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This is interesting; I agree there is almost a whole other story, or set of stories, going on, just under the surface. It sort of reminds me of those 'Magic Eye' pictures, which seem to be a jumble of shapes & images on the surface, but if you view them in the right way, they form a 3d image. of course, with LotR its different, in that the 'surface' image also has meaning. I can't help wondering whether, if we could 'read' the underlying story we'd like it as much, or more, or whether we'd feel disappointed - sometimes the mystery is more attractive & exciting than the solution.
Now, Mods, PLEASE bear with me here:
One other thing regarding 'canonicity, which I'm a bit dubious about bringing up here, was inspired by the little debate last week on 'Why doesn't the Downs allow 'Slash'. The reason given was that it is 'uncanonical'. But what struck me at the time was, there are two ways of looking at that:
One - Tolkien created a world, over which he has absolute creative control - as an artist he can create a world in which Homosexuality, like cars or spaceships or t-rex's, don't exist. So, Slash is uncanonical, & has no place in Middle earth fiction.
Two - Tolkien claimed that Middle earth is this world at an earlier period in our history. If this is the case then we are dealing with a world in which nothing of human nature can be excluded as 'uncanonical'. In this case, a fanfic with gay characters, or a fanfic where characters find a frozen t-rex.
My question WITHOUT, PLEASE, getting into the slash debate, is to what extent we are restricted to Tolkien's 'rules' for Middle earth - are we obliged to interpret the stories in the light of Tolkien's intentions & values (my view), because Middle earth is an artistic creation? Or can we treat it as 'history', in which case we have total freesom of interpretation, & nothing, particularly in human nature could be considered 'uncanonical'.
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