Transmission theory - what if it's ALL true?

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Galin

It wasn't really a challenge, but okay

The point was merely another example of why I'd change "mountain" to "mountain range" -- meaning (what I would think would be) a very notable amount of fan-made inconsistencies/confusions -- explained by the same fans that "made" them in the first place (and whether or not a given argument/explanation seems "compelling enough" can be fairly subjective, so I won't go there).


In other words, I would imagine that these two examples, Trotter/Galadriel, are only the tip of an enormous berg of ice -- if one really starts with page one of HOME and considers names, changing ideas both large and small (some so bewildering even CJRT had a bit of trouble untangling them), and whatever and so on . . . and especially, for whatever reason, "you" (as in anyone) want to include draft materials for The Lord of the Rings as well!

All I can say is good luck. Again, to my mind rejected drafts/ideas are not part of the art of world-building, and considering Tolkien's own choice (for one example), to abandon a few pages expounding upon the name Elros (and so on) after he realized he had already characterized ros as a Sindarin word, not a Beorian word, and in print (not in drafts). . .

. . . well, Shirly Tolkien could have bent over back"words" to explain the seeming discrepancy there; but then again there is the consideration of art, or to bring the matter into the kitchen, the taste of the soup: too much "pepper in the soup" and the chef just might be grumbled at by his patrons -- and for whatever reason Tolkien wouldn't even let this "ros detail", itself "hidden" in a corner of the appendices of ROTK, be confuddled.

That said, in any case, it's not my project/idea/fun-thing-to-do . . . and obviously no one needs my permission for anything . . . so if it's for you (plural), have fun!

This is soooooo not my project, and yet I found myself pondering it on the train last night.

I think all we need to posit is that Tolkien wasn't quite as honest as we give him credit for. What if the EARLIEST versions are always the ones closest to the vision and the later forms (that we think of as the "real" story) are Tolkien rewriting history?

For example, what if the hobbits really were met by a Hobbit named Trotter in Bree? Trotter-the-Hobbit seems to disappear around Moria. What if he died there? Strider shows up in Lórien--makes sense, if we can trust the Received Version's assertion that Galadriel seems to have favoured his suit and given him the Elessar then. Perhaps Tolkien is just trying to dramatically simplify the number of characters by conflating the similarly-named characters. Did he perhaps think it was nonsense that a Hobbit wearing clogs could have kept the Witch-king and four companions at bay? Or was he confused when Trotter leaves the story at Moria and a human shows up?The evidence shows he kept the name "Trotter" for the human character for a while.

What this might mean for the Silmarillion is that Tevildo really was a giant cat. Did he conflate Tevildo with Thû, or was Thû his way of saying "well, this is really nonsense--no one's going to buy a giant cat keeping Lúthien captive!" Or is Thû/Sauron a different character (by the way, if this WERE Tolkien's method, no one can complain that Peter Jackson conflates Glorfindel and Arwen--Tolkien might have done the same if he weren't sexist) that Tolkien conflates?

The many, many names changes are very easy to explain away this way: the oldest form is probably the true one, but we all know how seriously Tolkien took his linguistic aesthetics. Bingo Bulger-Baggins probably is "Frodo"'s real name, but Tolkien clearly said "well, that's never going to fly" and stole Frodo's name ("because, after all, the connection to the Germanic Froda is delicious").

By the way, if we assume the visions were truest EARLY, then we can perhaps explain why Tolkien moved away from really writing stories to writing "philosophical" works: there were two great bursts of visions: the Lost Tales material in the 1910s and the Third Age material in the 1930s/1940s. Perhaps there were some smaller visions here or there, but most of the work in the off-years can be explained as his attempt to fill in the gaps extrapolating from what he knew, rather than seeing directly, which perhaps explains the great apparently inconsistency between the Lost Tales First Age (note that he never seems to have seen its ending) and the LotR Third Age.