The Complete Tolkien Companion - anyone have it?

[Galin]

Originally Posted by lindil

Available in England is a thrice revised version of JEA Tylers Tolkien Companion now called the Complete Tolkien Comapanion.

Anyone have it, and if so what do you think? How well does it cover the HoM-E material?

I don't think Foster's or Tyler's companions ever intended to fully cover HME. Hammond and Scull's The JRR Tolkien Companion and Guide -- which includes two volumes, Chronology and Reader's Guide, does cover HME, especially the Reader's Guide as far as collecting related material.


I actually have Foster's guide published before the 1977 Silmarillion, so that's based primarily on Tolkien-published material, and so to my mind ends up being like a good internal look at Middle-earth. Of course, one expects some things to be off, compared to what would later come to light, but I find it very interesting to read a companion that considers only (or at least mostly) what the Subcreator himself allowed his readership to read.

Anyway, again I doubt Foster or Tyler even claim to take up the difficult task of covering UT or HME, at least in full. Not that I know of anyway.

[Snowdog]

Originally Posted by Galin

I actually have Foster's guide published before the 1977 Silmarillion, so that's based primarily on Tolkien-published material, and so to my mind ends up being like a good internal look at Middle-earth. Of course, one expects some things to be off, compared to what would later come to light, but I find it very interesting to read a companion that considers only (or at least mostly) what the Subcreator himself allowed his readership to read.

Anyway, again I doubt Foster or Tyler even claim to take up the difficult task of covering UT or HME, at least in full. Not that I know of anyway.

In his forward, Tyler does say that much of the material in UT did add to expanding the known tales, whereas, HoME contained primarily earlier, rejected or superseded versions and such of previously released materials.

- From the 3rd Edition Forward - Complete Guide to Middle-earth:
"If the many books by J.R.R. Tolkien published over the last 20 years - that is, since the Silmarillion - had individually contained even half as much new material as that work, compiling this 3rd Edition would have been a labour indeed. Fortunately, for my purposes anyway, they do not. ...
Yet, though anything but valueless to the Tolkien scholar, The History of Middle-earth proves to be of limited relevance to the compiler of Middle-earth reverence works. ...
Then there is Unfinished Tales. First published in 1980, this volume is anything but irrelevant. It consists of a number of shorter tales, essays and (by the Editor) annotations, nearly all of which cast fascinating light on hitherto unilluminated regions of Tolkien's world."

I too have Robert Foster's Guide to Middle Earth, and it was quite invaluable to me when I got it in 1976 after I read Lord of the Rings a couple times. All we had in those days were the J.R.R. Tolkien-published books, and the gold-mine that is the Appendices. I agree it is a great glimpse back to what Tolkien himself had published.

[Galin]

Hmm, interesting Snowdog.

I assume Tyler's use of UT is then limited to additional material that does not conflict with other unpublished (additional) material, or conflict with Tolkien-published material. So I asume Tyler is picking and choosing texts he feels are 'safe enough' from UT, though that could still give him a substantial enough amount of additional material I guess.

Take the Oropher material for instance. Does Tyler avoid Oropher altogether? because if not he will end up playing editor between two arguably conflicting accounts in UT, and to conflate the two (as I've seen on the web) would also involve editorial decisions and present something that JRRT himself never wrote. And if Tyler presents both accounts, then his companion has basically become another animal, selectively dealing with external variations if he ignores others.

And since Tyler is already working with Christopher Tolkien's constructed Silmarillion, 'new material' like the death of Amros at Losgar, or the Dome of Varda and the Star Imagines, or Gil-galad's parentage (for examples) can't really be considered new for his purposes anyway.

It must be obvious enough to Tyler that the Later Quenta Silmarillion and other Silmarillion related texts have already been edited for him -- the death of Amros is not an early or superseded notion, for instance, but neither can it be easily used in his companion as new material or he will have to explain the variation in an external context.

[Snowdog]

I guess one would have to read through his book to see how he handles it.

Listed as 'Amrod &n Amras', said both to have been slain in an assault upon the Havens of Sirion

Of Oropher it says he was slain the Battle of Dagorlad and Thranduil his son became King of the Woodland Realm.

So it appears he doesn't avoid Oropher altogether, and accepts the information in the Silmarillion as published, not other versions of the tale presented in HoMe.

[Galin]

Yes I'm almost tempted to buy it now. Almost

The Amrod and Amras entry is expected enough, and Tyler appears to be doing as I expected with Unfinished Tales too: editing problematic accounts and therefore somewhat limiting the amount of new material he can add to his companion. That's why I said above 'at least in full', as here we see him using Unfinished Tales but stripping the Oropher texts (which arguably conflict with each other in part) to present a more easily accepted description concerning this character.

I'm not yet sure I would necessarily include Oropher at all.

[lindil]

The one thing I forgot to point out was that in the 1st 2 editions, JEAT, goes along with JRRT's feigned 'M-E as history' .

I liked the effect, as if I was reading a tome from within M-E not the RW.

That was forsworn in the 3rd ed. Too bad.

I think I will try and find a 2nd ed. a do an all new revision.

When Aiwendil and I tried our hand at an encyclo, I neglected to use an older outdated reference work as a starting point. Big Mistake! This will help put some healthy boundaries on the thing.