‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[Lalwendë]

Perhaps both C-threads ought to come to a Gentlemen's agreement and take each other outside for a bout of fisticuffs and see who emerges as winner. Or failing that could the threads be merged?

Originally Posted by Squatter

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.

Originally Posted by SpM

Nine times out of ten, the reader's interpretation will accord with authorial intention (that's where common sense and judgment play their role), but it will not always be so. And, in some cases, the reader's interpretation may well be completely at odds with the author's intention, but nevertheless hold meaning for that reader.

I am very, very pleased that Tolkien expicitly stated that LotR was Not an allegory. If he had not done so, then we might all have spent many hours drawing analogies between the events in Middle-earth and events in the 20th Century. Time and again I will read something in LotR that brings to mind events of the last century, but then I stop and think and before I get carried away, remember that Tolkien said this was not the meaning of what I am reading.

So the Author clearly is not irrelevant. Anything I may 'see' or may individually interpret as similar to historical events is effectively wrong. I can see these elements as 'applicable' to our world, but I cannot and must not see them as allegorical. It isn't any consensus which does that, nor is it sense or judgement, it is the Author who tells me that this meaning I am constructing is wrong.

I think Tolkien was all too well aware of how readers can construct meanings, and he did want to steer us away from that particular path or else why would he have stated his case so clearly? If he had not done so then I am quite sure that upon publication some would have picked up LotR and said "ah, an allegory of..." because all the elements are in place; people still do this to this day before they learn otherwise, and it is Tolkien who steps in to 'put them straight' as 'twere.

Like Tony Blair and Saruman before him I'm sticking with the 'third way'.