Canon: what ARE we babbling about?

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

All I'm getting is that you guys want to keep it in for sentimental reasons. The fact that Bilbo & the Dwarves encountered three trolls, they found the swords & went to Rivendell is accepted. We're not discussing the events depicted - which are part of the Legendarium - we're talking about whether an (in parts condescending) childrens fairy story should be considered a primary text in the Legendarium.

. . . .

I'm not saying you can't have TH. I'm saying it doesn't belong in the Legendarium. Sentimental justifications apart I don't see that anyone has offered any convincing arguments for that.

Congratulations, davem, for taking the thread so completely off topic. We were not discussing what belongs in the Legendarium, but what we mean by the word "canon". 'Canon' is not equivalent with "Legendarium."

From SpM to Fordim to my own posts, three of us have offerred definitions of that word in testimony to our point here--a definition which you have ignored and even studiously obfuscated.

Originally Posted by davem

TH is clearly a 'non-canonical' secondarytext, of dubious value in terms of the actualite it presents. It may be accepted by some readers as having a value to the main body of the myth & by others as being 'mere' entertainment.

I think that sums up the positions....

By the definitions offerred you cannot call it non-canonical and then say well, I meant non-Legendarium. And using the single quotation punctuation marks is a wafflish weasle bit of rhetorical legerdemain, roughly akin to having your cake and eating it too. And I am not aware that defining terms is a feature of sentimentality.

Your argument belongs in a completely different thread. I'm sure you would find yourself in less of a minority should you wish to argue it there. Although I'm not sure just what all the fuss is about.

Ideas evolve, transform. Sometimes we start out on the road without knowing where we will end. What was it T. S. Eliot said? Something to the effect of "to return from all our wanderings and know the place for the first time."

A children's tale that bore traces of Tolkien's own academic reading, lore, and languages is what got him going and what stimulated his publishers into getting him to write more. These are facts of publishing history. Maybe academics are embarassed about the significance of childish things to adults?