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

jallanite · 11-06-2012, 07:14 PM

I would now add to the things that Tolkien probably knew were to be published: the 1973 Ballantine Tolkien Calendar, which I expect was at least almost prepared when Tolkien died. This calendar contained among other things all Tolkien’s colour plates from The Hobbit and the cover sketch on the British paperback version of The Hobbit. It also contained the first publication of some of his Lord of the Rings illustrations:

Old Man Willow for August (http://www.councilofelrond.com/image...-man-willow-2/ ).
Moria Gate, discarded bottom section, for September (http://www.councilofelrond.com/image.../moria-gate-4/ ).
Moria Gate, upper section, for October (http://www.councilofelrond.com/imagegallery/moria-gate/ ).
Barad-dûr for November (http://www.councilofelrond.com/image...y/barad-dur-3/ ).

See http://www.tolkiencalendars.com/BAL1973.html for the calendar laid out.

I don’t see why the “Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings” should has the special status of omitted but “Of notable weight″. This item contains information on Tolkien’s world not found elsewhere and was distributed to translators in his lifetime, although not published then.

But that is why I loathe the word canon.

Galin unintentionally points out why there is often disagreement on items that might be considered dubious but are generally considered canon by those who think that way. When one considers the published Silmarillion as canon or not doesn’t matter when even the most skeptical admits that almost all of it comes from J. R. R. Tolkien’s own writing and only small bits of it were ever planned to be significantly changed by Tolkien.

If by canon one means material that was intended by Tolkien, so far as we can tell, to see publication in the form under which Christopher Tolkien has preserved it for us, then The Children of Húrin certainly almost counts, although nitpickers (like myself) will point out that the Elf whom Túrin drove to his death should be named Orgol and not Saeros according to what Christopher Tolkien has determined about his father’s latest thoughts on the matter. Christopher Tolkien tells us this outright on page 287 of the book.

For Húrin’s early adventures upon his release by Morgoth see the chapter “The Wanderings of Húrin″ in The War of the Jewels which is almost a finished account as written and which in dealing with the results of Morwen’s death continues with material closely bound in with the tale. Húrin’s anger with the Hardang of Brethil is motivated by Húrin’s incorrect conviction that the Hardang is practically personally responsible for Morwen’s death though, as it turns out, the Hardang and all in Brethil are innocent of it.

The HoME series contains various other places which recount tales which are also finished or practically finished or which enhance our understanding of the short version later given by providing a longer version, even though the earlier version is also not to be taken as entirely valid in Tolkien’s later thought.

To claim that all this material is not canon seems to be silly except in the restricted sense that none of it was published in Tolkien’s lifetime. The phrase “community canon” fails for me because any canon depends on a community that accepts it.

For example, to ask whether The War of the Jewels or any of the other HoME books is canon seems to me to be missing the point of those books, which is to publish J. R. R. Tolkien’s writings related to the first four ages of Middle-earth and its creation, including Tolkien’s first drafts. Christopher Tolkien sometimes goes into the matter of how much a particular account is congruent with Tolkien’s published writing, and sometimes even points out that it is the writing that he himself has previously published, or sometimes even what his father had previously published, that is the work at fault in respect to what his father seems to have thought.

The published Silmarillion may be at least recommended as a necessary volume of reasonable examples of Tolkien’s thoughts on the history that led up to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and one which is at least sufficiently accurate to continue to be recommended to people. How do we know that it is sufficiently accurate? Why only from the HoME series. And yet the HoME series is by many said not to be accurate enough to be canon or to even be said to contain canon in part because it contains mainly obviously outmoded material, or material that is possibly valid but not in definitive form and not published under J. R. R. Tolkien.

Should publication be the criteria for canon? For example, the artwork from the 1973 Ballantine calendar would be canon but Tolkien’s Númenórian pieces of artwork would not be (see http://wiki.lindefirion.net/Heraldry for most of those preserved). But such categorization obscures rather than reveals anything important about such work.

Take other canons. The Tarzan of the Apes canon is of course the books published by his author Edgar Rice Burroughs. In the first of these books, Tarzan of the Apes, the story is that Tarzan’s parents-to-be are on the way to Africa in 1888. In later books by late 1910 or 1911 Tarzan had married Jane and they had a son named Jack. A son of Tarzan named Jack subsequently joined the British army during wartime in 1918 where he participated in the Meuse-Argonne campaign. (Neither is related to the son called Boy in some films.) Some readers accept that both sons named Jack are the same and the early dates of Tarzan’s life must therefore be taken as incorrect. Other readers take the son Jack who joined the army to be an adopted son, unrelated to Tarzan’s real son. For more details see http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/F...cles.htm#KORAK . In neither case is it considered that because something is canon means that it should be considered to be consistent with everything else that is canon.

Or take The Avengers television series, I mean the old tv series unrelated to Marvel Comics’ The Avengers super heroes. All of the episodes in the series count as part of the same canon. But three of the episodes co-starring Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale were later rewritten with co-star Diana Rigg as Mrs. Emma Peel. One of them named “Don’t Look Behind You” is so close to the subsequent “The Joker″ that it is really the identical story run again.

Or take http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_canon for documentation of a real mess.

Typical fan: “its all canon, except for …” followed by a long list of things which are part of the works called canon which are not canon.

A canon is simply a list of works that have been compiled into a list but there is nothing to say that any particular canon must be consistent with itself. Even the so-called Holy Canon contains four accounts of Jesus Christ which somewhat disagree. The Shakespeare canon only agrees within itself with the historical plays and “Falstaff in Love”.

The J. R. R. Tolkien Middle-earth canon is, to my mind, if one must use the term canon, all the books and art by J. R. R. Tolkien containing writing or art primarily related to Tolkien’s Middle-earth, include the HoME series, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, and John D. Rateliff‘’s The History of the Hobbit. The illustrations can be conveniently found in J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator and The Art of the Hobbit by Wayne G. Hannond and Christina Scull. That these books contain so much third-party commentary and material that is not congruent with Tolkien’s published works is only to be expected in volumes which primarily deal with works unfinished or set aside to be replaced by more advanced works, not to be published in their author’s lifetime, works which are supposedly set in the same setting and time (relative not absolute), a unique situation for this series of works. This uniqueness explains much.

Even Rateliff’s volume contains a section called “The Fifth Phase” which deals with Tolkien’s unfinished revision of The Hobbit in 1960 where Tolkien attempts to correct its chronology and clarify its early geography. Tolkien here gives the name of Gandalf’s horse as Rohald and changes Thorin’s puzzling request that Bilbo “hoot twice like a barn-owl and once like a screech-owl” to the request that Bilbo “give a signal: the cry of a night-hawk, and two hoots like an owl”.

Do I expect that everyone will read all of these books? Of course not. Among the unpublished works only the published Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin is really necessary and some people who love The Lord of the Rings find these works unreadable.

But experience shows that all the works containing J. R. R. Tolkien’s writing and even some mentions of his artwork are mentioned again and again on web forums as evidence for something or other. No-one (hardly anyone) claims that their being non-canon is a reason why they should not be cited. If you want to use the word canon, then usage shows that people use at least some of the HoME series as though it were what some call canon and no-one (hardly anyone) complains.

They may complain that something is not necessarily still valid, but that is a different matter. To be canon in many fandoms it is not necessarily that everything is the canon be valid. Notoriously Shakespeare places his action on the seacoast of Bohemia in A Winter’s Tale, but Bohemia has no seacoast. To be canon meant primarily that the work be included in the canonical works. We have the work of the editors and our own judgment to tell us what might still count as valid.

11-06-2012, 07:14 PM	#13
jallanite Shade of Carn Dûm Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: Toronto Posts: 479	I would now add to the things that Tolkien probably knew were to be published: the 1973 Ballantine Tolkien Calendar, which I expect was at least almost prepared when Tolkien died. This calendar contained among other things all Tolkien’s colour plates from The Hobbit and the cover sketch on the British paperback version of The Hobbit. It also contained the first publication of some of his Lord of the Rings illustrations: Old Man Willow for August (http://www.councilofelrond.com/image...-man-willow-2/ ). Moria Gate, discarded bottom section, for September (http://www.councilofelrond.com/image.../moria-gate-4/ ). Moria Gate, upper section, for October (http://www.councilofelrond.com/imagegallery/moria-gate/ ). Barad-dûr for November (http://www.councilofelrond.com/image...y/barad-dur-3/ ). See http://www.tolkiencalendars.com/BAL1973.html for the calendar laid out. I don’t see why the “Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings” should has the special status of omitted but “Of notable weight″. This item contains information on Tolkien’s world not found elsewhere and was distributed to translators in his lifetime, although not published then. But that is why I loathe the word canon. Galin unintentionally points out why there is often disagreement on items that might be considered dubious but are generally considered canon by those who think that way. When one considers the published Silmarillion as canon or not doesn’t matter when even the most skeptical admits that almost all of it comes from J. R. R. Tolkien’s own writing and only small bits of it were ever planned to be significantly changed by Tolkien. If by canon one means material that was intended by Tolkien, so far as we can tell, to see publication in the form under which Christopher Tolkien has preserved it for us, then The Children of Húrin certainly almost counts, although nitpickers (like myself) will point out that the Elf whom Túrin drove to his death should be named Orgol and not Saeros according to what Christopher Tolkien has determined about his father’s latest thoughts on the matter. Christopher Tolkien tells us this outright on page 287 of the book. For Húrin’s early adventures upon his release by Morgoth see the chapter “The Wanderings of Húrin″ in The War of the Jewels which is almost a finished account as written and which in dealing with the results of Morwen’s death continues with material closely bound in with the tale. Húrin’s anger with the Hardang of Brethil is motivated by Húrin’s incorrect conviction that the Hardang is practically personally responsible for Morwen’s death though, as it turns out, the Hardang and all in Brethil are innocent of it. The HoME series contains various other places which recount tales which are also finished or practically finished or which enhance our understanding of the short version later given by providing a longer version, even though the earlier version is also not to be taken as entirely valid in Tolkien’s later thought. To claim that all this material is not canon seems to be silly except in the restricted sense that none of it was published in Tolkien’s lifetime. The phrase “community canon” fails for me because any canon depends on a community that accepts it. For example, to ask whether The War of the Jewels or any of the other HoME books is canon seems to me to be missing the point of those books, which is to publish J. R. R. Tolkien’s writings related to the first four ages of Middle-earth and its creation, including Tolkien’s first drafts. Christopher Tolkien sometimes goes into the matter of how much a particular account is congruent with Tolkien’s published writing, and sometimes even points out that it is the writing that he himself has previously published, or sometimes even what his father had previously published, that is the work at fault in respect to what his father seems to have thought. The published Silmarillion may be at least recommended as a necessary volume of reasonable examples of Tolkien’s thoughts on the history that led up to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and one which is at least sufficiently accurate to continue to be recommended to people. How do we know that it is sufficiently accurate? Why only from the HoME series. And yet the HoME series is by many said not to be accurate enough to be canon or to even be said to contain canon in part because it contains mainly obviously outmoded material, or material that is possibly valid but not in definitive form and not published under J. R. R. Tolkien. Should publication be the criteria for canon? For example, the artwork from the 1973 Ballantine calendar would be canon but Tolkien’s Númenórian pieces of artwork would not be (see http://wiki.lindefirion.net/Heraldry for most of those preserved). But such categorization obscures rather than reveals anything important about such work. Take other canons. The Tarzan of the Apes canon is of course the books published by his author Edgar Rice Burroughs. In the first of these books, Tarzan of the Apes, the story is that Tarzan’s parents-to-be are on the way to Africa in 1888. In later books by late 1910 or 1911 Tarzan had married Jane and they had a son named Jack. A son of Tarzan named Jack subsequently joined the British army during wartime in 1918 where he participated in the Meuse-Argonne campaign. (Neither is related to the son called Boy in some films.) Some readers accept that both sons named Jack are the same and the early dates of Tarzan’s life must therefore be taken as incorrect. Other readers take the son Jack who joined the army to be an adopted son, unrelated to Tarzan’s real son. For more details see http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/F...cles.htm#KORAK . In neither case is it considered that because something is canon means that it should be considered to be consistent with everything else that is canon. Or take The Avengers television series, I mean the old tv series unrelated to Marvel Comics’ The Avengers super heroes. All of the episodes in the series count as part of the same canon. But three of the episodes co-starring Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale were later rewritten with co-star Diana Rigg as Mrs. Emma Peel. One of them named “Don’t Look Behind You” is so close to the subsequent “The Joker″ that it is really the identical story run again. Or take http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_canon for documentation of a real mess. Typical fan: “its all canon, except for …” followed by a long list of things which are part of the works called canon which are not canon. A canon is simply a list of works that have been compiled into a list but there is nothing to say that any particular canon must be consistent with itself. Even the so-called Holy Canon contains four accounts of Jesus Christ which somewhat disagree. The Shakespeare canon only agrees within itself with the historical plays and “Falstaff in Love”. The J. R. R. Tolkien Middle-earth canon is, to my mind, if one must use the term canon, all the books and art by J. R. R. Tolkien containing writing or art primarily related to Tolkien’s Middle-earth, include the HoME series, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, and John D. Rateliff‘’s The History of the Hobbit. The illustrations can be conveniently found in J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator and The Art of the Hobbit by Wayne G. Hannond and Christina Scull. That these books contain so much third-party commentary and material that is not congruent with Tolkien’s published works is only to be expected in volumes which primarily deal with works unfinished or set aside to be replaced by more advanced works, not to be published in their author’s lifetime, works which are supposedly set in the same setting and time (relative not absolute), a unique situation for this series of works. This uniqueness explains much. Even Rateliff’s volume contains a section called “The Fifth Phase” which deals with Tolkien’s unfinished revision of The Hobbit in 1960 where Tolkien attempts to correct its chronology and clarify its early geography. Tolkien here gives the name of Gandalf’s horse as Rohald and changes Thorin’s puzzling request that Bilbo “hoot twice like a barn-owl and once like a screech-owl” to the request that Bilbo “give a signal: the cry of a night-hawk, and two hoots like an owl”. Do I expect that everyone will read all of these books? Of course not. Among the unpublished works only the published Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin is really necessary and some people who love The Lord of the Rings find these works unreadable. But experience shows that all the works containing J. R. R. Tolkien’s writing and even some mentions of his artwork are mentioned again and again on web forums as evidence for something or other. No-one (hardly anyone) claims that their being non-canon is a reason why they should not be cited. If you want to use the word canon, then usage shows that people use at least some of the HoME series as though it were what some call canon and no-one (hardly anyone) complains. They may complain that something is not necessarily still valid, but that is a different matter. To be canon in many fandoms it is not necessarily that everything is the canon be valid. Notoriously Shakespeare places his action on the seacoast of Bohemia in A Winter’s Tale, but Bohemia has no seacoast. To be canon meant primarily that the work be included in the canonical works. We have the work of the editors and our own judgment to tell us what might still count as valid. Last edited by jallanite; 11-06-2012 at 07:22 PM.