‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[davem]

Fordim,

As to the governmental structure of Gondor, Aragorn at least is a kind of elected Monarch - Faramir asks if the people will have him as King, which is not simply a rhetorical or ritual question - they could refuse. He has no legal claim to the Kingship, he comes from a royal line who messed up big time, & lost their own Kingdom. It is at least a kind of democracy. They could have chosen Faramir to continue as ruling steward, but they actually wanted a King, & felt Aragorn had proven himself.

'Mark'

I too wouldn't be without the 'philosophy'. My point was simply that those later writings don't fit into the pre LotR Sil which Tolkien had gone back to after LotR was published. They eventually necessitated the attempted re writing of the Sil ('Myths Transformed'). The pre LotR Sil was virtually complete, & the publishers wanted it. So why didn't he just devote the year or two necessary & hand it over? My own feeling is that with LotR he had grown as a writer, & as a thinker. What he found when he re-read the Sil wasn't what he wanted or needed. He needed to progress creatively. And he did. I said in another thread that i consider those later works, the Athrabeth, Laws & Customs, & Osanwe Kenta (what I've read of it - I've been waiting 5 months for the relevant issue of Vinyar Tengwar to turn up!) to contain some of his most beautiful prose & most profound thought. But the point is, they are in no way consistent with the Sil as it existed when he went back to it after LotR. Either they would have to be rejected, or the Sil would need to be re-written. He eventually chose the latter course, but found it too much, & that it would require too much to be lost from the original.

That said, i also hold to another expressed statement that ideas like the Dome of Varda are bordering on silliness, where Elbereth is transformed from creator of the stars of Heaven to a kind of lighting technician.

In this instance, we have two totally conflicting stories, from different periods. The Dome of Varda is not a 'Balrog's Wings' question. It either existed or it didn't. Personally, like Christopher Tolkien, who rejected it for the published Sil, i think it was a mistake - though i understand Tolkien's motivations & what he was attempting to do.

I just feel that when he realised the scale of rewriting required, he gave up on completing the Sil, & set to work on the philosophical pieces & longer versions of the individual stories (Narn, Tuor, Hurin). But I also feel that it was this realisation that he would never be able to produce a complete, perfect Sil, that lead to him not being able really to complete any of the later stories.

I think that his later 'philosophical/theological' works will come in time to be seen as among the greatest things he wrote. Although set in ME, I feel that they rank alongside both LotR & the Beowulf & Fairy Stories essays as the work of a writer & thinker of genius. But I also feel that they are responsible for him not finishing another work of genius -The Silmarillion.