[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

I would be interested to know if CT or the Estate has ever issued any statement to that effect.

I don’t believe either of them have. Just as the BBC has never officially stated that any of the Doctor Who material is either canon or not canon. Whether something is canon or not canon is something for fans to concern themselves with. And fans often mean different things by canon.

The term was originally introduced into Sherlock Holmes fandom, and referred to the more official status of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories as opposed to others, particularly films, and radio plays, and live dramas.

As to statements by CT or the Estate, note that on the dust jacket of Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur it is stated: “The Fall of Arthur, the only venture by J.R.R. Tolkien into the legends of Arthur King of Britain ...”. This entirely ignores “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Pearl: Sir Orfeo.

I would not feel at all comfortable in ignoring Christopher Tolkien’s continual mentions of places where he feels the published Silmarillion falls down. I would not feel at all comfortable in a forum that banned mentions of particular books other than for legal reasons.

You have more clearly stated my own belief. HOME leaves far too much leeway for endless debates for me, as an "average" Tolkien reader, to be comfortable with. Unless CT or the Estate later produces something better, the best bet for me is the published Silmarillion.

Yet you do not complain in the thread http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=18457 when Zigûr follow your beginning post with a quotation from Tolkien’s Letters and from Morgoth’s Ring. You jump in immediately on Mithalwen’s thread at http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=18434 which begins with “Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner’s Wife” from Unfinished Tales. I am not willing to follow what you say especially when you yourself do not do so. It appears you simply want things to be easier, like a school essay which allow only particular texts to be cited to make marking easier.

I’ve never read any complaints about anyone citing material published after Tolkien’s death in any Tolkien forum so far as I can recall. No Tolkien forum, so far as I know has any such rule. You are inventing a problem that doesn’t exist and has never existed. Invent all you want, but this supposed problem is only your own invention. It seems to me to be more “pointless” to attempt to add a rule to the forum that no-one but you wants and is not needed.

Originally Posted by Galin

Incidentally [since it came up in the thread] I accept what Galadriel says in Fellowship of the Ring about Nargothrond and so on, and what it says in The Road Goes Ever On about her movements [crossing the mountains of Lindon]. Both these works are published by JRRT himself in any case [whether or not they seem to contradict each other].

From Unfinished Tales, “The History of Galadriel and Celeborn”:

Thus, at the onset, it is certain that the earlier conception was that Galadriel went east over the mountains from Beleriand alone, before the end of the First Age, and met Celeborn in his own land of Lórien; this is explicitly stated in unpublished writings, and the same idea underlies Galadriel’s words to Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring II 7, where she says of Celeborn that ‘He has dwelt in the West since the days of dawn, and I have dwelt with him for years uncounted; for ere the fall of Nargothrond or Gondolin I passed over the mountains, and together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.’ In all probability Celeborn was in this conception a Nandoran Elf (that is one of the Teleri who refused to cross the Misty Mountains on the Great Journey from Cuiviénen).

These unpublished writings seems to be cited in The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoME XII), page 185, by Christopher Tolkien:

In one of the earliest texts of the work Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age my father wrote of Galadriel: ‘A Queen she was and lady of the woodland elves, yet she was herself of the Noldor and had come from Beleriand in the days of the Exile.’ To this he added subsequently: ‘For it is said by some that she was a handmaid of Melian the immortal in the realm of Doriath’; but striking this out at once he substituted: ‘For it is said by some that she was the daughter of Felegund the Fair and escaped from Nargothrond in the day of its destruction.’ In the following text this was changed to read: ‘And some have said that she was the daughter of Felegund the Fair and fled from Nargothrond before its fall, and passed over the mountains into Eriador ere the coming of Fionwë’; this in turn he altered to: ‘For she was the daughter of Felagund the Fair and the elder sister of Gil-galad, though seldom had they met, for ere Nargothrond was made or Felagund was driven from Dorthonion, she passed east over the mountains and forsook Beleriand, and first of all the Noldor came to the inner lands; and too late she heard the summons of Fionwë.’ – In the Annals of Aman and the Grey Annals she had become, as she remained, the sister of Felagund.