[cellurdur]

Originally Posted by Galin

I'm aware of the wording of Tolkien's will, but don't see what this necessarily has to do with what Christopher Tolkien actually did. Do you have something from Christopher Tolkien himself, anywhere, where he states or even suggests that something he himself published has 'more weight' than something he authorized, say, the Linguistic Editorial Team to publish, like Ósanwe-kenta for example?

Christopher Tolkien is not 'deleting' any text that I'm aware of because it has less weight than something else. And even if he did, to my mind that doesn't change that JRR Tolkien is the creator of Middle-earth in the end.

I'm sorry I don't follow this argument at all, and I agree with Nerwen here.

We have the words from JRR Tolkien himself. Christopher Tolkien has sole authority when it comes to not only publishing, but editing the story. We see excess this authority in the case of Sador. Tolkien planned to change him into one of the Pukel men, but in the Children of Hurin he remains a lame man.

Tolkien may be the creator of the Middle-Earth, but he passed on those rights to his son. Virtually everything we know about the extended world comes from the work that Christopher Tolkien has done.

If he thought that the notes on the artwork were a noteworthy contradiction then he could have made a comment about it. He did not. In other cases he does.

Well the artwork descripton I cited is itself a 'late text' too, and as I say, how brief is all the artwork commentary combined? It's hasn't all been published yet. Not that I would necessarily be swayed about relative brevity in any case.

Brevity does give an indication to the amount of time and thought he put into the work. A brief note written about a piece of artwork is far more likely to be less precise than an essay. Secondly it is up to Christopher Tolkien to decide what he wants to be noted.

My point here was that nicknames can be funny things in general, and thus there are arguably ways for Tolkien to explain 'Elendil the Tall' without making him 7 foot 10.

Not generally the case with Tolkien though. People called the 'the Tall' tend to be tall. We even have Tolkien naming Elendil as the tallest of the exiles.

Christopher Tolkien actually published some of these 'artwork descriptions'. They were not noted as such at the time because Pauline Baynes was still alive, and some of Tolkien's commentary was negative, or could be taken as negative.

Now more of these descriptions, but still not all, are in print, thanks to Christopher Tolkien allowing both Hammond and Scull and J. Rateliff to publish them [Pauline Baynes has passed on incidentally]

That's still not the same as Christopher publishing them himself is it? The comments on the artwork are definitely of interest, but they need validation from Christopher Tolkien or at least a comment for me to hold them with equal standing to TCOH for instance.

Well, it was you who called NLM 'an entire essay'. CJRT called it a note. Are we going to count words now, or words that actually deal with height within a given text compared to another?

I'm not. I've only got so many fingers and toes

This is where you are arguing semantics. Whether you call it a note or an essay it is quite a long and detailed account about measurements.

In any case the 'artwork descriptions' represent Tolkien's thinking at the time. They appear to be considered enough for me, and we don't have 'merely' 5 foot 10 or 11 for the Eldar for instance, nor even 6 feet to 6 feet 3 or 4 for most Eldar, for example, which if we did, we would then have the Numenoreans at their height towering over them by a full foot or nearly so in some cases.

In short [no pun intended] the Eldar are still notably tall here, especially the great kings and leaders; and we read often enough about the Noldorin kings and leaders too.

And yes we don't know the external chronology of a number of 'late texts' dealing with heights, which I acknowledged from the start.

Well this is where we will disagree. I still have not seen you address these issues concerning the notes on the artwork.

If Aragorn at 6'6 is much shorter than the average Numenoreans of old then how tall were the Numenoreans of old? In every text no matter how late, the decline in stature is noted.

Nor have you answered that if the minimum height was 6'6 for the Eldar then what would the average height be?

EDIT
Mentioned it briefly, but Tolkien was well aware of the English kings. It was not unusual for one of the Plantagenet descendants to be nearly a foot taller than the average man and virtually a foot taller than the average peasant. Charlemagne himself was a giant at close to 6'3. Edward I and II were both described as the tallest and strongest men in the real (considering their great height this was probably not just flattery). Elendil is simply a reflection of this.