Do you consider The Silmarillion to be fully "canon"?

[TheLostPilgrim]

Do you consider The Silmarillion, as released in 1977, to be "canon"? To be something close to what J.R.R. Tolkien may have released if he had lived longer? Or is it more a product of the son rather than the father? Do you think J.R.R. would've approved of Christopher's work?

Would a Silmarillion, if it was compiled now, by Christopher differ all that much from what was released in '77? If so, how?

Just want to hear all the different views on The Silmarillion and it's status in the "Tolkien Canon." I think it's one of the most beautiful works ever written as is....Better in some ways than The Lord of the Rings. If only Tolkien had been immortal--Imagine if he could've worked all the storylines in The Silmarillion into their own full length stories

And speaking of full length stories, what of the Children of Hurin? What are the sentiments on it around here? Is it considered on par with Tolkien's other works--Is it considered a book that is indeed the work of the father rather than the son?

A last question: I do not have any of the History of Middle Earth books--I have no finances to buy books at the moment--so a question: What are among Tolkien's later writings with regard to The Silmarillion? I mean stuff written by him with regard to the Similarillion in the 1960s or 1970s--His last writings in the work. Are any later (say post 1960) writings included in the released Silmarillion?

[Galadriel55]

I personally consider COH and The Sil to be canonical (and very good) books. I think TH is the only one that is only semi-canonical. But then again, I look at books from a less academic perspective, and the ones who could give you some good academic insight on how canonical these books are, are the people doing the Translation from the Elvish project.

[Bellamira]

As far as I know, The Children of Hurin comes straight out of The Silmarillion and/or Unfinished Tales; it seems to me to only have been published as a separate book in order to get more publicity from newer Tolkien fans that might not have read or thought to read The Silmarillion. So in that sense, yes I do believe it to be canonical. But like you I am not an academic, just a die-hard fan who's read them over and over again

[blantyr]

To be entirely canon one would have to be entirely consistent. Tolkien's body of work is too large to be strictly canon, and consistency really wasn't a prime consideration anyway.

But then, I read for fun, don't claim to be academic, and don't claim to care that much about consistency. If I had a voice, I'd have wanted an editor who cared more about telling a good story than consistency or academic strictness.

But we've got what we've got.

[radagastly]

Originally posted by blantyr:

To be entirely canon one would have to be entirely consistent. Tolkien's body of work is too large to be strictly canon, and consistency really wasn't a prime consideration anyway.

I actually like a few minor inconsistencies. Even real-world histories have certain inconsistencies, depending on which historian you read you may get radically different versions of the same events.

As for the Silmarillion being "canon" or not, I suppose it is as close as you can get without J.R.R.Tolkien right there to approve of everything. Chirstopher was, after all, his father's "first reader" and somewhat of a personal editor. The next closest thing to a co-author even while his father was still alive. But, while I cannot at the moment find it, I do recall Christopher saying that his choices when constructing Silmarillion were based on telling a story that was consistent, both internally, as a story, and also consistent with already-published work. I infer from this that he did not necessarily choose the most recently written versions of certain chapters, but selected them because they fit together the best, in tone, style and factual details. At least as best as he could. He did a great job at it, I think. It's actually my favorite Tolkien book lately.

[jallanite]

“Canon″ was originally used by Sherlock Holmes fandom as a somewhat joking reference to the works on Sherlock Holmes which were written by Arthur Conan Doyle and therefore considered to be to some degree authoritative compared to other works by other writers in book form or in cinematic form or on radio or in live drama.

From that point it began to be used by other fandoms in an increasingly confused fashion, particularly in respect to television series or film series in which there was no one single creator of a series and often later stories tended to disagree with earlier stories. Then there were spin-offs of the television series or films and sometimes further spin-offs of these which further disagreed with one another.

The Sherlock Holmes series did not altogether cohere from the beginning. But it wasn’t supposed to agree. Somewhere the supposed writer of most of the stories, Doctor Watson, explains that he has deliberately misrepresented parts of his stories and some of the chronology to hide the supposed original facts in order to protect those involved. These events did not supposedly happen as recorded. The most notable example is that Sherlock Holmes’ arch-enemy Professor Moriarty is mentioned for the first time by Holmes in “The Final Problem”, but Moriarty is already well-known to Watson in the novel The Valley of Fear which supposedly occurred earlier.

Currently we have the representatives of owners of franchise series changing their pronouncements about which derivative works are canonical and which ones aren’t. Generally the owners include works currently being produced but some years later may suddenly declare some of these non-canonical. But the B.B.C. in particular adamantly refuses to make any pronouncement on canon.

The only works about Tolkien’s Middle-earth that were authorized by Tolkien by being released with his authorization during his lifetime are:

The Hobbit (two main different editions, the second being the authoritative one)

The Lord of the Rings (two main different editions, the second being mostly the authoritative one)

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil

The Road Goes Ever On (the material in this book by J.R.R. Tolkien, not the music by Donald Swann)

“Nomenclature of the Lord of the Rings″ (sent to many translators of The Lord of the Rings during Tolkien’s lifetime, although only officially published after his death)

I also add:

“Bilbo’s Last Song” (a short poem given by Tolkien to his secretary Joy Hill, originally published as a poster in 1974 and in 1978 included in the second edition and later of The Road Goes Ever On.

The recordings of J. R. R. Tolkien reading from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were not intended to be publicly released during Tolkien’s lifetime. In particular the version of Namárië recorded there follows a different, earlier text than that published and Tolkien would certainly have been more careful in his pronunciation of Elvish if he had thought this was going to be published on records rather than be only a casual, amateur, one-time recording of some of his material for the pure fun of it.

J. R. R. Tolkien did not specifically authorize publication of any of the material edited and published by Christopher Tolkien, except that J. R. R. Tolkien authorized his son to edit and publish some version of the Silmarillion material after his death as he chose. Christopher Tolkien has again and again indicated he himself does not consider any of this material, taken as a whole, to be among the works specifically authorized for publication by his father. In particular Christopher Tolkien has said that much of the material in The Silmarillion on the necklace of the Dwarves was invented by himself and Guy Gavriel Kay and has referred to many other passages in The Silmarillion which he now considers to somewhat misrepresent his father’s intention. Christopher Tolkien never uses the words canon or canonical in respect to any of this father’s work or his own work.

As to what Christopher Tolkien would do now, Christopher Tolkien has again and again pointed out in the HoME series what he now sees as errors in his Silmarillion. Presumably he would fix them and present a version of the quarrel between Thingol and the Dwarves which was less inventive. But he shows no indication that he ever plans to do this. I suspect it is because he knows that no corrected version of the Silmarillion would ever be completely accurate as his father continued to change his ideas up to the time of his death. It is more accurate to accept that Christopher Tolkien’s Silmarillion is only an imperfect stand-in for the real thing which his father never finished. The errors and infelicities that Christopher Tolkien has mentioned again and again, by not being fixed, help prevent The Silmarillion being wrongly taken as authorized in every detail, which some would like to do.

The Children of Húrin is taken from previously unpublished material that is more finished in line with Tolkien’s late ideas than any other section of similar length in the unpublished material and as such is to be taken as more authoritative than some other Silmarillion material. See Christopher Tolkien’s Appendix (2) “The Composition of the Text” for Christopher Tolkien’s own discussion of his sources.

But see from The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoME), page 309, on the Drúedain:

… and allows the introduction of characters somewhat similar to the Hobbits of The Lord of the Rings into some of the legends of the First Age (e.g. the old retainer (Sadog) of Húrin in the legend of Túrin).

But, in the event, Tolkien never got around to making Sadog into one of the Drúedain. Of course, Christopher Tolkien might have inserted once or twice into The Children of Húrin that Sadog was a Drúedan, but Tolkien obviously intended more changes than that. If Sadog is canonically a Drúadan, then what does this say about the account of Sadog in The Children of Húrin and other Silmarillion material in which he is not?

Most of the later non-linguistic material written by Tolkien in the 60s and 70s appears in the published Silmarillion, but this is mostly minor references to material in technical essays. The latest material that appears in large chunks is on Finwë and Míriel.

The Silmarillion is both a book by the father and a book by the son, in which the son chose which one of various accounts to publish and sometimes merged them, sometimes selecting passages from different sources, sometimes merging actual sentences, and occasionally, but very seldom, inventing.

Tolkien tried to fit the flat-earth, fairy tale, cosmology of his Middle-earth into one congruent with the universe as known by science but found that this would require too many changes to his chronology and cosmology to satisfy him. Eventually he decided instead to accept that the Silmarillion material was, within his legendarium, Elvish tradition mixed with Mannish tales, and had been passed on as Mannish tales, some of the tales being badly distorted.

Galadriel55’s opinions I accept as adopting a very free use of canonical in which The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin are, despite their final text not being authorized by Tolkien Senior, works which are the closest to being authorized texts as there is likely to be. Myself and some others who were involved in the Translation from the Elvish project thought it was possible to produce a better Silmarillion than Christopher Tolkien had. I still think so, but not one that is very much better and which did not involve continuous voting on which choice we should take. So I withdrew from the project.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

jallanite, the term "canon" actually comes from church history and refers to the body of Scripture that was considered cohesive and authoritative. Applied to Tolkien, that could fit Christopher's Silmarillion, as he strove for coherency and was certainly the only authorized person for a task like posthumous publication of his father's works. There are numerous arguments for both opinions, pro- and con-canon. It's good to hear both sides, but Tolkien's body of work being what it was, fragmental and developed over decades, there are inconsistencies even between those two major works of Middle-earth published in his lifetime. My personal opinion is that it's close enough...

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

jallanite, the term "canon" actually comes from church history and refers to the body of Scripture that was considered cohesive and authoritative.

Yes.

Note that originally the Christian canon included the Greek translation of the Hebrew texts which was then common, one known as the Septuagint and often abbreviated as LXVII. But because of differences between the LXVII and the common Hebrew version of his day, eventually Saint Jerome (c. 347–420) translated the Hebrew text and parts found only in the LXVII into the standard Latin version. Since then, for the so-called Old Testament, it is mostly the Hebrew version which is purportedly authoritative to Christians, though questions arise over which exact version of the Hebrew text is authoritative when there are differences among versions of the Hebrew text. But some Christians prefer instead the exact wording of the King James translation, this particular translation alone being inspired by God in their belief.

In short, the exact wording of the canon sometimes differs from version to version and translation to translation.

It is also arguable that none of the versions of the canon is entirely cohesive. One difference is that the genealogy of Jesus Christ in Matthew 1 differs from that in Luke 3:23–38 and also disagrees with that in the Hebrew and LXVII Book of Kings. And there are other discrepancies.

What books make up the canon also differ among different branches of Christianity. For example, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church includes the books of Enoch, Jubilees, and I II III Meqabyan in their canon.

Determining exactly what is Christian canon is not simple.

Applied to Tolkien, that could fit Christopher's Silmarillion, as he strove for coherency …

Christopher Tolkien states in his Foreward to The Silmarillion:

A complete consistency (either within the compass of The Silmarillion) itself or between The Silmarillion and other published writings of my father’s) is not to be looked for, and could only be achieved, if at all, at heavy and needless cost.

… and was certainly the only authorized person for a task like posthumous publication of his father's works.

Quite true.

There are numerous arguments for both opinions, pro- and con-canon. It's good to hear both sides, but Tolkien's body of work being what it was, fragmental and developed over decades, there are inconsistencies even between those two major works of Middle-earth published in his lifetime. My personal opinion is that it's close enough...

Close enough for what though? Close enough that Tolkien fans generally accept the Silmarillion as a mostly reasonable version of what J. R. R. Tolkien intended but no more than that. Christopher Tolkien himself indicates by the numerous admitted errors he brings up in the HoME books that his Silmarillion is no more than that.

That is why I prefer not to use the word canon at all, as it is needlessly confusing bringing with it, in fan circles, ideas of fixed continuity which don’t apply when admitted errors are at the point of an argument, or even when they are not.

It seems to me to be clearer if more long-winded to refer to “the published Silmarillion” or to a statement in the HoME series when there are differences. The reason that the word canon is so seldom used in fan forums is, I believe, because it brings with it too many ideas of authority that just don’t work, according more authority to the published Silmarillion than its co-author accords it. Best to not use such a weighted term. Yes the published Silmarillion is “authorized”, but no more so than is indicated by its co-author.

If you want to find out what Tolkien thought about any issue in respect to his legendarium at different times, then look at what is said in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales and the HoME series and in Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien and in John Rateliff’s The History of The Hobbit, including Christopher Tolkien’s comments, noting that some of it must be erroneous because it disagrees with what is said elsewhere. After all, this is fiction we are investigating.