[Fordim Hedgethistle]

While I would hate to see this wonderful discussion become an endless search for a ‘good term’ (nothing kills intellectual inquiry faster than terminology) the idea of refining our language at this point might be a good one – particularly since the term “Canonicity” with which this thread (unfortunately) began, is terribly inadequate.

In deference to Tolkien, I would suggest that we could recover the meaning of a word near and dear to his heart: historia. The Latin root for “history” it comes from the Greek word istor which meant something close to “wisdom” or “knowledge”. The Latin word, however, comes closest to capturing what we are on about. Historia means more than a collection of historical events or ‘facts’ (annals or a chronicle would be the correct words for that); instead it means the rendering of historical fact into a narrative that gives those facts meaning.

I would submit, that this is what Tolkien sought to do in all of his writings on Middle-Earth. He ‘knew’ what happened in his subcreated world, and on these facts we cannot question him – but he made sense of these events, he gave them meaning, through his historia about them (that is, his meaningful stories).

This is more accurate than it might sound, insofar as for Tolkien the act of subcreating Middle-Earth began with the words and the languages he invented. He came up with the words themselves and the languages (the historical ‘facts’ ) then sought out the stories that would give these languages the context that all languages need (i.e. speakers). In effect, in order for his subcreated names and languages to come to life, he had to generate a meaningful story to explain them. I would suggest that while we cannot question, add to or alter those foundational facts (names, languages, peoples) we have the right to generate our own historia to explain those facts as well.