‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[Bêthberry]

davem,

I'm a bit confused about a statement you made earlier today.

I'm simply taking Tolkien's statements at face value, because they strike me as expressing what I feel about things.

I don't wish to appear to be pouncing on something you said, but this confuses me as it appears to suggest my--perhaps Sauce's and Fordim's-- position as well (although I don't wish to speak for them and I could be wrong).

I read this as saying you give credence to Tolkien's statements because they accord with something you have felt or experienced prior to reading Tolkien: you grant his words authority because they agree with your experience. Thus, the 'test' (if I may use that word) of the validity or authenticity of Tolkien's words is your own experience.

This seems to me to describe quite well the position that it is the reader who ultimately ascribes value or meaning to Tolkien.

I wonder if we could look at the word 'magic' for a moment. My recollection (and I don't have "On Fairy Stories" at hand) is that Tolkien offerred a particular definition of his use of the word.

He rejected magic as the magician's sleight of hand in favour of something which satisfied 'primordial human desires' (relying on memory here), of 'imagined wonder'. Elsewhere, I think in the Letters (and they are not at hand now either) I recall he regretted using this word magic as it is easily misunderstood. He then elaborated upon his idea that he meant a perfect correlation between will and deed, an ideal sense of art where intention is satisfied by the --I would use execution but that word seems to me to express too cruel a summation. A vision of aesthetic perfection or ideal.


Perhaps this encompasses both your sense of mystical experience and Aiwendil's aesthetic satisfaction?

EDIT: cross-posting with SpM. I would simply like to say that I agree with Sauce that we can never finally ascertain what Tolkien meant. And, that, for me, to make any effort to determine that apart from a text like LOTR is to engage in an activity which predetermines the text. We can discuss the text in terms of our own experience.