Thank you,
HerenIstarion, for the link to the Orcish Fears thread (a tremendous discussion!), but I cannot find anything in it relevant to my point, so perhaps I need to clarify my entry in this discussion.
Let me begin by quoting Mithadan again. He explained the purpose of this thread as the following:
Quote:
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We can, at best, extrapolate from what was written, seeking an answer consistent with the mythos.
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This I regard as a philosophical analysis, the internal consistency (or lack thereof) of Tolkien's mythology.
Yet, to my mind, the discussion moved out of the analysis of philosophical consistency with the suggestion that Tolkien's reason for sinking Numenor and not simply stopping Ar-Pharazon's armada was his desire to include the Atlantis myth in his mythology. (This is the point I quoted in my first post here.)
Suggesting that Tolkien wanted to include the Atlantis myth, IMHO, is a question of literary creation or structure rather than logical consistency. It opens up the discussion to Tolkien's imaginative inspiration rather than limit the question solely to logical consistency. It also leads to the question of whether Atlantis was the only myth which Tolkien was working with in The Akallabeth.
I would argue that Tolkien was incorporating at least two other myths as well: that of Noah and the Flood and that of the bending or rounding of the Earth.
(
Gandalf the Grey recognized my point here.
Joy,I would argue that the Breaking of Beleriand by flood is not related to the Fall of Numenor because it appears as a consequence of the wholesale destruction of land during the wars. At least, to my mind, I cannot see any relationship to the idea of punishment which I see in the Fall of Numenor.)
So, I would argue that Tolkien did not proceed from a desire to create a consistent philosophy or mythos. This is extrapolating philosophy out of fiction. It is interesting and I am not saying it cannot be done. However, I am suggesting that Tolkien's inspiration was that of the creative artist and not the philosopher. That into the question of his canon must come what Harold Bloom called "poetic influence" or "the story of intra-poetic relationships." (
The Anxiety of Influence)(I am not here subscribing to his argument wholesale in that I reject his idea that subconscious inspiration can only be understood through the Freudian model of father/son antagonisms.)
What I mean to say is that Tolkien was conflating several sources into his own myth. He was providing revisionary insights of his own. And that where it appears that we have fissures in the philosophy we ought to consider, as Mithadan has suggested, this literary impulse. My point is that such sources of influence need not be limited to one mythological precursor alone. (And this has nothing to do with my own beliefs. It is an argument of literary creation.)
I know only HOME 12 and UT and have just started to read the Letters, so perhaps there is something elsewhere in HOME which can be applied here. My own take on HOME is that is limited mainly to textual questions of chronological primacy and really does not provide extensive discussion of the richness and variety of Tolkien's imaginative creation.
Bethberry
[ September 16, 2002: Message edited by: Bethberry ]