Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza

Introduction

Whenever I encounter the word ‘canon’ used in an on-line discussion of Tolkien, I wonder, “what, then, is your idea of a canon?”

The word is used in many ways, and it may be beneficial from the outset to distinguish between them.

1. Author canon In literature studies, the word ‘canon’ is used in two senses, and the one I am interested in here is the body of work (including interviews etc.) that can be authoritatively attributed to a given author: “The works of a particular author or artist that are recognized as genuine.” The ‘Tolkien canon’ in this sense consists of everything that we know that Tolkien wrote or said.
2. Literary canon The other literary sense is a body of literature considered emblemic of e.g. a specific culture (such as e.g. Harold Bloom's The Western Canon). “The list of works considered to be permanently established as being of the highest quality.” The extremely subjective nature of this sense makes for it's own problems so that I do not intend to spend more time on this.
3. Adaptative canon For e.g. fan-fiction writers and others who do adaptations into the world of Tolkien's legendarium (series script writers, for instance), it is generally necessary to have a set of information, facts, events, texts, assumptions that are held to be ‘true’ within the specific narrative context (here many of the roleplaying fora of this, our Plaza, would be a good example). One could sensibly ask a writer ‘what is your canon’ and equally sensibly (and uncontroversially) get the answer that ‘in my canon Sam is a black woman’ ...
4. Fan canon by which I mean the idea of an extended, highly selective, conflated and homogenised conception of Tolkien's legendarium that is, in an all too real sense, considered the ‘Truth’ about and within said legendarium. This concept is usually referred to in the definite singular, showing that the users generally accept that there can be only one such canon, the Canon.

While I have no problems, whatsoever, with senses 1 and 3, and I will refrain from further discussions of 2, it is the fourth sense that my title refers to as a ‘fallacy’.


My reasons for both bringing this up and for declaring this, fourth sense, a fallacy are numerous, but I hope that by sharing it here, I can bring some clarity to my thinking.

Let me start by acknowledging the attractiveness of the concept. It is neat and would make (some) things so much easier, but especially it is attractive for its ability to provide simple answers that can be either correct or wrong. Quite possibly the best introduction and defence of the idea (certainly the best that I know of) is Tolkien's Parish: The Canonical Middle-earth by Steuard Jensen.

In his essay, Jensen refers to Tolkien's concept of sub-creating an ‘inner consistency of reality’ (On Fairy-stories (OFS)) that can be achieved when the author “makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world.” Jensen further asserts that “Tolkien spent much of his life seeking to bring this level of consistency to his own "sub-created" world” and in his essay uses the concept of a “‘true’ Middle-earth” as synonymous with the ‘canon’.


So, in addition to the general attractiveness (to which I agree entirely), the concept seems to mainly rely on (and seek justification from) at least two assumptions:

1. That it was Tolkien's (unambiguous) intention to create a full and final conception of his Silmarillion mythology, and
2. That it is possible to construct a selection of texts (or even bits of texts) written by Tolkien that would be internally consistent and represent a reasonable approximation to Tolkien's intended conception.

My claim is that both of these assumptions are fallacious. The first mainly so, and the second wholly so.


Tolkien's conception

Let me start with the second of these assumptions: that it should be possible to construct a selection of texts, all written by Tolkien, that would in a meaningful sense represent, to as wide extent as possible, Tolkien's hypothesised final, ‘complete’ and consistent conception of the world and history of his mythology.


One of the major issues with such an endeavour is that it is not even possible to construct a set of basic facts about some of the major cosmogonic facts underlying the story that would hold true even just for the entirety of The Lord of the Rings. That book alone is inconsistent with respect to some of the basic facts about the world and its history such as whether the world (the Earth, Ambar, if you will) was created as a flat world or as a spherical world. Nor is the book consistent with respect to whether the Orcs were created from unliving matter by Morgoth or were bred and corrupted from some other living stock. The status for The Hobbit and the published Silmarillion is even worse. As Christopher Tolkien wrote in the foreword to the published Silmarillion,

Christopher Tolkien wrote:On my father’s death it fell to me to try to bring the work into publishable form. It became clear to me that to attempt to present, within the covers of a single book, the diversity of the materials – to show The Silmarillion as in truth a continuing and evolving creation extending over more than half a century – would in fact lead only to confusion and the submerging of what is essential. I set myself therefore to work out a single text, selecting and arranging in such a way as seemed to me to produce the most coherent and internally self-consistent narrative. In this work the concluding chapters (from the death of Túrin Turambar) introduced peculiar difficulties, in that they had remained unchanged for many years, and were in some respects in serious disharmony with more developed conceptions in other parts of the book.

and Christopher Tolkien goes on to point out this crucial fact

Christopher Tolkien wrote:A complete consistency (either within the compass of The Silmarillion itself or between The Silmarillion and other published writings of my father’s) is not to be looked for, and could only be achieved, if at all, at heavy and needless cost.

Both quotations, Tolkien, Christopher. “Foreword” in Tolkien, J. R. R.. The Silmarillion. HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Complete consistency, he says, is not to be looked for (emphasis added), neither betwen the publised Silmarillion and other works (at the time this would, if memory serves, include The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and The Road Goes Ever On), not, even, just internally within the published Silmarillion itself.

There is, in other words, no single set of facts that one could hold as true that would satisfy any of those, and much less satisfy all of them together. Or, at least, the set would be very, very small and extremely dissatisfying.

The problem here is that Tolkien never had such a complete conception of his own legendarium. His ideas were in constant flux and never settled on anything for long enough for him to get more than a few pages of writing done before something else had changed.

In order to create something that might appear to be serviceable, you would have to err on two accounts:

1. You would need to conflate bits from such a wide range of writings, that we can be certain that they never co-existed in Tolkien's conception of his legendarium, and they would belong with — be tied together with — mutually exclusive ideas, making them contextually incompatible.
2. You would need to make choices that would invalidate the basis for parts of a core text such as The Lord of the Rings (and, trivially, also of large parts of The Hobbit and the published Silmarillion).

Both of these flaws in the construction would make the second of the assumptions above invalid. The assumption is therefore fallacious. It is not possible to construct a set of texts (or even bits of texts) written by Tolkien that would represent an internally consistent, reasonable approximation to Tolkien's intention for a ‘complete’ conception of the world and history of his mythology.

You can, obviously, select a set of texts and bits written by Tolkien that is sort-of nearly internally consistent and (at least) one such set would, in theory, have the largest scope. Such a set would, however, not in any way represent Tolkien's conception of his legendarium at any point, nor would it be possible for such a set to include the entirety of any work published while Tolkien was alive (with the possible exception of The Road Goes Ever On – but that may just be because I haven't analysed it thoroughly) and much less any that has been published since his death (with The Children of Húrin probably coming closest). Such a construction is precisely what fan-fiction writers do to create an adaptative canon for themselves; for that purpose, such a construct is laudable and, I suspect, necessary, but for other purposes it is unhelpful, to say the least.



Tolkien's Desire

Going back to the first of the presumptions that I listed as the basic rationale and justification on which the “fan-canon” concept relies, namely “That it was Tolkien's (unambiguous) intention to create a full and final conception of his Silmarillion mythology”.

The parenthetical addition of “unambiguous” could be phrased differently, of course; the point here is to express an intention that goes beyond the level of that might have been nice ..., which I hold is the only level at which Tolkien had any intention – or even ambition – of creating any kind of “full and final conception of his Silmarillion mythology”.

The exception to that might, of course, be the short period about 1950–51 when Tolkien embarked on an ambitious rewriting of his mid-1930s, pre-LotR version of the Silmarillion (when italicised, I will be referring to the published book, while I will refer to the abstract concept of the book – the book “considered simply as a large narrative structure” – without italicisation).

I will grant that, during this short period, everything appears to suggest that Tolkien truly did intend to create a version of his Silmarillion tales that could be published to accompany The Lord of the Rings, and he first tried to sell this idea to his old publisher, George Allen and Unwin, before trying to sell it to Collins (through Milton Waldman), and finally giving up and settling for publication of The Lord of the Rings alone.

However, if we study the history of this attempt, we will see how the attempt was impossible, and not just because of work load, illness and other domestic affairs, but very much because Tolkien was incapable of achieving what he thought he wanted.

In his foreword to The Silmarillion, Christopher Tolkien includes a very illuminating passage:

Christopher Tolkien wrote:In all that time The Silmarillion, considered simply as a large narrative structure, underwent relatively little radical change; it became long ago a fixed tradition, and background to later writings. But it was far indeed from being a fixed text, and did not remain unchanged even in certain fundamental ideas concerning the nature of the world it portrays; while the same legends came to be retold in longer and shorter forms, and in different styles. As the years passed the changes and variants, both in detail and in larger perspectives, became so complex, so pervasive, and so many-layered that a final and definitive version seemed unattainable. Moreover the old legends (‘old’ now not only in their derivation from the remote First Age, but also in terms of my father’s life) became the vehicle and depository of his profoundest reflections. In his later writing mythology and poetry sank down behind his theological and philosophical preoccupations: from which arose incompatibilities of tone.

Tolkien, Christopher. “Foreword” in Tolkien, J. R. R.. The Silmarillion. HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.


I ask you to remember that Christopher Tolkien wrote this before he embarked on the Heraklean work that would eventually give us Unfinished Tales, the whole 12 volumes of The History of Middle-earth, The Children of Húrin, The Fall of Gondolin, Beren and Lúthien as well as materials published by others (there the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship deserves to be mentioned specifically). Christopher Tolkien nonetheless speaks with extraordinary perspicacity – the only thing we might fault him for is not going far enough.

When reading The History of Middle-earth it becomes clear that the Silmarillion was not just “the vehicle and depository of [J.R.R. Tolkien's] profoundest reflections”, but also of his experiments with literary style (both prose styles and poetic styles), narrative structure, sub-creation, etc. etc. And all of this belonged not just to Tolkien's later years, but is very much evident throughout: from the first experiments (such as his Story of Kullervo and the Earendel poem) to his last writings – in his younger years, however, writing mythology and poetry was the way he worked with and expressed his philosophical, theological, literary, narrative, aesthetical, etc. preoccupations.

Even during that brief period, when we know that the desire to produce a final version of the Silmarillion was at its strongest, this desire was insufficient to overcome the even stronger desire to niggle with his work. So, even at that point, it would seem, he had an underlying, possibly sub-conscious, desire to keep the Silmarillion open-ended, unfinished, as a vessel for his experiments and for his most profound reflections.

All of this shows that while Tolkien might, at one level, have intended to create a final and complete (or even just final and partial) version of his Silmarillion, that intention, or wish, was overshadowed by other desires and intentions that prevented it. This is not merely a matter of not being able to finish the work (he did, after all, finish The Lord of the Rings), but rather of not wanting to finish it; of not truly wanting to set any aspect of his Silmarillion mythology (beyond the very high-level outline in appendix A to The Lord of the Rings). Instead, Tolkien wanted to retain the fluidity necessary for him to keep using the Silmarillion as a vessel for his changing preoccupations of narrative form, of style, of literary aesthetics, of philosophy and theology etc. etc.

Very much, actually, as Carl Hostetter has explained with respect to the languages of the stories in his eminent essay, Elvish as She Is Spoke (the essay is topmost on the linked page).

Another way of seeing this is looking into Tolkien's history of revising even the published texts. The most famous example is, of course, the revision of “Riddles in the Dark” for the second edition of The Hobbit , but also The Lord of the Rings saw revisions due to Tolkien's shifting tastes and ideas. When his phonetic ideas on Quenya had changed, the first edition greeting, Elen síla lumenn' omentielmo became Elen síla lumenn' omentielvo in the second edition. Galadriel's lineage was similarly changed: in the first edition of The Lord of the Rings, Galadriel was daughter of Finrod, but in the second edition this was changed to Finarfin.

All of this demonstrates that Tolkien certainly never truly intended to create a full and final conception of his Silmarillion mythology. Not even a partial and final conception was his intention other than at a very high level: the narrative structure that had become a fixed tradition, as Christopher Tolkien describes it. The first of the two assumptions is thus also fallacious.


Concluding Remarks

So ... why bother with all of this?

Let me start by stressing that my intention is not to stop speaking or thinking in terms of what I have called ‘fan canon’. If it makes things easier for you, then please go ahead.

My hope, however, is that you will do so with a understanding of the nature of this way of viewing Tolkien's sub-creation. This view is falsified both by the texts themselves and by the actions of their author.

I hope that any reader reaching to this point will have some understanding of the complexity of both Tolkien as a man, and of the nature of his writings on his Silmarillion mythology. Attempting to see this complexity in all it's unfolding glory is difficult and requires a lot of reading, but I will claim that it is very rewarding, and it enables you to read what Tolkien wrote in the proper context – understanding that any quotation from Tolkien must be appropriately contextualised in order for us to understand what else Tolkien was thinking and preoccupying himself with at that point in time, and to understand whom he was writing to.

By constricting your own thinking about Tolkien's sub-creation to a ‘canonical’ sub-set of Tolkien's texts, you set yourself up to misinterpret the texts by reading them out of context. If you set out to read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings thinking that Gandalf, in any of these texts, is a Maia, you are making a serious mistake. The concept of the Maiar was not even conceived of until after Tolkien had finished writing The Lord of the Rings, so obviously a character in that book could never be informed by a concept that didn't exist when the book was written.

I wholly and fully support the effort to understand what Tolkien meant and intended with this or that passage, but Tolkien's own conception was fluid and changed all the time and at all levels (very little was set in stone – not even whether the Earth was created flat to be made a sphere in the Downfall, or if it was created as a sphere to be changed in size in the Downfall), so our discussions must, if we aim at understanding Tolkien's conception of his sub-creation, include the reality of this fluidity and changefulness.

Once we understand this, we might also become more inclusive of some personal readings. A girl hearing the story of a female hobbit going on an adventure to kill the dragon? Why not? Or Sam's hand being brown because all of Sam was brown? Again, why not? (Well, I'd prefer a PoC Frodo, but that's just because I don't find Sam an admirable character at all ).


This post has many sources of inspiration, and my thoughts have been steeping for a very long time, and mentioning all the people and writings that have, in one way or another, contributed would be both impossible and needlessly long-winded. Nonetheless, besides Steuard Jensen's essay (and the discussions in the Tolkien usenet groups that inspired his work), I feel that I ought mention a more recent impetus, the thread “A Question of Canonicity” here on the Plaza.

Your 'Tolkien's Desire' section doesn't do the job you want, in my opinion. I'm very hesitant to fold both 'acts to which we aspire' and 'patterns to which we cannot break free' under the same umbrella, and then furl it out as if it can still be used to any meaningful effect. Yes, you could call both of those desires, but they aren't really the same thing at all. Tolkien's compulsions in this, the niggling, certainly at times held him back in this other desire, to produce some ultimate version of the Silmarillion.

But I would point out two important things.
First, it also pulled him forward. Yes, we have what are supposed to be timelines descending into Turambarian chaos and fizzling out. But we also have timelines burgeoning in ways that are less destructive. The Silmarillion, what exists of it outside of the Great Tales, is pretty flat, character-wise. We see people do things. We see events happen. But we seldom see why. Characters and feelings are often left to do what the narrative needs t o be done. Enter the Annals of Aman, and the creation of real characterization and backstory for Feanor, in a way that, love him or hate him, allows him to move through the narrative, even beyond death, in ways that have more weight? Can you love or hate the 1937 QS Feanor? Hardly. And yet it wasn't the long-form LQ manuscripts where he came to life, was it? It was where he intruded on AAM, or where other diversions and texts were built around the thought of him.
Second, and more importantly, even if this idea is viewed a entirely set against the desire to complete, it in no way must be stronger to have Tolkien fall short of the mark. This task was not a cake-walk. It required effort. It required more than letting the tides of time go in and out until the matter was done. The counter-pull only needed to be strong enough to stop him from going as far with the other desire. How can you judge that as stronger? Especially as you mention, it had friends. Your 'work load, illness and other domestic affairs'. These are not desires. These are obstacles. You could easily imagine a world in which those obstacles were more grave, and then completion of the Silmarillion would have been impossible even with the niggling bug. Or, a world where they were grave enough to kill LotR before it was completed. This movement into 'impossibility' flagrantly ignoring what might have happened for what did.

Do we imagine that if a publisher had said 'yes', and Tolkien had been given the belief that a finished Silmarillion would have been published, everything would have rolled out the same? Would that have significantly altered his desire? Or merely his incentives? After all, why does this bug so strongly hit the Silmarillion, and not LotR? Because LotR was asked for, embarked on to an already-promised end? Because there was a functional stopping point? I'm going to address your claim of changes here. 'Riddles in the Dark' has never particularly troubled me. Yes, Tolkien changed it. But he changed it in ways that flowed actually quite naturally with what he was establishing, in furtherance of some really important aspects surrounding the Ring that was developing. It's not whimsy; it serves a direct purpose. If he truly couldn't help but get into the gritty reworking of even tiny details, why not remove the reference to giants, when in the process of writing LotR he scrapped the idea, never to be found in his writings again, folding bits and pieces into the trolls and the rest into the emerging ents? That could have been done, no? And yet he did not. Why? Perhaps because it didn't really matter? The single letter in the Elvish word is on par with typo revisions in many a published work. It's not a typo revision, of course, but it's hardly something of great time and effort. And with Galadriel, while he did a lot with Galadriel behind the scenes, on First and Second Age material, isn't your example nothing? Did her father change here, or was this just when the name shuffle happened, when Inglor became Finrod and Finrod became Finarfin? That's not changing anything about Galadriel.

These aren't the same at all. Not comparable to the stuff you're talking about for Silmarillion material. I could point of greater changes to a published work by Sanderson in only pointing out a revised scene in The Way of Kings, where a late scene is changed, between the publishing of the first and second book, to present a different than original actions and morality and consequences that fell in line with the philosophy of the greater work in that series. Less effort than 'Riddles in the Dark', yes, but much more than your other examples. And yet Sanderson remains on the most regular and prolific fantasy authors currently working. It is, I think, a mistake to think that this is somehow a little early window into this element of Tolkien's soul, visible before the long years of revising were laid bare.

You argue that we see, even in LotR, that Tolkien cannot truly do what he desired. I say the reverse. LotR proves he can. He didn't, for the Silmarillion, but have you done everything you could accomplish in your own life? Does your failure to bring something to completion mean it was impossible? Does it mean you didn't have a strong enough desire? Or, for some other reason, have some of those potentialities not occurred because something else didn't work out? Do you really think, that by pretty much exclusively focusing on how it didn't happen, you've shown Tolkien did not 'express an intention that goes beyond the level of that might have been nice ...'

None of this demonstrates that Tolkien 'certainly never truly intended to create a full and final conception of the Silmarillion mythology.' It demonstrates he was human, and was pulled in many directions, as all humans are. It demonstrates that he failed in a task. Again, so very human.

I understand what you are trying to do. I agree with the majority of your conclusion. The fluidity is evident to anyone who has opened HoME and read any significant fraction of it sincerely. And I am proud to say that I have been quite vicious to many a person being vicious to people talking about their personal readings, and recall the particular flareups around the particular examples you chose. But you're throwing a bit of the baby out with the bathwater here. In your desire to make a very cogent point on that dreadfully abused word, 'canon', you're asserting a proscribed truth of itself that is, like the issues you lay out, a bit beside the point. Tolkien's intentions don't create a solid Silmarillion from the fractious sea. They can remain his intentions, even, perhaps, his strongest intentions, and lack that power. There's no need to constrict our thinking.

Troelsfo, I like your distinction of the 4 different types of canon. I also think your definition of "Fan canon," and reasoning of its limits is well stated. It reminds me of an interview Leonard Nimoy did with Reuters about the 1st Star Trek movie by JJ Abrams. Nimoy responded to the claim that Star Trek fans would get upset by the changes to canon JJ Abrams made:

“Canon is only important to certain people because they have to cling to their knowledge of the minutiae, open your mind! Be a ‘Star Trek’ fan and open your mind and say, ‘Where does Star Trek want to take me now’. - Leonard Nimoy to Reuters <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-star ... BU20090505>

Compared to my Tolkien fandom, I am only a casual Star Trek fan, but Nimoy's point is a good one. It sounds the most fitting to Gene Rodenberry's vision of the story, that Star Trek should push boundaries and see "where does Star Trek want to take me now."

Having made this point, I think the question still needs to be answered what was Tolkien's desire for his story? Afterall, an argument could easily be made "how does Gene Rodenberry's vision of Star Trek have any weight on Tolkien's vision of his story?"

Something that I often refer to is from the Foreward in Lord of the Rings:

The Lord of the Rings has been read by many people since it finally appeared in print; and I should like to say something here with reference to the many opinions or guesses that I have received or have read concerning the motives and meaning of the tale. The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them

Although,I would say, this specifically deals with his motive for Lord of the Rings, and possibly not his motive for The Silmarillion.

Edit: simul with Elenhir.

Re: Tolkien's motive for The Silmarillion, is not a topic I know much about, beyond the basic understanding from posts by others on the Old Plaza that he was passionate about its completion, but ultimately never acheived.

It's always interesting to me when new information comes to light. When I read John Rateliff's History of The Hobbit I think it changed an original opinion that "The Necromancer" from The Hobbit wasn't intended to be Sauron. It was only after starting The Lord of the Rings that Tolkien realized the similarity and made them the same character. However, from the first draft of An Unexpected Party, about dealing with The Necromancer, Gandalf replies:

"Don't be absurd" said the wizard. "That is a job quite beyond the powers of all the dwarves, if they could be all gathered together again from the four corners of the world. And anyway his castle stands no more and he is flown to another darker place - Beren and Tinuviel broke his power, but that is quite another story."

Maybe it was subconscious and Tolkien was pulling in snippets from The Silm out of convenience? I just don't know enough on this topic to say for sure. Personally, I do think on some level it shows that "The Necromancer" was intended to be Sauron from the beginning and not just a connection Tolkien realized after.

In regards to how this fits in with your conclusions, Troelsfo, I think it's going to be hard to reach this:

Once we understand this, we might also become more inclusive of some personal readings. A girl hearing the story of a female hobbit going on an adventure to kill the dragon? Why not? Or Sam's hand being brown because all of Sam was brown? Again, why not? (Well, I'd prefer a PoC Frodo, but that's just because I don't find Sam an admirable character at all ).

But, as always I'm interested to hear and learn more about it.

@Elenhir and @Boromir88, thank you!

@Elenhir, you are absolutely right – that section really is too weak, and needs improving. I will stand by the conclusion, though: that Tolkien did not desire to create a final, fixed form of his Silmarillion mythology (I think I would need to treat the desire for publishing as a separate thing, as it evidently was for Tolkien).

I aim at returning to this over Easter, but I wanted to tell you as soon as possible that I am very thankful for your comments