Canon: what ARE we babbling about?

[Mister Underhill]

Originally Posted by davem

I'm not sure how that's relevant. There are lots of true things which are not easily explicable to schoolchildren.

It's relevant when you accuse one side of making convoluted explanations while simultaneously implying that your own is not.

Originally Posted by davem

The 'historical' references in TH are few & are only there - as Tolkien stated - to give a sense of historical 'depth'.

They serve much the same function in LotR. So?

Originally Posted by davem

Again, I'd offer Anderson's Annotated Hobbit & HoMe 6 as proof of that.

You'll have to do better than "HoME 6" to support your argument here. I do not, alas, own a copy of the Annotated Hobbit, and so cannot answer you there.

But in the meantime, I would point out that the character of Bilbo, and his role as a writer in and of Middle-earth, was important enough that Tolkien attributed to him the translation of the Silmarillion. I'll also add this, from Christopher Tolkien:

Originally Posted by Christopher Tolkien

But beyond the difficulties and the obscurities [of the textual history of the Silmarillion], what is certain and very evident is that for the begetter of Middle-earth and Valinor there was a deep coherence and vital interrelation between all its times, places, and beings, whatever the literary modes, and however protean some parts of the conception might seem when viewed over a long lifetime.

[...]the author's vision of his own vision underwent a continual slow shifting, shedding and enlarging: only in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings did parts of it emerge to become fixed in print, in his own lifetime.

An interesting point, that last -- that the only truly "fixed" points of Silmarillion lore are those published in two books, one of which you seek to exclude.

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

And how many of us have gripes with the films for dropping magic in favour of action? That's what would happen if we dropped The Hobbit from the Legendarium and just relied on the bare facts about the story.

Hear, hear!

Originally Posted by davem

The Hobbits of TH couldn't do any more- because the 'Hobbits' of TH are not the Hobbits of LotR - they do not have the depth, or complexity. or spiritual potential of the Hobbits of the later work.

Balderdash. Show me how the hobbits of TH are not the hobbits of LotR.

You're also ignoring Tolkien's later statements to the effect that Bilbo's intrusion into the legendarium was a fortuitous accident, and, indeed, his reservations about publishing the Silmarillion at all. Why? "No hobbits!"

If anything, in a grouping of TH, LotR, and The Sil, it's usually the Sil (in the forms in which it exists) which is the odd man out, the one that "doesn't fit", as Lalwendë has already noted.

You're thinking of the Sil as a coherent and fixed work -- but early editions of TH referred to the (then) Sil "Gnomes" instead of the later "Elves". The Sil legends were constantly in flux throughout Tolkien's lifetime. Therefore, there never really was a fixed "legendarium" for Tolkien to integrate TH into. Each work acted and reacted on all the other works, until two became (relatively) fixed by publication: TH and LotR.