‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[Aiwendil]

Davem wrote:

The problem I still have is that while this 'state' may not be logically 'coherent, he ideas & symbols which we find there are consistent. Faeries/Elves throughout all the stories show consistent & recognisable behaviour, Archetypal images are consistent, so I'm still stuck with the idea of it bering simply a source of random images

True - I certainly don't think that they're random images. But that doesn't mean that they have some mystical origin, nor even that they originate in some "pure Faerie", (meta)-physical or psychological. I think that in large part they are the result of mythology. They have been building up, and changing, ever since the first time a human tried to explain a feature of the world with a piece of imaginative fiction. All sorts of things have gone into Faerie - Greek myths, Norse myths, the Bible, the Crusades, etc., etc.

These elements are not logically consistent with one another. But certainly (and I think this may be what is bothering you) there are consistencies of a sort to be found among them. This is where Jung and Campbell become helpful. Of course there are consistencies if you look for them, for we are all humans, and we all live on Earth, and all those things that go into Faerie originate either in true events or in fictions designed by us (and often designed to conform to or even explain real things). There are consistencies in the stories because there are consistencies in their origins. "Archetypes" are a convenient way of naming and categorizing those consistencies. And so it is natural that we find "truth" in these stories - truths about human psychology and human perception.

But Tolkien set out to 're-create' a 'lost tradition', to reconstruct what our ancestors had lost. So was there a point at which he deliberately rejected that idea & decided he would use the traditional images for his own purposes - ie in order to 'reveal to us a far off gleam of the gospel'? Or did he ever really intend to simply 're-create' the ancient mythology of England, was his intention always to write with another purpose in mind?

I think we ought to be careful about metaphors here. Tolkien certainly never really thought that he was re-creating an ancient mythology. He did not expect archaeologists to one day recover the original "Quenta Silmarillion". At most, he was only "re-creating" an ancient mythology in that he was reconstructing (as he thought) certain elements from it, and inventing others that could plausibly fit with it.

But - you seem to allow only two possibilities: 1. Tolkien was re-creating an ancient mythology; 2. Tolkien was preaching to us, trying to convince us of something or change us in some way.

I don't see why these should be the only two options. I'll take a third - Tolkien was simply writing a story.

Why, then, did he draw on ancient legends and mythology? Because that was the sort of story that he liked, and the sort that he wanted to write. Why did he think the story could offer us glimpses of "truth"? Because he thought that all really good stories must approximate "truth".

It's a simple answer, but I think it's the right one. Again, I don't see why he must either be engaged in "a scholarly attempt to give us back exactly what we had lost" or "combatting what they considered the 'vices' of the modern world." Why cannot the intention just be to write a very good story?

The Saucepan Man wrote:

And can someone please explain to me what this "Truth" is that we are supposed to transcendentally be brought to when reading Tolkien's works? It appears to have been eluding me entirely all these years.

Me too! Note that when, in my past two posts or so, I talk about "truth" in stories, I only mean literally "facts about the real world" - so that a story "has truth in it" if it is realistic. But I suspect that something quite different is meant by those who speak of transcendental truth in Tolkien's works - and I'd like to know what it's supposed to be.

Edit: Cross-posting with Mark12_30, who wrote:

No. Look, or don't look.

Well, sorry for asking. But if there's to be a discussion revolving around a certain term, I'd like that term defined. Look where, by the way?

[mark12_30]

'Let you? Make you?’ said the wizard. ‘Haven’t you been listening to all that I have said? You are not thinking of what you are saying.'