[Bêthberry]

Thanks to Boro and our great moderator Estelyn for the reminders about civility and courtesy.

I'd like to add a few general comments about using a writer's letters as evidence in an argument. Some years ago, I wickedly decided to begin a campaign in favour of the reader (rather than the writer or the text) because of how Tolkien's letters were viewed as definitive writ by some of my friends here. They aren't. (Yes, Aiwendil, I come clean here about my philosophical perspective.)

A few points about letters: Letters are a personal and private communication between two or a few more people. When we read them, we are sneaking a look into something that was never intended to be read by others (even if some authors write with an eye to posterity). We are, essentially, spying or stalking on the writer and have to remember that we are not part of that interpersonal relationship, howevermuch it might seem we are kindred.

Letters are based on the relationship between the people involved; their context extends beyond the letter itself into the entire history of that relationship. They will of course include business aspects of the relationship if that is significant, but letters remain very different from public essays or academic reports and critical articles. Those forms of writings will address at length an issue or problem and will represent a writer's declared wish to make a public statement about the subject. But letters are a private communication which we are violating.

All human language varies depending upon its audience. The way teenagers speak with (or to!) parents differs from the way they speak with each other. The way adults speak with their bosses differs from the way they speak with co-workers. Linguistic research shows differences in the patterns of male and female speech. The language of the deaf community is utterly, utterly different from the language of the hearing community. Letters, although written language, still partake of this essence of spoken language. Anyone who has read the letters of Charlotte Bronte, for instance, has been struck by how she varies her voice according to her audience. And she isn't the only author who does so.

Furthermore, writers are not in fact infallible even about their own work. Their memories, like all human memories, are selective and can be mistaken about events. They may also be reticent about very personal details of their imaginative life. They may even change their mind, knowingly and unknowingly. And even more than people who do not have highly developed linguistic skills, writers manipulate language for effect as well as for fact.

Tolkien's letters are selected letters, not collected letters. We don't know the content, style, and form of letters that were not included in the book we now have and we don't know what the principles for selection were, for every letter that was included. And we don't know what was excluded.

What this all means is that any statement Tolkien makes in a letter needs to be examined in terms of the letter's audience and purpose in writing. Such a statement needs to be compared to other statements on the same topic, if any can be found. The context needs to be considered before the statement can be used as an all-encompassing piece of evidence for said fact.

Most often (not just here, but in many discussions) two of Tolkien's comments are particularly used without this kind of careful contextualisation: his comment about creating a mythology and his comment about an essential Catholic frame of mind. Tolkien himself later in life came to recognise that his early enthusiasm for creating a national mythology was a youthful enterprise that went on to take a different form. His comment about the Catholic nature of his universe was written to a Catholic friend (a priest, if I remember correctly--I don't have the letters at hand). I cannot recall if that particular expression and claim is made anywhere else in Tolkien's letters; I don't think it is. Was he simply trying to reassure someone who had qualms about creating a fantasy world or was he deliberately laying out a precise blueprint for his secondary world? I've spoken about this letter with a Downer who is deeply and profoundly a sincere Catholic and he doesn't think this particular letter can be taken as evidence of the fundamental Catholic nature of Middle-earth, because the evidence does not exist solidly elsewhere to substantiate the claim as a major tenet of the work. On the other hand, Tolkien's comments about the philological nature of his writing is something that can be extensively substantiated and is probably for that reason closer to his guiding ethos.

Letters can be helpful but they aren't jurisprudence; they can't provide legalistic evidence, however much we would like to use them that way. They need interpretation as much, if not more so, than a fictional text. If we grab on to a comment or claim because it feeds our wish for interpreting the text a certain way, then we are following a readerly form of interpretation for a text, creating our own personal version of the text.

There is a great deal in Tolkien's work that is not explicitly Christian. He draws from many sources and to focus on one to the exclusion of others is to deny his own unique creative crucible. Or, in his words, his leaf mold.