The Canon

[Galin]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Of course, the publication trench-line meas that there is virtually no canonical "fact" regarding the Elder Days at all, beyond the fragments in the LR Appendices. individuals named Hurin and Turin existed and were apparently mighty warriors, but we know nothing about them; and there was never any such person as Fingolfin or Maedhros!

Yes, but of course that doesn't mean we all can't expand our visions of Middle-earth by employing the posthumously published texts. This canon line is not a barrier to imagining (and engaging with) and discussing the First Age. It might seem dismissive to say there was "never any such person" as Maedhros, but despite that there is no canonical version of this character and his deeds, all of our personal Silmarillions surely include him (or if not, why not), and there is little reason [so far that I'm aware of] to believe that Meadhros was going to become a very different character from what we see both in the constructed Silmarillion, and in the actual extant texts Tolkien left behind (from which the Silmarillion was constructed).

And so we discuss the life and character of Maedhros as if he is as attested and as canonical as Frodo Baggins. And who wants a Middle-earth without Maedhros? Not me. The distinction need not erase him from our imaginative Middle-earths, but "canon" would have helped me engage with the Maedros tale if his story or character had been drowned under a pile of posthumously published, confusing material.

It remains merely possible that Tolkien could have altered Maedhros' character and his actions, even drastically, but that's injecting the "possible factor" without reasonable grounds [unless someone has some]. I can however, reasonably (in my opinion) argue that there was no character in Middle-earth with a name Maedhros that meant "Pale-glitter", and because Tolkien had never attested the name in any published work, he was free to niggle with its form and meaning, which he did.

I think that that is a very interesting letter (unfortunately only the last half-sheet was preserved by the recipient); not just for the "Numenorean transmission" line but also because its mention of the Second and Third Ages indicates that Akallabeth and Of the Rings of Power were by this time clearly intended for inclusion in the book T planned to publish.

No argument here. I also argue that (I think) Tolkien intended to publish The Drowning of Anadune, which contains purposed confusions and contradictions in it when compared to Akallabeth. I can't prove that he would have for sure, nor can I prove that the "final" form as we have it in HOME was going to be the final form. I've little doubt that JRRT desired the works you note to be published, but such general statements need not mean "in the form they currently exist"... and even if that was Tolkien's meaning, we are still in a grey area, if in the admittedly not very compelling arena of merely stamping "not authorized" on something -- not that it matters much in various cases (in one context or sense, anyway) -- I mean the fact that something was posthumously published is probably going to lurk in the back of people's minds in an all-agreed-upon sense... until one stumbles across points of arguable contradiction or confusion.

For example, if I post that Galadriel was referred to as a queen of Lothlorien according to OTROP, can I post this as a fact due to this section of the letter you raised? If I did, I'll bet someone would point out that JRRT himself never published OTROP in any case (in other words, someone would call its canonicity into question), likely adding that we don't know that the form that we have today was fully revised in an updated context, and so ready for print, and that the "no queen" statements found in Unfinished Tales post-date this (and I think, the Zimmerman Letter too)...

... but if I post that Gimli called Galadriel a queen in The Lord of the Rings, I doubt folks would attack the canonicity of the source. So if Tolkien's "latest" (but never published by him) statements are to become a fact of the internal world, one has to say that maybe Gimli's statement is merely his opinion, and that he is wrong or at least arguably uninformed about how Galadriel sees her role in Lothlorien. Then again, why can't Gimli be correct? Robert Foster calls Galadriel a Queen in his Guide to Middle-earth, both the original and revised versions. There is the matter of canon, and there is how much one is willing to weight canon against other texts when constructing the world of Middle-earth beyond what the author himself published.


You also brought up the Hurin/Turin tale; and again, as I know you know, Christopher Tolkien explained: "It was my father's intention ultimately to transform Sador, the old serving-man in Hurin's house in Dor-lomin, into a Drug." [Christopher Tolkien, note 8, The Druedain, Unfinished Tales] We don't have that version, of course. We don't have any canonical source for a detailed version of the Turin tale -- again, that doesn't mean that Hurin and Turin don't exist in (I assume) all our personal Silmarillions, but it does illustrate that what wasn't already in print is quite open to Tolkien's changing tastes and imagination.

Interestingly, Robert Foster's early (pre-constructed Silmarillion) Guide to Middle-earth notes that the hero of the First Age Turin seems to have killed a Dragon, and to have become a king, based on ATB.