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Originally Posted by davem
I love getting lost in the world of TH but I think its overshadowed by LotR & The Sil if you include it in with them & that simple sense of wonder it inspires can disappear if you're trying to force it to fit. So, for me LotR & the Sil are the 'true' account of events in Middle-earth, while TH is a version of it that has passed down through various hands, minds & voices. In many ways its more magical than the Legendarium because of the unexplained vistas. The borders of the story of TH could open up onto any landscape - its only LotR that 'fixes' it in a particular place & time & removes it from the world of fairy story & takes it up into the realm of high myth - which, for me, is a place it doesn't belong.
Anyway.....
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Well, I'll stir up a little more argument (which shall continue after I've logged off no doubt and end up in "nurrr nurrr" style chidings
) about TH in the legendarium. I think it does 'fit' as it is simply another account of Middle-earth, one from a different perspective; different peoples in our own world have different views of it, and in that respect, Tolkien's providing us with three main different views of Middle-earth only serves to give the whole legendarium more depth to me. I'm also not so sure that LotR itself is without 'unexplained vistas' - that's part of the appeal. All of Tolkien's work is filled with 'unexplained vistas', I think this may be part of its appeal and what keeps drawing us back, the hope we'll find something new (and I usually do).
I recommend the Annotated Hobbit. I've been looking at it this evening, and there are some really interesting notes. One concerned the choice of 'Baggins', which has always struck me as similar to the word 'baggin' - meaning a workman's lunch. Apparently in the OED 'baggin' is listed as 'bagging'; Shippey ppointed out that Tolkien knew that this was an incorrect spelling according to the people who actually used the word, as it's a dialect word from the north. Tolkien was a member of the Yorkshire Dialect Society (which I did not know!) and so knew that the correct term was 'baggin' and used it as the name for a food-loving Hobbit.
the other note which interested me was that a Bullroarer is a slither of wood on the end of a string which when whirled round the head makes a horrendous noise; apparently children used to like to play with them. I liked this, as I've always pictured Bullroarer as a loud and slightly obnoxious (but not in a bad way) Hobbit. It has also made me want to make a Bullroarer and see just how loud and horrible they really do sound.