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if the author hadn't intended us to know anything besides what was in the published stories only, then he didn't have to leave it around to be published later. But he *wanted* to publish the Silmarillion; he *wanted* to respond to (respectfully phrased) questions about Middle-Earth and its denizens.
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Fordim, your first post is an excellent and refreshing train of thought, not to mention very well written. On the whole, however, I agree with
Mark 12:30. Tolkien's rigid insistence on continuity and almost pedantic ability to fill in minor details do not leave us a lot of elbow room. I can't help but feel that the more we carelessly speculate about Orcs and Balrogs, the more likely we are to come up with ideas that run contrary to those of the Professor, who
is ultimately the author of his own works.
Does Tolkien's authorship give him absolute control over those works? No; once they were published and widely read, they began to take on a life of their own, in the minds of others, apart from Tolkien. This is an incredible thing, especially in the case of Tolkien, since his works struck a chord with so many of us.
But it is not always a good thing. Without entering into a discussion about them here, I'd like to bring up the Movies. The filmmakers had the daunting task of filling in many, many gaps in detail, without the collaboration of the author. While the cast and crew did a bang-up job overall, many glaring... differences... (for the sake of this discussion I won't call them errors!) between the text and the script have been noticed.
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Given this idea (which, again, was Tolkien’s own) of the writer-as-historian, then does this not mean that we – the readers – are not only able, but compelled, to seek always to reinterpret the tales from our own standpoint rather than continually try to figure out what the ‘first’ historian made of them?
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Well, we now have a large-scale modern reinterpretation to judge by. My question is, can the original intentions of an author be subverted by those of a later interpreter? At what point do we say, "this is no longer a faithful representation of the original", or "this is only loosely based on the original", or cry "SACRILEGE!"? And if the material as reinterpreted comes up greatly different from the original, shouldn't the reinterpreter (great word) just come up with their own vessel for telling a new story?
I agree wholeheartedly that we have not only the ability, but the obligation to examine the works of Tolkien, and well,
everybody to the depth that they deserve. I also feel that during the course of our reading it may be possible to discover things in Middle Earth that Tolkien himself may not have consciously put there.
Fordim's description of the class struggle in the Shire is a possible example of this. However I feel that if he were able today, JRRT would like to have the last say on such reinterpretations. Judging by many of the negative comments contained in
Letters, the last say would not always be pleasant.