However, in trying to assign weight to various things Tolkien wrote down, one can't go exclusively by chronology, because it's certainly the case that T had in his mind, and committed to paper, everything from considered ideas worked out in great detail with full commitment, to on the other hand passing notions he jotted somewhere and soon rejected or forgot. To me the "nette remark" smacks more of the latter than the former.
__________________
The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.
|