Child, and Lindil, your posts remind me of an assertion I've heard regarding Tolkien's later thinking, namely that in later life he ceased to subcreate based solely on language, doing so more out of philosophical (and perhaps theological) considerations; this change was believed to compromise Tolkien's efforts, setting him off on tangents that served only to send him into a quagmire of potential implications.
So here's my new question: should Tolkien's later thinking, after the publication of LotR, be taken as improvements and therefore as 'canon', or as philosophical niggling that serves only to confound and confuse what his characters and mythos were, as published? I grant that this question need not be dealt with as an either/or; in other words, which parts of Tolkien's later thinking do we do well to consider as improvements on his legendarium, and which should we set aside? And how do we know? Difficulty level 6 out of 5, eh? [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]
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