As usual, I come to the debate after many substantial points have been made and some very fine discussion put forth.
I have been pondering this thread, however, since
lmp's first post. What I have to offer, rather than reply to specific points already made far better than I could, is some rambling thought which I hope manages some coherency.
First of all, I think it is fascinating and well worth while to consider the role of Christopher in his father's work. And not just the publishing of The Silm and HoMe. Anyone who has read Tolkien's Letters, particularly those during WWII when Christopher was stationed in South Africa, will be aware of how very much Tolkien Sr thought of Tolkien Jr as his audience. Time and again JRR asks C for his opinion. Publishing the papers after JRR's death can perhaps be seen as an extension of this process for Christopher. I don't know, but the fact remains that there was some kind of symbiotic relationship here which was part of Tolkien's habit of composition. Was this relationship something which stimulated Tolkien's later work? There is a letter (cannot remember the number now) where Tolkien bemoans his children's loss of faith. Was the increasingly didactic part of his latter work part of Tolkien's response to this, as to the rising secularisation of his world?
As an aside, Christopher was an academic in his own career and the scroll on the wall of the Bird and Baby includes Christopher as an academic and member of the Inklings. Does anyone know what else Christopher has done? What was his academic field aside from Middle earth?
Also, we keep coming up with this idea of a pristine reading of enchantment. (
davem is currently berating me for destroying enchantment on the Chapter by Chapter discussion of Shelob's Lair.) The problem I have with this is trying to set in stone just what the perfect first reading is.
lmp, you are yourself an accomplished writer. You understand how to intersperse dialogue and exposition, action and reflection. Is this something that you suspend when you read initially and do inretrospect? I guess what I am asking is, what do you mean by enchantment and by tearing apart the tower to see the stones? (Yes, I know the Tolkien allusion.)
What HoMe has done, I think, it make available to the general public the kind of detailed writing papers which more usually remain sequestered in libraries and the domain of scholars to pour over. The publication of HoMe has actually democratised Tolkien scholarship, I think.
Now, for my own theory, being myself a little of the Ann Elk variety.
I see the vast panorama of Tolkien's writing in narrative terms. I see a very strong impulse towards the kind of heterogeneity of style, narration, point of view, structure which marks early narratives and the Bible itself. The Bible is, after all, a compendium of various authors over a great range of time. This variety is fascinatingly various and multiplicitous (is that a word?). Then I see the impulse towards hegemony and control, authorship as one voice, one vision, one way. In himself, Tolkien seems to have combined contradictory impulses, a paradox of authorship. He was both a medieval pluralist and an authoritarian eighteenth century rationalist. This paradox informed his work throughout his life, directing his ideas differently at various times. As readers, we can pick and choose which we like best, but I think it is also rewarding to consider how the cauldron bubbled for Tolkien, either simmering or roiling boil, for that might help us understand aspects of creativity. That might be something altogether different, however, from simply reading for enjoyment, which of course offers its own rewards.
EDIT: Cross posted with davem.