"Canonicity II": Has Yours Changed?

[Galin]

For me, canon equals author-published material.

With respect to "in story" texts: the rest is JRRT in the process of making more canon

With respect to the revised foreword to The Lord of the Rings, this is an external text (JRRT writing as the author), and thus not canon for me. In general I think it's open to something like the Death Of Author principle.

Originally Posted by Boromir88

Everything had to be neat, clean, categorized and explained; absolutely no contradictions. As I started reading more than The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit however, . . .

But there are un-neat, unclean, unexplained things, along with arguable contradictions, in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, including an unreliable narrator in Bilbo, for example.

. . . trying to come up with "no contradictions" canon, was I daresay impossible. I think it actually soured my experience, and "broke the enchantment" (to refer to another thread from the days of old).

I'll put it this way: some of the posthumously published corpus started chipping away at the story, undermining it, and thus, breaking the enchantment. Folks naturally want the/a story, and Tolkien, likewise naturally, didn't want readers to see its process . . . which is not a jab at Christopher Tolkien for publishing anything. Christopher Tolkien wasn't trying to create canon in any case, nor undermine it, I would think.


I've invented (or maybe not) a term "false contradiction", and I mean something like this (for a mostly made up example).

A) Tolkien publishes a limited history of Rohan in Appendix A.

B) Tolkien writes a long history of Rohan, but mistakenly contradicts a couple of things in Appendix A.

C) Tolkien writes another extended history of Rohan. This time nothing arguably conflicts with Appendix A, but this version rather noticeably conflicts with "text B" in many areas.

Certainly there are contradictions when we compare the three texts, but is it fair to a subcreator/writer to claim that the History of Rohan is "now" (post-posthumously-published-papers) full of contradictions?

I say it's full of false contradictions. Tolkien was working toward the history of Rohan.

Or in other words, more of A, author published work

[Mithadan]

Boromir88, you picked quite a classic thread to piggyback upon. I didn't wander all the way through, and I don't think I contributed to it way back when. But I do recall my own posts on the subject, and, looking back, I may have changed my views a bit.

I once posted a "scale" of canonicity; (1) works published during JRRT's lifetime; (2) The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales; (3) late volumes from HoME. I might change this a bit now. In term's of the "author's canon," meaning what JRRT intended, clearly some iteration of The Silmarillion was to be part of the canon. Because I think that he intended the Three Great Tales from the First Age (Beren and Luthien, the children of Hurin and the Fall of Gondolin, together with Earendil, all "mannish tales") to be expanded in the fashion seen in Unfinished Tales (grievously without Beren), I would tend to give those iterations greater weight. I at one time believed that one might be able to glean JRRT's final intent from study of HoME, particularly the last few volumes, for a full picture of the Silmarillion, but now think that at least some of Morgoth's Ring, while fascinating, was in the nature of an exploration regarding whether the fundamentals of the Silmarillion could be changed.

So perhaps I am retreating to a reader-centric view of canon, particularly since I am of the school that likes to find consistency (or explanations that work within the framework of the mythos) in his writing. I also appreciate his works as a history and literary evolution. In short, everyone gets to pick and choose a bit.

[Bêthberry]

Great treasure troving, Boro

A bit of irrelevant information about the original Canonicity thread: As it turns out our Mr. Fordham Hedgethistle was a grad student in an English department of which a friend of mine was the head. Oh the things Facebook helps us learn! I vaguely teased him a bit but did not challenge him or dox him, as that I thought would be really unfair or unethical.

But what a small world the internet is.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I think there is a tendency often to very much exaggerate the degree of Authorial Intent to be attached to the published text of the Lord of the Rings, as if "This is FINAL and OFFICIAL and represents Tolkien's consciously determined LAST WORD." The more I work with Tolkien's manuscripts, the clearer it is to me that this is not at all the case; that the text published in 1954-55 represents merely a contingent state, a transverse cut across an ongoing development that became "fixed" not because Tolkien had decided that it was finished, final and complete, but because it was physically taken out of his hands so that he couldn't continue to monkey with it. Even in the course of the typescript for the printers - weeks and months past deadline - he was rewriting things. Even on the galley proofs (which for normal authors exist to correct typos), he was rewriting things. Had not Rayner Unwin practically put a gun to his head and made him give up the papers, he probably would have spent the last two decades of his life continuing to alter and reshape The Lord of the Rings just as he did with The Silmarillion.

[Galin]

Yes but William, what about the art of subcreation? Something has to be the story, and even Tolkien bowed to that.

And if JRRT wants to niggle away for years, no problem, but he's still working toward a story to be published. And if he could change his mind about something right up to the point that that something was physically taken from him -- I'd say all the more reason to consider author-published work as canon. At least we know "that much" about a given thing: it prevailed into the Secondary World.


And even when JRRT just couldn't help himself, he still realized that stepping on already published work is simply not the same as continuing to niggle or revise aspects of the subcreated world that nobody knows about. The Secondary World exists on bookshelves for a once and future readership.

"It may be suggested that whereas my father set great store by consistency at all points with The Lord of the Rings and the Appendices, so little concerning the First Age had appeared in print that he was under far less constraint. I am inclined to think, however, that the primary explanation of these differences lies rather in his writing largely from memory. The histories of the First Age would always remain in a somewhat fluid state so long as they were not fixed in a published state; and he certainly did not have all the relevant manuscripts clearly arranged and set out before him."

Foreword, The Peoples of Middle-Earth

To me, this is another way to say that Tolkien (and quite naturally in my opinion), treats fixed work as canon.


Ursula Le Guin did some fancy dancing with Earthsea, for another example I've used in the past. But she herself published the later books of course, leaving no question as to whether she truly wanted to shine such a new light on Earthsea.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

To me, this is another way to say that Tolkien (and quite naturally in my opinion), treats fixed work as canon.

Or is Christopher saying that, without a bound book ready to hand and his manuscripts in disorder, his father's memory couldn't keep it all straight? This would apply especially to the 'late writings' 1968-73, since not only was Tolkien elderly, but due to an unfortunate accident his papers had become hopelessly jumbled during the move to Bournemouth. To take one example of his fading mental powers: the Glorfindel essays state that he was now stuck with the name because it had appeared in print in the Lord of the Rings, therefore Glorfindel of Rivendell must necessarily be the same person as Glorfindel of Gondolin and an explanation of how this was possible was necessary. But of course, there was nothing whatsoever preventing him from just renaming the Gondolin hero; it seems he was getting somewhat confused (or he could have let it ride, as he did with Legolas and Galdor)

[Galin]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Or is Christopher saying that, without a bound book ready to hand and his manuscripts in disorder, his father's memory couldn't keep it all straight?

I think he's saying that as well -- after the first sentence about consistency with already published works

Which brings up another issue: if Tolkien simply forgets something already in print and "steps on it" in a late text, has he truly, consciously revised that something?

This would apply especially to the 'late writings' 1968-73, since not only was Tolkien elderly, but due to an unfortunate accident his papers had become hopelessly jumbled during the move to Bournemouth. To take one example of his fading mental powers: the Glorfindel essays state that he was now stuck with the name because it had appeared in print in the Lord of the Rings, therefore Glorfindel of Rivendell must necessarily be the same person as Glorfindel of Gondolin and an explanation of how this was possible was necessary. But of course, there was nothing whatsoever preventing him from just renaming the Gondolin hero; it seems he was getting somewhat confused (or he could have let it ride, as he did with Legolas and Galdor)

I think the late Glorfindel text II contains a good example of Tolkien following his canon: in this text he negates the idea that Glorfindel might have been Sindarin -- negating it due to what is already in print -- if Glorfindel of Gondolin is supposed to be the same person as Glorfindel of Rivendell of course. In other words, The Lord of the Rings comes first, or in other other words, JRRT will naturally try to figure out the scenario giving top priority to already published description.

In other other other words, don't break the enchantment here.

And in my opinion, in this late text Tolkien is simply choosing to see if a satisfactory answer can emerge without altering the name of the Elf of Gondolin, and if not, he has the option of altering it.

I think a good example of Tolkien's shaky memory here might be the late detail that Gondolin was occupied by a people of almost entirely Noldorin origin, which is closer to the original conception of Gondolin's folk than description found in The Grey Annals.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Great treasure troving, Boro

A bit of irrelevant information about the original Canonicity thread: As it turns out our Mr. Fordham Hedgethistle was a grad student in an English department of which a friend of mine was the head. Oh the things Facebook helps us learn! I vaguely teased him a bit but did not challenge him or dox him, as that I thought would be really unfair or unethical.

But what a small world the internet is.

Not quite -- I was still listed on the dept website as a mere grad student, but by the time of the first go-round with this I was a fully fledged PhD in me own rights. Call the original thread a perverse form of celebration/