Incanus or Outcanus… canon who?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

At the risk of being accused of arrogance for quoting myself, I feel I should add something that I just learned myself this morning and which relates to my comment about CT.

Another Tolkien friend asked about Guy Favriel Kay's role in editing the Silm, having just learned about his role in helping edit the Silm. Quite a few other Tolkien fans were also surprised to hear of his work with CT. It hasn't been widely acknowledged and in the 1977 Foreward (repeated in the Second Edition), CT makes a concluding comment to thank Kay for his work. It isn't clear if this is simply academic courtesy or an acknowledgement that Kay played a significant part in helping with the edition. Kay himself is reluctant to speak in detail about it. He has said that he learned a great deal about narrative writing working on Tolkien Sr's drafts and manuscripts. And he has gone on to become a highy regarded fantasy writer himself, winning international awards and becoming a best seller with translations into several languages.

As part of my searches about Kay's contribution, I came upon the fact that CT has acknowledged that chapter twenty two of the Quenta Silmarillion was in fact not an edited version of one of JRRT's texts but largely rewritten by CT himself.



It is dicey to quote this because the source was not given but I suspect it is in book 11 of HoMe, a copy of which I don't have at hand right now.

The upshot of this of course influences what people might call canon. There are many online discussions asking how much of the Silm reflects CT's writing and even how much reflects Favriel Kay's work. Certainly I find the style in CT's edition of the Silm much different from JRRT's style in HoMe and the later editions of Tolkien Sr's work and for that reason I am not sure that we can say that the Silm is canon, if by canon we mean, as Tar Elenion says,

And as an addenda to this, I note the following discussion about Vincent Ferré's article in The Great Tales Never End which apparently fails to make any mention of Guy Favriel Kay's contributions to editing the Silm. https://www.tolkienguide.com/modules...=4534&start=20

A review of Ferré's article can be found in the respected Journal of Tolkien Research https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloft.../vol14/iss2/8/, which faults Ferré's omission.

So was CT the first fanfiction writer? He was certainly a fan.

Many years ago, Kay gave an address at (IIRC) Mythcon where he talked about his work on the Silm; it was not recorded or transcribed but a fairly well-known Tolkien figure - I keep wanting to say John Rateliff but it may have been someone else - published a summary of Kay's remarks.

One takeaway is that Kay was not yet an author- he was a 19-year old college student studying law. CT needed, basically, a gopher- somebody to make photocopies and fetch coffee. Since Kay's parents were friends of Baillie Tolkien's parents back in Winnipeg, his name came up and he got the gig.

The other takeaway is that Kay's role grew; CT started using him as a sounding board, and eventually as a first-pass "assembler" of JRRT passages (The "constructed" Silm is a bit like multiple decks of cards shuffled together)- and then CT would write the final text. So GK had a fair bit of input into the final product, and CT later did say that his "discussions" with Kay underlay the Doriath chapter.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Many years ago, Kay gave an address at (IIRC) Mythcon where he talked about his work on the Silm; it was not recorded or transcribed but a fairly well-known Tolkien figure - I keep wanting to say John Rateliff but it may have been someone else - published a summary of Kay's remarks.

One takeaway is that Kay was not yet an author- he was a 19-year old college student studying law. CT needed, basically, a gopher- somebody to make photocopies and fetch coffee. Since Kay's parents were friends of Baillie Tolkien's parents back in Winnipeg, his name came up and he got the gig.

The other takeaway is that Kay's role grew; CT started using him as a sounding board, and eventually as a first-pass "assembler" of JRRT passages (The "constructed" Silm is a bit like multiple decks of cards shuffled together)- and then CT would write the final text. So GK had a fair bit of input into the final product, and CT later did say that his "discussions" with Kay underlay the Doriath chapter.

Thanks for this, William Cloud Hicklin. I knew that Kay had played a role in the editing but I was not aware of the different opinions about his role. Clearly that year working with CT on JRRT's manuscripts and notes had a great influence on him; he did complete his law studies and was called to the bar but writing called more strongly to him .

I've been told that Charles Noad in Amon Hen 91 reports on a talk given by Kay, where Kay explained what his role was on the Silm but I wasn't told where Kay gave the talk. Perhaps this is the one you were thinking of from Mythcon? I don't have access to AH.

I've also been told that it was Kay's influence to produce the Silm as a continuous narrative rather than an academic text with footnotes. So because of Kay we have both the Silm and HoMe?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

I've been told that Charles Noad in Amon Hen 91 reports on a talk given by Kay, where Kay explained what his role was on the Silm but I wasn't told where Kay gave the talk. Perhaps this is the one you were thinking of from Mythcon? I don't have access to AH.

I've also been told that it was Kay's influence to produce the Silm as a continuous narrative rather than an academic text with footnotes. So because of Kay we have both the Silm and HoMe?

Yes! Correct on both counts. You have jogged my memory and it was Charles Noad; and, yes, CT's original inclination was to do something more like HME, or the Celeborn and Galadriel chapter of UT.

As to the former, it is specifically "A Tower in Beleriand, a talk by Guy Gavriel Kay", published in Amon Hen 91 (1988)

[Galin]

For me, Tolkien-published* text is canon.

And as the posthumously published stuff seems to raise the very question, again for me, that seems an easy division. Were we ever supposed to see any of these texts in the forms that we find them today? Even those texts that seem finished don't have that final stamp of author-approved . . .

"The desire to revise, improve, and polish was characteristic of Tolkien. His obituary in the Times of London, obviously written by someone who knew him well, says that "his standard of self criticism was high and the mere suggestion of publication usually set him upon a revision, in the course of which so many new ideas occurred to him that where his friends had hoped for the final text of an old work they actually got the first draft of a new one”.

Christina Scull, The Development of Tolkien's legendarium, Tolkien’s Legendarium, Essays on The History of Middle-earth

__________

* Also, any "Hobbit-holdouts" (there appear to be some who do not hold any edition of The Hobbit as canon) will have to deal with Tolkien's own statements about even the first edition Hobbit being an internal work -- statements made in the canon itself (here The Lord of the Rings).

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Galin

For me, Tolkien-published* text is canon.

And as the posthumously published stuff seems to raise the very question, again for me, that seems an easy division. Were we ever supposed to see any of these texts in the forms that we find them today? Even those texts that seem finished don't have that final stamp of author-approved . . .

Coming back to this with the looming presence of RoP series 2 coming towards us: this means that "Tom Bombadil was imprisoned by talking badgers" is more canonical than "Feanor is dead". Which is hilarious - but also true, because even long-standing "draft ideas" did change late in Tolkien's lifetime, whereas there was no walking back the fact that the Bucklanders had poems about the adventures of Tom Bombadil.

hS