‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[davem]

I suppose this simply rephrases the question of whether there is some underlying objective 'reality' - because otherwise we would simply accept everything Tolkien wrote as 'fact' - why is it that some statements by Tolkien would feel 'wrong'? That would imply that some statements are 'right', & that even Tolkien could be wrong in the facts he stated about Middle earth. What strikes me most strongly is this sense that on some level we feel we can judge even Tolkien to have got things 'wrong' - even Aiwendil & I agree that some of the later writings (Myths Transformed) where Tolkien rewrites the cosmology, are 'mistakes' - they don't work - as CT himself more or less admits. Why this general agreement on where Tolkien got it right & where he got it wrong?

As to Tolkien's role in the mythology:

Originally Posted by SpM

He plays a very small role in the tale and acts purely as its archaeologist and translator. Within this fiction, the account was written by various Hobbit hands and unearthed and translated by the fictional Tolkien. He plays only a very limited editorial role in providing notes on translation and, on rare occasions (restricted almost entirely to The Hobbit and the Shire-based beginning of LotR), including the odd "story-teller's comment". Isn't that all we need to know about him (the fictional Tolkien, as opposed to the factual author) to understand his role in the story?

One could argue the same in regard to Eriol in the Lost Tales, but I don't think that actually stands up in his case. Aelfwine is actually a major character, with a detailed history, & to an extent Tolkien never completley rejected this 'framing device'. The point for me is that The 'translator' role is not necessary, & Tolkien, like the writers of every other fantasy novel could have left the idea out. It is this idea that Tolkien is merely passing on an already existing story/mythology, that adds to the verisimilitude of the world. We are repeatedly told by the translator, 'this really happened, I'm not making this up', & on some level we believe that, feel it to be true - because we have a sense of what is 'correct' & what is 'incorrect' - this has been pointed out in one of the currect 'Women' threads, the way some events in the story feel 'wrong' & 'break the spell' - but how are we making this judgement, & what are we basing it on? If the Art has no inherent 'meaning', does not 'refer' to or connect us with something 'objective' then where does the feeling come from? Because (imo) it is a different kind of feeling to the one I get with other works of fiction - I often feel that a writer has lost the plot, or failed to write a convincing character, or forced a situation in order to tie up loose ends, but almost never get the sense as I do with tolkien on rare occasions, that he has written something 'wrong', that it 'didn't happen that way'.