Smith of Wootton Major in Middle Earth?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bb

Surely Smith is not quite as closed as you imply? This thread demonstrates that there are at least three ways in which the tale is not closed.

i wonder whether tolkien considered the story, & the world it depicted as 'closed'. Flieger quotes from an essay Tolkien wrote on Smith (so far unpublished but to be included in the new ed)

The Great Hall is evidently in a way an 'allegory' of the village Church; the Master Cook with his house adjacent, & his office that is not hereditary, provides for its own instruction & succession but is not one of the 'secular' or profitable crafts, & yet is supported by the village, is plainly the Parson & the Priesthood. 'Cooking' is a domestic affair practised by men & women: personal religion & prayer. the Master Cook presides over & provides for all the religious festivals of the year, & also for all the religious occaisions that are not universal: births, marriages, & deaths'

'The Forest lies on the western edge of Wooton Major, whose one Inn bears over its door a stone with a worn & faded carving of three trees & the inscription [I]'Welco to the Wode.'....The western villages of the country, among them the Wooton's & Walton, were originally main points of contact between Faery & this country of Men; they had been at an earlier period actually within the forest borders, as their names signify.' (Wooton comes from Old English wudu-tun- 'town in or by a wood', & Walton, a village even samller than Wooton Minor, from weald-tun,' town in a wood or on a wold' ).....Walton, even deeper in the forest than Wooton Minor, is evidently still the point of entry into Faery for those humans who venture there.'

These quotes seem to imply that Tolkien saw SoWM as an 'allegory' on one level & a 'history' on another, or maybe it was more that if it was viewd from one angle it was one thing, if viewed from another it was something else....