‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[davem]

Maedhros

My position is that you don't have to choose between the stories, & classify one as 'better' or even that one expresses Tolkien's vision better than another. If we were talking about a collection of completely unrelated tales this wouldn't arise - so, the question is - are we actually talking about completely seperate stories? If we take BoLT as a different work than the pre-LotR Sil, & both as different from the post LotR Sil, there is no need to make these choices. And I think the premise you are working from is simply wrong. Because Tolkien uses many of the same characters, settings & events acoss all three (& in the Annals, etc) it simply 'fools' us into seeing them as the 'same' story evolving over time. But each was the 'definitive' version of the work when they were composed. Lost Tales was not written as a first draft of the post LotR Sil. It was a work which expressed Tolkien's desires at the time it was written. His desires had changed when he came to write the Sil in the 30's, so it was a different work. When he returned to the legends in the post LotR period, he was again writing something entirely different.

He is attempting to tell a number of stories, construct a number of 'Legendaria'. The characters, settings & events remain (in their 'essential' form, at least in some cases), but what Tolkien has to say changes, his world view changes. His life changes, so, in many ways, he is a different person, with different things to say. Probably his understanding of his faith & his relationship to God & the world changed as he matured - so the references in the Qenya Lexicon to Germans as 'barbarians' was a reflection of his beliefs & attitudes at the time he wrote it. They are neither 'canonical' nor 'non-canonical'. They reflect his feelings at the time of WW1. Later, his attitudes towards the German people changed. They are no longer 'barbarians'. But once they were - even the 'Elves' thought so.

The idea that you can take bits from the Fall of Gondolin, add to them bits from 'Tuor', written half a century or so later, by a 'different' writer - because Tolkien did change as a man & as a creator - & produce an 'official' version of the story of Gondolin is, in my view, mistaken. Its almost equivalent to taking some scenes from Marlowe's Jew of Malta, & Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice & trying to produce a 'canonical' Elizabethan view of 'Jewishness'', or combining Marlowe's Faustus & Goethe's Faust to get at the 'true' version of the legend. There simply isn't a 'canonical' Silmarillion - its the fox that isn't there. What is there, is JRR Tolkien, a writer who throughout his adult life was telling stories, with many of the same characters & events in them, but with different meanings & intentions. You can no more produce a 'canonical' Silmarillion, by choosing some bits from here, there & eveywhere from his ME writings & casting aside other bits, than you can create a 'canonical' JRRT, by taking some bits from his biology, his academic career, his personal life, his fictional & non fictional writings & rejecting other bits. Tolkien, as I said, is his creative life, the Legendarium, & the Legendarium is Tolkien. There is no 'definitive' version of either.

I'm glad your forays into trying to create a 'canon' have increased you appreciation of Tolkien's work, but I can't see what you hope to end up with, or what value you think it will have - I suspect that in the end you'll find that the process of creating it will be more important than what you end up with.

Bethberry

I think there is an essential difference between fairy stories & Tolkien's creation. The very process of tales being handed down by word of mouth, possibly over centuries, means they soon cease to be the work of a single mind, or reflective of a single person's worldview, at a particular time in that person's life. They accrue & discard details & references as they are told & re-told. They become something totally different to a book written by a particular author ('living shapes that move from mind to mind' as Tolkien put it is Mythopoea). Tolkien's legendarium is Tolkien's story (or, more accurately, as I said above, Tolkien's stories ). They come out of his mind, & in effect are him, speaking to us, mind to mind. To risk falling into the trap of 'Zen & the Art of interpreting Tolkien , we can almost say that while he was in the process of telling the stories - in the various periods of his life - he 'was' the story - his mind was focussed on them, his total attention was on the tale. So, when we read the stories, we encounter Tolkien 'mind to mind'. We are reading his thoughts - even if we know nothing about him or his day to day life or his beliefs, it is still Tolkien's mind that is communing with our mind. We cannot say that Tolkien is not there, because in effect we would be saying our minds are communing with nothing, or that our minds are communing with themselves. The author introduces new ideas - 'living' shapes move from his mind to ours' - 'living' because ideas & images are mental processes - processes transmitted from one living brain to another. So, the author & the reader are both 'really' present in the experience - the author doesn't 'cease' to be while the story is being told - even if he happens to be physically dead. His mind is 'alive', because his mind is the source of the living ideas we are experiencing as we read - & how can something dead produce life? Once we put down the story and think of something else, the author - whether still physically alive or not, is 'dead' to us, because we are no longer aware of his or her existence. Tolkien 'lives' when we read his writings - 'living' mind meets & interacts with 'living' mind - and if you can only offer that 'illusion' of serial time as an argument against that theory then I will be disappointed

No, The author of a tale is always present when the tale is told- whether we realise it or not.