The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum - View Single Post - Do you consider The Silmarillion to be fully "canon"?

jallanite · 10-25-2012, 09:39 PM

“Canon″ was originally used by Sherlock Holmes fandom as a somewhat joking reference to the works on Sherlock Holmes which were written by Arthur Conan Doyle and therefore considered to be to some degree authoritative compared to other works by other writers in book form or in cinematic form or on radio or in live drama.

From that point it began to be used by other fandoms in an increasingly confused fashion, particularly in respect to television series or film series in which there was no one single creator of a series and often later stories tended to disagree with earlier stories. Then there were spin-offs of the television series or films and sometimes further spin-offs of these which further disagreed with one another.

The Sherlock Holmes series did not altogether cohere from the beginning. But it wasn’t supposed to agree. Somewhere the supposed writer of most of the stories, Doctor Watson, explains that he has deliberately misrepresented parts of his stories and some of the chronology to hide the supposed original facts in order to protect those involved. These events did not supposedly happen as recorded. The most notable example is that Sherlock Holmes’ arch-enemy Professor Moriarty is mentioned for the first time by Holmes in “The Final Problem”, but Moriarty is already well-known to Watson in the novel The Valley of Fear which supposedly occurred earlier.

Currently we have the representatives of owners of franchise series changing their pronouncements about which derivative works are canonical and which ones aren’t. Generally the owners include works currently being produced but some years later may suddenly declare some of these non-canonical. But the B.B.C. in particular adamantly refuses to make any pronouncement on canon.

The only works about Tolkien’s Middle-earth that were authorized by Tolkien by being released with his authorization during his lifetime are:

The Hobbit (two main different editions, the second being the authoritative one)

The Lord of the Rings (two main different editions, the second being mostly the authoritative one)

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil

The Road Goes Ever On (the material in this book by J.R.R. Tolkien, not the music by Donald Swann)

“Nomenclature of the Lord of the Rings″ (sent to many translators of The Lord of the Rings during Tolkien’s lifetime, although only officially published after his death)

I also add:

“Bilbo’s Last Song” (a short poem given by Tolkien to his secretary Joy Hill, originally published as a poster in 1974 and in 1978 included in the second edition and later of The Road Goes Ever On.

The recordings of J. R. R. Tolkien reading from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were not intended to be publicly released during Tolkien’s lifetime. In particular the version of Namárië recorded there follows a different, earlier text than that published and Tolkien would certainly have been more careful in his pronunciation of Elvish if he had thought this was going to be published on records rather than be only a casual, amateur, one-time recording of some of his material for the pure fun of it.

J. R. R. Tolkien did not specifically authorize publication of any of the material edited and published by Christopher Tolkien, except that J. R. R. Tolkien authorized his son to edit and publish some version of the Silmarillion material after his death as he chose. Christopher Tolkien has again and again indicated he himself does not consider any of this material, taken as a whole, to be among the works specifically authorized for publication by his father. In particular Christopher Tolkien has said that much of the material in The Silmarillion on the necklace of the Dwarves was invented by himself and Guy Gavriel Kay and has referred to many other passages in The Silmarillion which he now considers to somewhat misrepresent his father’s intention. Christopher Tolkien never uses the words canon or canonical in respect to any of this father’s work or his own work.

As to what Christopher Tolkien would do now, Christopher Tolkien has again and again pointed out in the HoME series what he now sees as errors in his Silmarillion. Presumably he would fix them and present a version of the quarrel between Thingol and the Dwarves which was less inventive. But he shows no indication that he ever plans to do this. I suspect it is because he knows that no corrected version of the Silmarillion would ever be completely accurate as his father continued to change his ideas up to the time of his death. It is more accurate to accept that Christopher Tolkien’s Silmarillion is only an imperfect stand-in for the real thing which his father never finished. The errors and infelicities that Christopher Tolkien has mentioned again and again, by not being fixed, help prevent The Silmarillion being wrongly taken as authorized in every detail, which some would like to do.

The Children of Húrin is taken from previously unpublished material that is more finished in line with Tolkien’s late ideas than any other section of similar length in the unpublished material and as such is to be taken as more authoritative than some other Silmarillion material. See Christopher Tolkien’s Appendix (2) “The Composition of the Text” for Christopher Tolkien’s own discussion of his sources.

But see from The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoME), page 309, on the Drúedain:

… and allows the introduction of characters somewhat similar to the Hobbits of The Lord of the Rings into some of the legends of the First Age (e.g. the old retainer (Sadog) of Húrin in the legend of Túrin).

But, in the event, Tolkien never got around to making Sadog into one of the Drúedain. Of course, Christopher Tolkien might have inserted once or twice into The Children of Húrin that Sadog was a Drúedan, but Tolkien obviously intended more changes than that. If Sadog is canonically a Drúadan, then what does this say about the account of Sadog in The Children of Húrin and other Silmarillion material in which he is not?

Most of the later non-linguistic material written by Tolkien in the 60s and 70s appears in the published Silmarillion, but this is mostly minor references to material in technical essays. The latest material that appears in large chunks is on Finwë and Míriel.

The Silmarillion is both a book by the father and a book by the son, in which the son chose which one of various accounts to publish and sometimes merged them, sometimes selecting passages from different sources, sometimes merging actual sentences, and occasionally, but very seldom, inventing.

Tolkien tried to fit the flat-earth, fairy tale, cosmology of his Middle-earth into one congruent with the universe as known by science but found that this would require too many changes to his chronology and cosmology to satisfy him. Eventually he decided instead to accept that the Silmarillion material was, within his legendarium, Elvish tradition mixed with Mannish tales, and had been passed on as Mannish tales, some of the tales being badly distorted.

Galadriel55’s opinions I accept as adopting a very free use of canonical in which The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin are, despite their final text not being authorized by Tolkien Senior, works which are the closest to being authorized texts as there is likely to be. Myself and some others who were involved in the Translation from the Elvish project thought it was possible to produce a better Silmarillion than Christopher Tolkien had. I still think so, but not one that is very much better and which did not involve continuous voting on which choice we should take. So I withdrew from the project.

10-25-2012, 09:39 PM	#6
jallanite Shade of Carn Dûm Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: Toronto Posts: 479	“Canon″ was originally used by Sherlock Holmes fandom as a somewhat joking reference to the works on Sherlock Holmes which were written by Arthur Conan Doyle and therefore considered to be to some degree authoritative compared to other works by other writers in book form or in cinematic form or on radio or in live drama. From that point it began to be used by other fandoms in an increasingly confused fashion, particularly in respect to television series or film series in which there was no one single creator of a series and often later stories tended to disagree with earlier stories. Then there were spin-offs of the television series or films and sometimes further spin-offs of these which further disagreed with one another. The Sherlock Holmes series did not altogether cohere from the beginning. But it wasn’t supposed to agree. Somewhere the supposed writer of most of the stories, Doctor Watson, explains that he has deliberately misrepresented parts of his stories and some of the chronology to hide the supposed original facts in order to protect those involved. These events did not supposedly happen as recorded. The most notable example is that Sherlock Holmes’ arch-enemy Professor Moriarty is mentioned for the first time by Holmes in “The Final Problem”, but Moriarty is already well-known to Watson in the novel The Valley of Fear which supposedly occurred earlier. Currently we have the representatives of owners of franchise series changing their pronouncements about which derivative works are canonical and which ones aren’t. Generally the owners include works currently being produced but some years later may suddenly declare some of these non-canonical. But the B.B.C. in particular adamantly refuses to make any pronouncement on canon. The only works about Tolkien’s Middle-earth that were authorized by Tolkien by being released with his authorization during his lifetime are: The Hobbit (two main different editions, the second being the authoritative one) The Lord of the Rings (two main different editions, the second being mostly the authoritative one) The Adventures of Tom Bombadil The Road Goes Ever On (the material in this book by J.R.R. Tolkien, not the music by Donald Swann) “Nomenclature of the Lord of the Rings″ (sent to many translators of The Lord of the Rings during Tolkien’s lifetime, although only officially published after his death) I also add: “Bilbo’s Last Song” (a short poem given by Tolkien to his secretary Joy Hill, originally published as a poster in 1974 and in 1978 included in the second edition and later of The Road Goes Ever On. The recordings of J. R. R. Tolkien reading from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were not intended to be publicly released during Tolkien’s lifetime. In particular the version of Namárië recorded there follows a different, earlier text than that published and Tolkien would certainly have been more careful in his pronunciation of Elvish if he had thought this was going to be published on records rather than be only a casual, amateur, one-time recording of some of his material for the pure fun of it. J. R. R. Tolkien did not specifically authorize publication of any of the material edited and published by Christopher Tolkien, except that J. R. R. Tolkien authorized his son to edit and publish some version of the Silmarillion material after his death as he chose. Christopher Tolkien has again and again indicated he himself does not consider any of this material, taken as a whole, to be among the works specifically authorized for publication by his father. In particular Christopher Tolkien has said that much of the material in The Silmarillion on the necklace of the Dwarves was invented by himself and Guy Gavriel Kay and has referred to many other passages in The Silmarillion which he now considers to somewhat misrepresent his father’s intention. Christopher Tolkien never uses the words canon or canonical in respect to any of this father’s work or his own work. As to what Christopher Tolkien would do now, Christopher Tolkien has again and again pointed out in the HoME series what he now sees as errors in his Silmarillion. Presumably he would fix them and present a version of the quarrel between Thingol and the Dwarves which was less inventive. But he shows no indication that he ever plans to do this. I suspect it is because he knows that no corrected version of the Silmarillion would ever be completely accurate as his father continued to change his ideas up to the time of his death. It is more accurate to accept that Christopher Tolkien’s Silmarillion is only an imperfect stand-in for the real thing which his father never finished. The errors and infelicities that Christopher Tolkien has mentioned again and again, by not being fixed, help prevent The Silmarillion being wrongly taken as authorized in every detail, which some would like to do. The Children of Húrin is taken from previously unpublished material that is more finished in line with Tolkien’s late ideas than any other section of similar length in the unpublished material and as such is to be taken as more authoritative than some other Silmarillion material. See Christopher Tolkien’s Appendix (2) “The Composition of the Text” for Christopher Tolkien’s own discussion of his sources. But see from The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoME), page 309, on the Drúedain: … and allows the introduction of characters somewhat similar to the Hobbits of The Lord of the Rings into some of the legends of the First Age (e.g. the old retainer (Sadog) of Húrin in the legend of Túrin). But, in the event, Tolkien never got around to making Sadog into one of the Drúedain. Of course, Christopher Tolkien might have inserted once or twice into The Children of Húrin that Sadog was a Drúedan, but Tolkien obviously intended more changes than that. If Sadog is canonically a Drúadan, then what does this say about the account of Sadog in The Children of Húrin and other Silmarillion material in which he is not? Most of the later non-linguistic material written by Tolkien in the 60s and 70s appears in the published Silmarillion, but this is mostly minor references to material in technical essays. The latest material that appears in large chunks is on Finwë and Míriel. The Silmarillion is both a book by the father and a book by the son, in which the son chose which one of various accounts to publish and sometimes merged them, sometimes selecting passages from different sources, sometimes merging actual sentences, and occasionally, but very seldom, inventing. Tolkien tried to fit the flat-earth, fairy tale, cosmology of his Middle-earth into one congruent with the universe as known by science but found that this would require too many changes to his chronology and cosmology to satisfy him. Eventually he decided instead to accept that the Silmarillion material was, within his legendarium, Elvish tradition mixed with Mannish tales, and had been passed on as Mannish tales, some of the tales being badly distorted. Galadriel55’s opinions I accept as adopting a very free use of canonical in which The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin are, despite their final text not being authorized by Tolkien Senior, works which are the closest to being authorized texts as there is likely to be. Myself and some others who were involved in the Translation from the Elvish project thought it was possible to produce a better Silmarillion than Christopher Tolkien had. I still think so, but not one that is very much better and which did not involve continuous voting on which choice we should take. So I withdrew from the project.