‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Those are difficult questions to answer. Anyone who has read the rather complicated editorial history in the HarperCollins edition will realise that there were many publisher's errors to amend; but I am deeply suspicious of the correction of 'mistakes' that were apparently present in the author's original text. Far better, I think to assume that the inveterate tinkerer who wrote the book had done all the tinkering that he considered necessary before sending off his typescripts. After all, he had nearly twenty years to correct himself if he was unhappy with what he had printed.

Thus far I have avoided this thread, largely because I am so deeply unqualified to talk about literary theory and the philosophy of reading. Indeed I would have continued to leave well alone were it not for a discovery that may serve further to cloud these already murky waters. Anyone who reads my posts will know that I am no stranger to the conclusive Tolkien quotation, so it seems rather apt that in one of the disputedly 'canonical' sources I managed to find one that allows the reader a certain latitude.

The Athrabeth is a conversation, in which many assumptions and steps of thought have to be supplied by the reader.

Author's note #9 to the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth. HoME X, p.335

Of course some will be saying that this is unpublished, and that in any case the auctorial ogre has long since been laid low by the knights of criticism. To the latter I have no answer, other than that a text clearly is composed by someone, and that presumably that someone had at least an inkling of what they were trying to achieve. To the former I can reply that nobody would make such a statement unless he intended that someone else should read it. I would also say to both that my paradoxical use of the quotation above renders it equally useless to each side of the debate.

All of which is but to duck the issue through flippant obfuscation. My own views on Tolkien are every bit as complicated as the preceding comments would indicate. On the one hand he is an author of twentieth-century fiction, and therefore quite open to criticism under the normal rules. Therefore if the text supports the argument when cited in context then the argument stands. On the other hand, I would be the first to wheel out the Professor if someone asked me a question about the history of the Third Age or started saying that Hobbits can go to Aman and live forever. I am also not a subscriber to the 'death of the author' approach to texts. The composer has as much of a place in literature as does the reader, and to remove him from the equation looks suspiciously like an attempt to give the reader, or rather the literary critic, the sole significance in the process. I do not believe that an author's later comments are always correct, or even always consistent with the text, but even an anonymous author is still there, with all his influences and sources, opinions and beliefs. Texts do not write themselves.

Not that Anglo-Saxonists, and that would include the particular scholar under consideration, are any strangers to dead authors. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that the early-medieval literary community were a long way ahead of Barthes in their approach to dissemination, and the effects of this are well known. In a fairly recent article, John D. Niles wrote:

While some contemporary scholars may still hesitate to embrace the advance in critical thinking to which Barthes refers - "The author is dead; long live the multidimensional space!" - specialists in Old English literature can rest fairly unperturbed by the banning of authors from the precinct where the meaning of texts is discerned. For it has long been evident that Anglo-Saxon poets, now quite literally dead for over a thousand years, have left behind texts that, with a few exceptions, are inscrutably anonymous. Much as we might wish for evidence bearing on the flesh-and-blood people who sought to endow these texts with significance, all we have today are the texts themselves confronting us in splendid, post-modern isolation. In the original manuscripts, these texts are simply juxtaposed. They are written out in uniform lines, one after another: untitled, unattributed, undatable, with only a capital letter, in many instances, to mark the end of one piece and the beginning of another.

John D. Niles. 'Sign and Psyche in Old English Poetry'. American Journal of Semiotics 9 (1992) 11-25.

My point would be that a writer in whose field most of the authors are anonymous, a large body of the works untitled and the date of composition often doubtful; a writer who himself acknowledges the importance of the reader's perception in the process, might well agree that he is not the owner of his work. However, there are still theories about Tolkien that are clearly just wrong, such as the old second-world-war-allegory chestnut. Where the reader is clearly off his rocker, I can think of no better argument than that of the author. Perhaps what is required in the issue of 'canonicity' is the exercise of our own judgement and common sense. No quotation from Tolkien will ever supply that, and nor will our freedom of interpretation. Somewhere between the two is a medium in which both are important, which is pleasingly similar to the position of the text. It stands poised between the author and the reader, so clearly something is required from both in order for the circuit to be completed. I simply do not understand why one should have to be the master, as though one were to ask whether the ability to speak or the ability to understand were more important in conversation. Having said that, where there is uncertainty I prefer to have the author's opinion rather than just my own guesswork; and I would rather have the opinion of an expert, whatever the issue, than rely on my own. This subject is no exception.