‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[davem]

Helen

Quote:'I don't see that he dismantled his M-E Legendarium (or canon) at all.'

Well, yes, he changes his focus in Smith, but he seems to be saying Middle Earth is not a different 'secondary world' from Smith's 'Faery'. They are not so much different roads to the same destination, its more like they're the same world seen in different ways. Its like the difference between Archetypes & Archetypal images. We can never experience Archetypes directly. What we experience are Archetypal Images. So, in this sense both the Faery Queen in Smith & Galadriel are Archetypal Images, but the Archetype is always hidden & unreachable until it is given an image we can relate to. In the same way we could say that Gandalf, Merlin, Vainamoinen & even Obi Wan Kenobi & Dumbledore are all images deriving from the same archetype. So, Middle Earth & Smith's Faery are ' Images' of the same underlying Archetype.

So while Middle Earth is fantastically detailed & rule bound, & any fiction set in that world must obey those rules & not contradict those details, any fiction set in Smith's Faery will not have to be so rule bound. But if both 'worlds' are the same place, then the 'rules' of Middle Earth are imposed only by that particular 'window' on Faerie. If we look at the same 'world' through a different 'window' we see Smith's Faery, & all the rules of Middle Earth have vanished. Sowhat of Tolkien's own earlier belief, the one that drove so much of his work on Middle Earth, that those details & rules are necessary if a secondary world is to be convincing? He certainly seems to have put that idea aside in presenting Smith's Faery to us. Its not 'realistic' in any way. Its simply a sequence of 'magical' images & scenes. It rejects all the rules for creating secondary worlds which Tolkien had put together & believed to be essential, yet it works, & is in many ways far more powerful in its enchantment than most of his Middle Earth writings.