‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[Aiwendil]

Well now we're getting back into territory covered rather exhaustively earlier in the thread. It seems to me that you're saying that there is an objectively correct, internally consistent, Middle-earth that exists independent of anyone's thinking about it. If this is not what you're saying, then I don't see where we actually disagree. If it is, then I've got to wonder which Middle-earth it is. Is it, for example, the one where Turin returns to slay Ancalagon or the one where he returns to slay Morgoth? If you hold the view I formulated above, then there must be an objective fact about it. Either one is true or the other is. Is this the view that you hold? If so, then which one is the "real" story?

Your approach fails to answer what for me is the central question - why do we respond as we do to Middle earth, why do some of us feel it to be 'real', where does that sense of longing for it arise? Your position would seem to be that if we do respond to it in that we we're over-reacting (at the very least), or even that we're not responding in a sufficiently 'sane' & detatched way, that' there's something 'wrong' with us that we take a collection of texts so seriously.

Again, we are getting into stuff that was already debated extensively. I tried to make it clear then that I don't think it's at all silly or wrong to take Middle-earth, or any other literary world, seriously. We respond to it for profound psychological reasons. You may not like this explanation, but it is an explanation. There is no inexplicable mystery in my view.