What breaks the enchantment?

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

But Gandalf, as an Ainur, would, it seems to me, in this situation,adopt the role of 'impartial' narrator, passing on information to other council members. He can also seem as if he is 'bragging' in the Council, reporting his 'clever' responses to Saruman. I think he is being quite impartial. We have to keep in mind his true nature, & I think if we do his speech is in character. He may be in He may be in Middle earth, but he is not of it. As Tolkien put it he is effectively an 'incarnate angel'.

Originally Posted by davem

We know he is more than he appears. We are on a learning curve at this point in the story.

There's a big, big jump between saying Gandalf is an Ainur and saying 'he is more than he appears.' The latter could be said of all the characters in any story, that at the beginning, especially at such a momentous occasion as the Council of Elrond, there will be more to these characters than yet meets the eye.

To say that only a reading which knows The Silm can create a valid reading of Lot R is to demand a specific knowledge which was unavailable to almost all readers (short of CT and The Inklings) until the posthumous publication of The Silm. You are here now claiming that LotR cannot be understood without reference to other Tolkien texts, yet previously you were saying the LotR should be read without what you called baggage of other texts. To prioritise some texts above others is to engage in specious argument. LotR as its own unique text has to operate independently in order to charm readers.

What would appear to be important is the tantalizing potential of knowing that a "yet more ancient history" preceeded it, as Tolkien writes in the Second Edition. Hoping to catch such "glimpses" is a lot different than knowing Gandalf belongs to the form of creation set up by Eru. Things are held on the tenuous potential in LotR and not stated outright. That potentiality is, I argue, what we as readers are to experience, and not an explicit demand that the Legendarium explains everything.

In that second edition Tolkien stated what his purpose was, and it is an interesting purpose, for he does not claim he expected to hold readers constantly in thrall to some enchantment.

The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times mabye excite them or deeply move them.

It seems to me that to characterise any reading where enchantment breaks as a failure to attend properly to the text is to overstate and even mischaracterise what is happening.