[davem]

Originally Posted by Mnemosyne

Depends. The difficulty is that the pronunciation guides were published as part of Lord of the Rings, albeit in the Appendices. Which means that they are not placed nearly as high on the hierarchy of accuracy as, say, the doors to Moria or the maps or the fact that Aragorn had grey eyes.

And the Appendices are optional reading (& as I pointed out previously, there was a single volume edition of LotR published during Tolkien's lifetime which omitted the Appendices altogether apart from The Tale of Aragorn & Arwen). This being the case, I asked, firstly, is one's experience of the story lessened in some way if one does not read the Appendices & has no idea of the 'correct' pronunciation of the story, & secondly, if one does read & 'obey' the pronunciation guide in the Appendices, is one's experience of the story 'enhanced' by that, or does the sacrifice of one's own original pronunciations actually take something of that original experience away?

But how many visual cues about Middle-earth came from Tolkien during his lifetime?

And if Allen & Unwin had decided that the Appendices were an unnecessary part of the book & simply refused to print them - or Tolkien hadn't been able to bring them into publishable form - wouldn't the pronunciations be as optional as the illustrations?

What would be really interesting now would be to hop 20 years or so down the road and see how much the "your mileage may vary" attitude towards mental pictures remains as more and more people enter the fandom with the Jackson films ingrained in their heads.

It would - and also to what extent the video games affect that mental imagery too - & in many other ways besides the simple pictures. I haven't played any of them (or intend to) but I notice that there are a lot more prominent female characters in the games, a lot more magic users (& casual use of magic), & I even read a report that mixed race (ie human-elf, hobbit-dwarf, etc, etc) & same sex relationships are options in the game world too. All these things affect one's perceptions of the world of M-e & the way one conceives/visualises it. Beyond that, the screenshots I've seen depict a countryside & landscape which is often subtly (& sometimes not so subtly at all) different to the English countryside that inspired Tolkien - in fact when I look at said screenshots I'm reminded much more of pictures of North American countryside with a 'New Zealandish' overlay inspired by the movies. My Middle-earth is an English Middle-earth & looks like the landscapes I know & is nothing like the game world. What this means is that, yes, the look of Middle-earth is becoming incresingly as 'fixed' as the sound, & the reader has less & less freedom to participate in the creation of Middle-earth in their own mind. Many readers from now on will only have the 'correct' pronunciation in their heads because they will come to the books via the movies & the games. I would argue that their whole experience will be lessened by that - they will get the pronunciation right, but only because they will never have had the freedom to get it 'wrong'. Increasingly we will achieve a uniform sound & vision of Middle-earth. More & more manifestations of M-e will actually result in a more precisely defined & limited experience - all in the name of 'authenticity'.

This is worse than Mordor!' said Sam. 'Much worse in a way. It comes home to you, as they say; because it is home, and you remember it before it was all ruined.'