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Originally Posted by davem
Two, I'd say the main thing that prevents us understanding TH is our seeing it as being merely 'in the service' of LotR, rather than as a story in its own right. Read as 'merely' the prequel to LotR is bound to show it up poorly. If it was seperated out, & classed alongside Tolkien's other non-Legendarium writings (Smith, Niggle, Giles, Roverandom, Mr Bliss, Father Christmas Letters), we would more easily 'understand' what Tolkien was doing & what he wanted to give us.
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This argument presupposes that readers
do fail to understand The Hobbit and the evidence in the form of an appreciative readership shows otherwise. If someone does fail to understand The Hobbit then they are free to do that individually but as a whole the Tolkien fan/critical community would not support this.
And to separate it into the bracket of other texts such as Smith etc. would be to denigrate it.
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Originally Posted by davem
The parts of TH which are relevant to the Legendarium are incorporated into LotR, therefore TH is not necessary to the Legendarium & as I said before I don't want to destroy all copies of TH or anything - I'm just questioning whether it should be included in the Legendarium, let alone considered a 'primary text'.
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And as I've already said, there is a lot of magic in The Hobbit and though the strictly necessary information may be found elsewhere, it would be a very sorry (and orcish) state of affairs if we reduced judging what is of value to that level.