‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[Bêthberry]

And most folk have a vague understanding that that's what you kinda sorta mean, and those who are interested in reading 'Something That Might Remind The Reader Of Tolkien' will decide whether or not to check your stuff out.

Then in the review column, the reader can say "Yeah, it's not bad, in some ways it's pretty close, but well-- this thing about Legolas and the fifteen foot rabbit..."

I think Helen provides here a very useful definition of what makes fanfiction so popular: people are hungering after "more of the same" from an author they enjoy. This is I suspect the major reason why people read fanfiction and possibly a major reason why people write fanfiction. It does, however, limit writing to a kind of secondhand nature, where the imagination of the fanfic writer is in some measure bound up with the world of, for our purposes, Middle earth.

Yet there surely are other reasons for writing besides this kind of echo. There are many kinds of "influence" possible in the crucible of the creative imagination. When does a fanfiction writer cross over the line between "repeating" his favourite precursor and attaining his own kind of unique form of writing? After all, Tolkien himself was inspired by other writers to create his own Middle earth, a subcreation wholly unique. Is that freedom of invention, inspiration, creativity to be denied to those who follow him?

Tolkien as muse can take many forms. And people are free to define what form they prefer, I suppose.