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Has anyone else wondered whether we should use a better term than 'conceit' for this question. It seems to carry connotations of falseness, or of an unnecessary addition, which can (possibly should) be ignored. I am, I admit very much under the influence of Ms Flieger at the moment, but it seems to me that far from being something we can dismiss as unnecessary, it is, rather, essential to our understanding of what Tolkien was doing.
The Translator 'Conceit' is vital because it accounts for the way the stories of Middle earth have reached us. The idea always existed in Tolkien's mind, way back at the start, in BoLT. For tales to survive they must be told, passed on in some way. Tolkien wasn't just throwing in the idea of a series of translators/compilers/redactors as an aside - this is central, because without them the Legendarium is just a made up story, invented by JRR Tolkien. The Translator Conceit is part of the sense we have of reading history rather than fantasy. When I first read LotR (& this was in my teens) I believed (on some level at least, that it was history & I truly believed I might meet some Hobbits off the beaten track somewhere, in the woods & fields, or by some little river. Why did I feel that? Because in the Foreword the translator had told me Hobbits were still around, although they were less numerous than they once had been. I had never felt that with any other secondary world. The Secondary world had intruded into the primary world because the Translator Conceit. I knew I could notphysically enter the Secondary World, but I hoped (& the hope was so strong it almost hurt ot acknowledge it) that some aspect of it might have survived into the Primary world. Back then I never considered the beings of that world as inventions of Tolkien. They had once lived & their decendants still might.
If Tolkien had not told me (in his role of translator) that all this had, once upon a time, been real, & that he was only telling me about it, that intense experience of enchantment would never have overtaken me. Worse, if he had actually told me plain & simple that he had made it all up, I'm not sure I would have cared enough about the story to have finished it at all. Certainly it would not have changed me.
And you know what? I still, here in my forties, have that same hope that I may one day stumble into one of the decendants of Sam Gamgee.
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