[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by davem

What I was saying was that LotR breaks away from TH very early on in the drafting. TH becomes in many ways a source text. Tolkien did not write LotR as a sequel to TH - though that may have been his reason for starting to write it. From that pov TH did 'have to exist' - just as Beowulf, the Eddas, the Mabinogion & the Kalevala 'had' to exist to make LotR exist. I don't think anyone would argue that all Tolkien's 'sources' should be included in the Legendarium.

Of course it breaks away, it's a different book - but consider that it also veers back to it again at least twice. And this is a very different text as 'source' than those by other writers - a Historian would term The Hobbit as Primary evidence while texts by other writers can never be more than Secondary evidence.

All three major texts are interlinked and should all be considered as parts of the Legendarium simply because the story demands we consider them together - and we can have any number of styles, themes or whatnot but without a story to hang them on there's nothing. The style is irrelevant as the story concerns Middle-earth, and the characters therein, and it is a necessary part of the wider tale; had Tolkien decided to write one of the texts in the style of Virginia Woolf or James Joyce we might think differently, but in reality the style is complementary so it ought not to be of great concern.

We could in fact consider the three major texts as a journey in themselves, undertaken both by reader and characters, a journey from innocence to maturity. The fun-loving Elves of The Hobbit are the Elves idealised, before the Fall, while the Elves of the Sil are the Elves in maturity, fallen from Grace. Or is that a long-winded explanation? Either way, it's no more long-winded than trying to discredit The Hobbit by speculatively referring to 'pigwiggenry' which we will never know if Tolkien intended to refer to his own work.

Each leaf, of oak and ash and thorn, is a unique embodiment of the pattern, and for some eye this very year may be the embodiment, the first ever seen and recognised, though oaks have put forth leaves for countless generations of men.

Here Tolkien (from On Fairy Stories) describes how a new story, though it may be a tale often heard before, may for one person cause realisation, a sense of wonder. By implication, this would suggest that for others, the tale does nothing at all. And that is fine, but taste should not be the standard by which we include or remove a text from the Legendarium. If it was, then a lot of people would have discarded The Sil by now as it can be an incredibly difficult book in narrative terms and is not always enjoyed. Tolkien's words as above, could also describe how the 'Tree' of the story has many different and unique leaves.

EDIT: I think that what Bethberry poses is pertinent, as I fear that by wilfully excluding a text we can only limit ourselves. The arguments posed by the 'pro-Hobbit' posters put up many arguments why The Hobbit is different and why it deserves inclusion despite having differences. I'm all for diversity, and where do we stop if we are to 'exclude' works due to 'tone'? Taken to a logical conclusion, we must also jettison LotR as it is not part of that pure Silmarillion corpus which was first conceived.