[davem]

The 'baggage' I was referring to (which I should have expressed more clearly) was personal stuff, or ideas, concepts & connections external to Middle earth as a whole. Of course, the whole of Tolkien's extensive Me writings were not available to most readers, but they were available to Tolkien himself & LotR grew out of the earlier writings. For instance, the encounter with Shelob is heightened & deepened immensely by a knowlege of the story of the killing of the Two Trees, the rape of the Silmarils & the story of Earendel & Ungoliant. This 'background' information turns the episode from a fight with a monstrous spider into something far more significant & symbolic, & links back into Sam's statement about stories, & that he & Frodo are in the same story as Beren & Luthien & Earendel. The point is that Tolkien had those stories in mind as he wrote the confrontation with Shelob & if the reader also knows those stories he or she will read the encounter differently than if they don't. That is not bringing primary world baggage with them.

I wouldn't deny that readers who only have LotR can get a great deal from it, but Tolkien's struggles to get the Sil published alongside LotR show (aside fro his own comments in the letters) that he felt the background histories were necessary for a complete understanding of that work. The fact that he didn't struggle to get a volume of Anglo-Saxon, Middle Eastern, Finnish, Celtic, etc, myths & legends, fairy tales, other fantasy stories or historical accounts published as well, shows that he didn't consider a knowledge of those things to be necessary to such an understanding.

LotR was not considered by Tolkien to be a self contained story, but the culmination of the Legendarium.

LotR can be read as a stand alone work, & as you point out it has been, of necessity, read so for most of its history, but it was not intended by its author to be read so. Whether it has to stand or fall by whether it can be so read or not is a matter of opinion. Whether or not it was intended by its writer to be so read is not a matter of opinion. It wasn't. Expecting to fully understand LotR (as opposed to simply loving it & being enchanted by it) without knowing the rest of the Legendarium is rather like expecting to understand RotK without knowing The Fellowship or The Two Towers. One could read RotK & be enchanted & moved by it, but one wouldn't fully understand it - anymore than someone watching episodes 4,5 & 6 of Star Wars without knowing what happened in episodes 1-3 would fully understand them. The first three Star Wars movies (whatever one's opinion of them as movies) are necessary to give background & depth to the second three. What is not necessary, & would, in my opinion, get in the way would be watching the movies with a head full of ideas about comparative mythology, religion & the other movies 'referenced' by Lucas.

Being too aware of such 'baggage' while we are watching the movies would inevitably break the spell & reduce the whole experience to an intellectual exercise devoid of emotional involvement, but watching episodes 4-6 with the events of episodes 1-3 in mind will add meaning & depth to our experience. Episodes 4-6 had to be viewed as 'stand alone' movies for 20 odd years because episodes 1-3 weren't available to watch but George Lucas knew what they contained, & wrote episodes 4-6 as the culmination (unless you believe the 9 episode story arc tale) of his 'Legendarium', & events in the later trilogy only really make sense in the light of the earlier one. In the same way LotR was written by Tolkien as the culmination of The Sil.

So, while a full & complete understanding of both LotR & SW 4-6 requires a knowlege of the The Sil & SW 1-3 respectively, neither requires (or benefits from) any 'baggage' external to the secondary worlds they present to us.