Evolution of a Reader

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

I'd like to bring this deserving but neglected thread up out of the shadows in which it dwelt - perhaps more members have something to add to it?!

For shame, Esty! Bumping up a thread without posting to it!

What I find interesting about this thread is Mith's title: The Evolution of a Reader, for it suggests that Tolkien has created a new kind of reader. What do I mean?

Well, in the early years of the novel (read, centuries ), writers weren't expected to produce serial novels. It's true that Henry Fielding wrote Shamela and Joseph Andrews as parodies of Richardson's Pamela, but he never wrote a sequel to Tom Jones. Surely there would have been amble opportunity to develope ideas of the nature of Tom's and the lovely Sophia's marriage! After all, we know Tom's eye for lovely things and those don't stop at the church door. But Fielding didn't.

Readers expected and were expected to reread existing novels or turn to completely new ones.

Close to a serialisation was probably Dickens' method of serial publication of chapters (or books?) in magazines. Yet still Dickens never gave us sequels to actual novels. Lots and lots of Victorian situations and cultural bric a brac, but not more of Pip or Davey. We don't have a volume two to titilate readers about Jane's and Rochester's marriage: Jane's 'autobiography' ends with a paen to the rejected suitor and that's it. George Eliot's novels are entirely self-consistent, with no leakage into each other (well, not that I can think of, simply in terms of Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss and Daniel Deronda).

Trollope comes close I think to producing the kind of serialisation that Tolkien readers seem to want, especially with his series The Chronicles of Barsetshire and then the Palliser series. So I suppose the ground was already worked for Tolkien to come along and produce an immensely interesting world and characters and history of eons which whetted readers' appetites not necessarily to reread but to read more.

I'm not saying Tolkien fans don't reread. Obviously there's a strong tradition of rereading LotR as a ritual event which is amply reported here on the Downs. But this desire which Mithadan so lucidly describes and which Azaelia and Lindale and Ibrin attest to is something which possibly Tolkien himself created: an unsatiated desire for more and more of Middle-earth. This readerly desire is what Rowlings expanded upon with Harry Potter. Except that Rowlings seems to have given her readers the last little experience of readerly petit mort whereas Tolkien didn't do that. No act of reading ever actually consumes Tolkien fans, but sends them out to search for more of the same.

Originally Posted by some ancient poet

If ever any beauty I did see and desire and got,
'twas but a dream of thee

Is this a new kind of reader which Mithadan implies with his title?

[Mithadan]

Reviving this old thread for further comment. Since I opened this thread, Christopher Tolkien has published The Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien and The Fall of Gondolin. Of the three, only The Children of Hurin was an attempt to "complete" Tolkien's writing as a coherent narrative, rather than as a purely scholarly and heavily annotated work.

Personally, I feel that these three later publications, with the exception of portions of the Children of Hurin which add detail and flavor, add little to Tolkien's body of Middle Earth work. I am wondering if there are any differing opinions?

[Inziladun]

I seem to have overlooked this thread all these years.

I own CoH and Gondolin, but confess I haven't even read Luthien.

CoH struck me as really nothing but an amalgam of the Unfinished Tales Narn and the chapter in The Silmarillion. As you said, it does have its moments, but I honestly could have done without it.

I'm not very keen on Gondolin. I have always loved the UT section on Tuor and his journey to Turgon, so a look at earlier conceptions left me a bit nonplussed.
The appearance of Ulmo to Tuor at Vinyamar is epic. The image of a more easygoing, more kindly Lord of Waters sitting in a bunch of reeds playing with shells in order to persuade Tuor reminds me somehow of Bombadil skulking along the Withywindle. Hey! You don't suppose....