"Canonicity II": Has Yours Changed? - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Huinesoron · 09-07-2021, 09:10 AM

Findegil's discussion of LIT and FAN views, along with the release of NoME, have helped me crystalise my own view of canon, which is: it depends on context!

In some contexts, I hold to the LIT view that everything JRRT wrote is the Tolkien Canon. I have a document somewhere with all his statements on the nature of the Halls of Mandos - not to try and find 'the truth', but to see how his views evolved over time. NoME has made it clear to me that the "Myths Transformed" material, for instance, formed a major part of Tolkien's thinking in his last decade and a half, so this has to be considered in any view of the "Tolkien Canon" as a whole.

Straddling the middle ground between LIT and FAN is my desire to know what Tolkien's final view of Arda was. His ideas were constantly evolving, but he did have a view of the world when he died. It's not unfair to call that version the "truest" version of the Legendarium - the version that's truest to Tolkien's ideas. The issue, of course, is that he didn't record all his ideas - we have to reconstruct them from notes and scraps. The "Myths Transformed" material is a huge part of this - in his head, Tolkien would have had some concept of what he would do with the Lamps, or the Tale of the Sun and Moon, or the voyage of Earendil into the sky... but he doesn't seem to have written it down. This is a "Canon" we have to search for, like literary archaeology to discover something that is otherwise lost with the death of its creator.

But then there's the FAN view, which is: what was the latest and most complete story? Broadly, this is Hobbit+LotR+Silm+UT, but I'm entirely willing to add details from earlier versions or later notes that don't conflict with/break the story. Gil-Galad can be Orodreth's son, for instance - it changes nothing. But "Myths Transformed" goes right out the window, because it totally shatters several chapters of both the published and latest versions of the Silmarillion.

While the third "canon" is clearly the furthest from what Tolkien ultimately intended... Tolkien's works are fiction. "Myths Transformed" never became fiction; it stopped at worldbuilding, with no clear view on how to integrate it into the fiction. As the canon for Middle-earth as a story, this is the only one that works. (Unless you want to work in the Lost Tales canon, of course...!)

hS

William Cloud Hicklin · 09-07-2021, 01:48 PM

And then of course there is also the "common-base-of-assumptions" definition, not really the same as FAN above, which would essentially mean the published Silmarillion augmented by UT because that is what the vast majority have actually read. Not all that many, relatively speaking, have read Morgoth's Ring much less Nature of Middle-earth.

After all, generally the Arthurian "canon," at least in the English-speaking world, has come to mean Malory

Galin · 09-07-2021, 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

( . . . ) Tolkien's works are fiction. "Myths Transformed" never became fiction; it stopped at worldbuilding, with no clear view on how to integrate it into the fiction.

My opinion here is that MT-ideas were not ultimately intended for the fiction of Quenta Silmarillion, but for works like the Awakening of the Quendi (pre-existing Sun) and The Drowning of Anadune (always round world) -- with "touches" in QS still being possible, like the Dome of Varda in LQSII for example. In other words, the "solution" to JRRT's problem (noted by Christopher Tolkien in MT) ultimately fit well with his "new" Numenorean slash Bilbo transmission, and a multi-perspective legendarium. Or in other, other words, I suggest that Tolkien realized he didn't have to drastically revise QS specifically, as it was now a mostly Mannish text.

That said, I've only read a few short sections of (G)NOME so far -- so I reserve the right to change my mind later!

Huinesoron · 09-08-2021, 02:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

And then of course there is also the "common-base-of-assumptions" definition, not really the same as FAN above, which would essentially mean the published Silmarillion augmented by UT because that is what the vast majority have actually read. Not all that many, relatively speaking, have read Morgoth's Ring much less Nature of Middle-earth.

After all, generally the Arthurian "canon," at least in the English-speaking world, has come to mean Malory

Very true! I think generally (Gil-Galad being an exception) you can add in things from the notes to the "common-base-of-assumptions" without people querying it, eg in fanfic or art. But if you're going with "canon" as "what are people familiar with", then yeah, that's separate. (I'm betraying more about my own way of thinking than I meant to, aren't I? :O)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Galin

My opinion here is that MT-ideas were not ultimately intended for the fiction of Quenta Silmarillion, but for works like the Awakening of the Quendi (pre-existing Sun) and The Drowning of Anadune (always round world) -- with "touches" in QS still being possible, like the Dome of Varda in LQSII for example. In other words, the "solution" to JRRT's problem (noted by Christopher Tolkien in MT) ultimately fit well with his "new" Numenorean slash Bilbo transmission, and a multi-perspective legendarium. Or in other, other words, I suggest that Tolkien realized he didn't have to drastically revise QS specifically, as it was now a mostly Mannish text.

You may be right! And there's certainly a potential to view "the canon" as being a set of sometimes-contradictory accounts and legends of the same events. LotR, QS, MT, and even Lost Tales and Notion Club can all be in the canon, much like the different contradictory Norse or Greek mythology texts should all be considered.

The question is what you do with that view. In the real world, you can look at the texts and accounts from some culture to see how it evolved over time, but in this case the documents are all written by one hand, and not in the same order as they would "actually" have been. Hmm... I get the feeling Tolkien would have appreciated someone taking all his books, manuscripts, and notes, and treating them as a collection of found texts and received stories. Ignore the date he "copied them out", and just use the text itself to trace the history of the tellers! But I think you'd have to be an expert in literary analysis even to attempt it.

(Given that said analysis wouldn't include the actual existence of Elves, it would be interesting to see whether "round-world" or "flat-world" came out as the earliest, most primitive version...!)

hS

William Cloud Hicklin · 09-08-2021, 07:32 AM

Tolkien was contemplating metatextualism before post-modernism was a thing. But he was never able really to carry it through (although there is a taste of it in the LR Prologue).

Personally I think it would have been very hard to pull off, even if he had been younger and more vigorous in the 1960s. Somehow he would have had to come up with some sort of really creative "garbling of the traditions" to suture over certain great big fat hairy problems, like Venus = a boat with a guy wearing bling,* and a very physical Frodo in an apparently material ship arriving in a seemingly concrete Eressea.

But he was certainly determined that Arda = Our Solar System and Ambar = Our World; in NoME he explicitly states, writing in 1960, that the Seventh Age was 1960 years old (i.e. = Aetate Domini)

------------------------------------------

*The easy solution doesn't work- "Venus is just a hunk of gas-wrapped rock, and later garbled legend equated it with Earendil." The problem with that is that it rose for the first time as a brand new star within the living memory of certain persons still alive at the end of the Third Age, like Galadriel, Celeborn, Elrond and Cirdan, not to mention the Wizards.

Galin · 09-08-2021, 01:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Personally I think it would have been very hard to pull off, even if he had been younger and more vigorous in the 1960s. Somehow he would have had to come up with some sort of really creative "garbling of the traditions" to suture over certain great big fat hairy problems, like Venus = a boat with a guy wearing bling,* and a very physical Frodo in an apparently material ship arriving in a seemingly concrete Eressea.

Is there anything in (G)NOME where Tolkien considers the matter of Earendil problematic? I'm just asking,
I've only read a few sections of the book so far.

Anyway, I'd say publish the Awakening of the Quendi as written in WJ -- pre-existing sun.
And publish The Drowing of Anadune as written in Sauron Defeated -- always round world.

You didn't say otherwise, but Quenta Silmarillion doesn't have to be the vehicle for Western Elvish tradition. In my opinion DA is a creative garbling, and contains the "needed" -- if briefly stated -- Western Elvish perspective of the original shape of the world.

Quote:

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

*The easy solution doesn't work- "Venus is just a hunk of gas-wrapped rock, and later garbled legend equated it with Earendil." The problem with that is that it rose for the first time as a brand new star within the living memory of certain persons still alive at the end of the Third Age, like Galadriel, Celeborn, Elrond and Cirdan, not to mention the Wizards.

But none of these people wrote Quenta Silmarillion. And why would Bilbo's translation of a Numenorean, or largely "Mannish" Silmarillion, need not be "corrected" by the Noldor of Rivendell, or Cirdan, or Gandalf, and so on?

It wasn't Tolkien's job as translator to correct the poem about a troll baking bread for a Hobbit

In Morgoth's Ring, Myths Transformed, Christopher Tolkien writes concerning his father: "It is remarkable that he never at this time seems to have felt that what he said in this present note provided a resolution of the problem that he believed to exist:"

The present note here is text I of Myths Transformed.

And I agree it is "remarkable", but with emphasis on "at this time" as well.

And later . . .

Galin · 09-11-2021, 01:23 PM

By the way WCH, just to note it, I edited in a response to another part of your post above, just in case you want to respond to something I said there.

I'm not sure you'll want to, and in any event we've (basically) been over similar ground before, like in your thread: "Transmission theory: what the heck was Tolkien thinking?" for example.

http://www.forum.barrowdowns.com/sho...t=transmission

Anyway, note noted!

Boromir88 · 12-26-2021, 11:32 AM

I'm returning to this thread because yesterday an article about "What Do Orcs Eat Explained" popped up on my Google homepage. After reading it, it jogged some thoughts about this thread and I hope to read others' input.

https://gamerant.com/lotr-what-orcs-eat-explained/

I found the article itself, to put it kindly, a mess. The author appears to have a general knowledge of the books (probably read them at least once), but it was confusing to me.

The main problem (and this is done quite frequently) I can't tell whether this was written to be for movie canon or book canon, because the writer mixes both types together in explaining their point. If It's meant to explain what orcs eat in the movies, I think there's some leaps that are too far, but that would be less problematic. Since we do get the comedic "looks like meat's back on the menu" line. But the mixing of movie canon and book canon, confuses me too much and I can't tell if the author is attempting to explain what Jackson's orcs eat, or what Tolkien's orcs did.

And this:

However, the lands around are said to be fiery and desolate, and Boromir, the captain of Gondor, describes ‘the very air you breathe is a poisonous fume’ at the Council of Rivendell, so the likelihood that the orcs eat things that come from the earth like fruit or vegetables is highly improbable...

However, the gruesome truth is that what the orcs are more likely to be eating is the slaves themselves. It is well known that they greatly desire the taste of man-flesh. It is very credible that the slaves who are being shipped up from the south are actually what is sustaining the vast hordes of Sauron’s army.

While that's certainly the case for the part Frodo and Sam journey through, the author forgot, or omitted, Tolkien explicitly writes the land around Lake Nurnen sustains Sauron's armies.

I'd be interested to hear more input about the article itself, particularly the claim "It's well known they [Orcs] greatly desire man-flesh." I know Tolkien uses cannibalism as one of the most vile and lowly falls someone can endure. (Grima is accused of eating Lotho, as an example). And while I think it's generally accepted orcs are cannibalistic, I don't recall Tolkien ever mentioning that it was "greatly desired" or frequently done to the extent this article argues. That is Sauron brings in slaves for his orcs to dine on man-flesh.

I'd also be interested in general thoughts about movie-canon and book-canon being mixed together. This definitely isn't the first writer to do it, and certainly won't be the last (there are countless internet self-proclaimed "Tolkien experts" doing this since the movies came out). Do we get to a point where the movie canon takes over the book canon as more fans combine the 2 types together?

09-07-2021, 09:10 AM	#1
Huinesoron Overshadowed Eagle Join Date: Nov 2017 Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea Posts: 3,973	Findegil's discussion of LIT and FAN views, along with the release of NoME, have helped me crystalise my own view of canon, which is: it depends on context! In some contexts, I hold to the LIT view that everything JRRT wrote is the Tolkien Canon. I have a document somewhere with all his statements on the nature of the Halls of Mandos - not to try and find 'the truth', but to see how his views evolved over time. NoME has made it clear to me that the "Myths Transformed" material, for instance, formed a major part of Tolkien's thinking in his last decade and a half, so this has to be considered in any view of the "Tolkien Canon" as a whole. Straddling the middle ground between LIT and FAN is my desire to know what Tolkien's final view of Arda was. His ideas were constantly evolving, but he did have a view of the world when he died. It's not unfair to call that version the "truest" version of the Legendarium - the version that's truest to Tolkien's ideas. The issue, of course, is that he didn't record all his ideas - we have to reconstruct them from notes and scraps. The "Myths Transformed" material is a huge part of this - in his head, Tolkien would have had some concept of what he would do with the Lamps, or the Tale of the Sun and Moon, or the voyage of Earendil into the sky... but he doesn't seem to have written it down. This is a "Canon" we have to search for, like literary archaeology to discover something that is otherwise lost with the death of its creator. But then there's the FAN view, which is: what was the latest and most complete story? Broadly, this is Hobbit+LotR+Silm+UT, but I'm entirely willing to add details from earlier versions or later notes that don't conflict with/break the story. Gil-Galad can be Orodreth's son, for instance - it changes nothing. But "Myths Transformed" goes right out the window, because it totally shatters several chapters of both the published and latest versions of the Silmarillion. While the third "canon" is clearly the furthest from what Tolkien ultimately intended... Tolkien's works are fiction. "Myths Transformed" never became fiction; it stopped at worldbuilding, with no clear view on how to integrate it into the fiction. As the canon for Middle-earth as a story, this is the only one that works. (Unless you want to work in the Lost Tales canon, of course...!) hS __________________ Have you burned the ships that could bear you back again? ~Finrod: The Rock Opera

09-07-2021, 01:48 PM	#2
William Cloud Hicklin Loremaster of Annúminas Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 2,330	And then of course there is also the "common-base-of-assumptions" definition, not really the same as FAN above, which would essentially mean the published Silmarillion augmented by UT because that is what the vast majority have actually read. Not all that many, relatively speaking, have read Morgoth's Ring much less Nature of Middle-earth. After all, generally the Arthurian "canon," at least in the English-speaking world, has come to mean Malory __________________ The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.

09-08-2021, 07:32 AM	#5
William Cloud Hicklin Loremaster of Annúminas Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 2,330	Tolkien was contemplating metatextualism before post-modernism was a thing. But he was never able really to carry it through (although there is a taste of it in the LR Prologue). Personally I think it would have been very hard to pull off, even if he had been younger and more vigorous in the 1960s. Somehow he would have had to come up with some sort of really creative "garbling of the traditions" to suture over certain great big fat hairy problems, like Venus = a boat with a guy wearing bling,* and a very physical Frodo in an apparently material ship arriving in a seemingly concrete Eressea. But he was certainly determined that Arda = Our Solar System and Ambar = Our World; in NoME he explicitly states, writing in 1960, that the Seventh Age was 1960 years old (i.e. = Aetate Domini) ------------------------------------------ The easy solution doesn't work- "Venus is just a hunk of gas-wrapped rock, and later garbled legend equated it with Earendil." The problem with that is that it rose for the first time as a brand new star within the living memory of certain persons still alive at the end of the Third Age, like Galadriel, Celeborn, Elrond and Cirdan, not to mention the Wizards. __________________ The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.* Last edited by William Cloud Hicklin; 09-08-2021 at 07:38 AM.

12-26-2021, 11:32 AM	#8
Boromir88 Laconic Loreman Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: USA Posts: 7,521	I'm returning to this thread because yesterday an article about "What Do Orcs Eat Explained" popped up on my Google homepage. After reading it, it jogged some thoughts about this thread and I hope to read others' input. https://gamerant.com/lotr-what-orcs-eat-explained/ I found the article itself, to put it kindly, a mess. The author appears to have a general knowledge of the books (probably read them at least once), but it was confusing to me. The main problem (and this is done quite frequently) I can't tell whether this was written to be for movie canon or book canon, because the writer mixes both types together in explaining their point. If It's meant to explain what orcs eat in the movies, I think there's some leaps that are too far, but that would be less problematic. Since we do get the comedic "looks like meat's back on the menu" line. But the mixing of movie canon and book canon, confuses me too much and I can't tell if the author is attempting to explain what Jackson's orcs eat, or what Tolkien's orcs did. And this: However, the lands around are said to be fiery and desolate, and Boromir, the captain of Gondor, describes ‘the very air you breathe is a poisonous fume’ at the Council of Rivendell, so the likelihood that the orcs eat things that come from the earth like fruit or vegetables is highly improbable... However, the gruesome truth is that what the orcs are more likely to be eating is the slaves themselves. It is well known that they greatly desire the taste of man-flesh. It is very credible that the slaves who are being shipped up from the south are actually what is sustaining the vast hordes of Sauron’s army. While that's certainly the case for the part Frodo and Sam journey through, the author forgot, or omitted, Tolkien explicitly writes the land around Lake Nurnen sustains Sauron's armies. I'd be interested to hear more input about the article itself, particularly the claim "It's well known they [Orcs] greatly desire man-flesh." I know Tolkien uses cannibalism as one of the most vile and lowly falls someone can endure. (Grima is accused of eating Lotho, as an example). And while I think it's generally accepted orcs are cannibalistic, I don't recall Tolkien ever mentioning that it was "greatly desired" or frequently done to the extent this article argues. That is Sauron brings in slaves for his orcs to dine on man-flesh. I'd also be interested in general thoughts about movie-canon and book-canon being mixed together. This definitely isn't the first writer to do it, and certainly won't be the last (there are countless internet self-proclaimed "Tolkien experts" doing this since the movies came out). Do we get to a point where the movie canon takes over the book canon as more fans combine the 2 types together? __________________ Fenris Penguin

09-11-2021, 01:23 PM	#7
Galin Ghost Prince of Cardolan Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 1,036	By the way WCH, just to note it, I edited in a response to another part of your post above, just in case you want to respond to something I said there. I'm not sure you'll want to, and in any event we've (basically) been over similar ground before, like in your thread: "Transmission theory: what the heck was Tolkien thinking?" for example. http://www.forum.barrowdowns.com/sho...t=transmission Anyway, note noted!