Relative Powers

[davem]

Originally Posted by Thalion

The crux of this statement is "WHAT DOES GREATEST MEAN?!"...this question defines the statement...how you answer it will alter your beliefs as to what placement Luthien deserves amongst the elves.......as I've said multiple times before, defining "greatness" can be to say "of most renown" or "most famous"...to define "greatness" in this way would no way place Luthien atop a list of the highest in relative powers,

I think the issue is one of context. What did Tolkien mean by saying both Feanor & Luthien were 'greatest'?

Tolkien states at different times that Frodo, Sam & Aragorn was the 'hero' of LotR. Clearly they can't all have been the hero - simply that at different times Tolkien considered one to be the hero, at other times he considered another to fulfil that role. But in terms of context a statement may be qualified by what isn't stated

In Appendix F we find the 'clear' statement about Elves:

They were tall, fair of skin & grey-eyed, though their locks were dark save in the golden house of Finarfin.

Now, CT has stated in BoLT1:

Thus these words describing characters of face and hair were actually written of the Noldor only, and not of all the Eldar: indeed the Vanyar had golden hair, and it was from Finarfin's Vanyarin mother lndis that he, and Finrod Felagund and Galadriel his children, had their golden hair that marked them out among the princes of the Noldor. But I am unable to determine how this extraordinary perversion of meaning arose.

Because of this, in the revised 50th anniversary text the editors (Hammond & Scull) add the following note to LotR:

These words describing characters of face & hair in fact applied only to the Noldor.

So, what we have is an apparently clear statement about the physical attributes of the 'Eldar' as a whole, but which in fact only applies to the Noldor. Whether this failure to distinguish between the Noldor & the Eldar as a whole applies in the case of Luthien vs Feanor is probably impossible to answer, but certainly it might be true to say that while Luthien was the 'greatest' of the Eldar, Feanor was the 'greatest' of the Noldor (unless we give that crown to Galadriel). Yet, Luthien was not strictly 'Eldar, but half-Eldar-half Ainur.

Let's not forget that Tolkien often made 'poetic' statements about characters & events as well as strictly 'factual' ones. And once we introduce the 'Translator Conceit' we have to ask which 'writer' within the Legendarium wrote which statement. There are a number of 'contributors' to the Legendarium, from Pengolodh to Bilbo, & one could speculate that they may have had their own particular biases.

I think this alone shows that we must be very careful about simply trying to trump each other with quotes....