, Aragorn finds Pippin's tracks, & says that they must be Pippin's as he was 'smaller than the
other' CT points out that this obviously should have been 'smaller than the
others, as the first version is quite insultingly phrased. So, which version should stand?