Oh, but this creates questions.
Was Tolkien offering us a speculative history of this world - in which case we must rule out both allegory
and applicability. We're dealing with (possible) history pure & simple - uless we believe history repeats itself, but that's not really a case of 'applicability', as if history does really repeat itself, then whether we 'apply' events in the Legendarium to present events or not the applicability would be forced on the situation - no 'freedom of the reader'.
Allegory certainly would be out, because a (possibly) real historical event could not be an allegory of a current one. But let's take a statement of Tolkien's in Jared Lobdell's 'A Tolkien Compass:
Quote:
'The fellowship ... left on December 25th, which then had no sgniificance, since the Yule, or its equivalent, was then the last day of the year & the first of the next year. But December 25th (setting out) & March 25th (accomplishment of the quest) were intentionally chosen by me'
'A guide to the names in LotR'
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December 25th (birth of Christ), March 25th (Annunciation & old date of Good Friday), were 'intentionally chosen' by Tolkien - allegory creeping in, or a case of history repeating itself?
But the question of primary & secondary reality now sneaks in from the canonicity thread
Shouldn't (mustn't?) the primary & secondary world's be kept seperate, in order for the effect of the secondary world to work. Or was there a historical split between the two worlds, after the events described in the Legendarium? The problem with seeing Middle earth as an
actual historical period is that it denies the existence of Faerie as another 'reality' co-existing with this one, which we can still enter into (imaginatively, at least) & draw from - it becomes an historical, long gone epoch of our own history, not the source of living spiritual nourishment; least of all a means to eucatastrophic experience.
So it would require a kind of 'Fall of Numenor' split in reality. Up to a certain point, Middle Earth was our history, but after that point it split away, & continued as 'Faerie'. But this world would then not be Middle Earth in a later age, as Middle Earth's 'later age is somewhere else, running alongside ours. So, perhaps (have I suggested this before?) the Elves haven't 'faded' as such - they are continuing, as real & solid as ever, but we can only glimpse them occasionally, & 'vaguely', living on in another world.
Another problem with the 'actual history' theory is that if we take the records of Middle Earth, they are reports, translations, 'it is said's', 'we have heard's. We don't ever, can't ever, experience Middle earth first hand, only through books, tales, varying accounts - all refering back to an earlier time & place, a time & place we can never get to ourselves, so we can never know. We will never be able to touch an actual artifact of Middle earth origin. It can only ever exist as a secondary world in the mind. We can never find anything of 'pure' Morgoth, uncontaminated, which we can analyse, discover the essential nature of, & then analyse material objects in this world to see if they contain traces of it.
Its a bit of a quagmire - because if Morgoth has infested the very stuff of Arda with his will, & this is Arda, then we are all 'Evil things'
