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Originally Posted by NogrodtheGreat
Brljak's article (2011) for instance argued that the overall conceit of the Lord of the Rings - that it is ultimately a translation of an unknown number of 'manuscripts' (only the initial manuscripts in the tradition having been actually written by Bilbo, Frodo and Sam) - is actually its defining characteristics and should be granted far more attention.
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Welcome to the Downs, New Nogrod. Please try not to look too much like the old Nogrod, because that would be hideous and disturbing.
I'm afraid I don't have time for a full and detailed consideration of the whole thread, so I'll just offer a couple of thoughts about the main subject if I may.
Not being familiar with the article in question, I can't really comment on its content, but Tolkien's repeated uses of the found manuscript topos in his fiction are common enough to be significant. As early as
The Battle of the Eastern Field (
King Edwards School Chronicle, 1911) he was passing off his own work as that of other, anonymous scribes, and in my opinion this reached its acme, not in
LR but in the various 'translations' by Ælfwine from the work of Pengolod (mainly HME IV). Clearly a chain of transmission, a provenance for his stories was important to Tolkien, possibly because he felt that it lent them authenticity or context, or because he was naturally modest or reticent about his writing and felt more comfortable presenting it as the work of others. My own opinion tends toward the former. I think that Tolkien was seeking a legitimacy for his fiction akin to that of collected fairly tales. Providing a fictional chain of transmission from scribe to scribe, then Tolkien himself and finally the reader assists in the suspension of disbelief and does so in a particularly inclusive way. We are all part of the story, along with the many scribes, both named and anonymous who have copied the manuscripts of the Red Book, along with Tolkien himself as editor and translator. Tolkien is perhaps most explicit about this attitude through Sam, when he realises (
The Stairs of Cirith Ungol) that he and Frodo are themselves part of the wider tale of the Silmarils, and Frodo's answer that '[the great tales] never end as tales'. It would be very much JRRT's sense of humour to include himself, the Inklings (in the original Foreword) and his readers in the same story.
I find it difficult to see how the found manuscript conceit introduces any problems into (English for 'problematizes') the reader's relationship with the text. The reader is, I hope, aware that he is holding a work of fiction (Tolkien's name as sole author on the cover is a bit of a hint) and that therefore anything within its covers about the history of the text that presents it as somebody's work other than Tolkien's is part of that fiction. If anything the real problem consists in the tone of
LR, which is novelistic and simply inconsistent with the conceit that it is a translation of historical documents by different authors. In my opinion,
The Hobbit suffers in the same way, since well-adjusted people do not refer to themselves in the third person in their own diaires. Perhaps that was the argument presented in
Tolkien Studies.
That would appear to be all I have time for this evening. Hopefully I can find some time later in the week to do the thread a bit more justice.