The Canonical Fallacy

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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 :smile:).


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.
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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.

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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 :smile:).
But, as always I'm interested to hear and learn more about it. :smile:
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I don't know if there were more posts in this thread than what was saved in this PDF, but I'm providing the link to it anyway in case it might be of some assistance.
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Troelsfo wrote: Sat Mar 27, 2021 3:26 pm 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 :smile:).


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.
This is a great post, yet I disagree in many ways. But it deserves a proper response. Time does not allow such a post now but I think soon enough I will share my thoughts.
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Going over some old posts since I've been gone from the Plaza for a while, and I thought I'd drop in here and say I think you make some really compelling points Troels, and that I increasingly agree with you. Once upon a time -- less long ago than I'd like -- I was one of the minutiae-fans Nimoy criticized, but I'm increasingly frustrated with that approach to ... media consumption as a whole, I think, as time goes on. In some ways, especially in works which have such potential to function as a canon in the second (ugh) and third senses, it increasingly feels to me that we're limiting ourselves greatly by attempting to imagine a perfectly consistent world. Even Tolkien's goal of subcreation seems, to me, to need to go only so far as the illusion of secondary belief may be entered by the reader, none of which requires necessarily an entirely unified body of texts (although unity within one text is, of course, helpful!).

The other thing, of course, is that I don't particularly care what Tolkien would have done with infinite time and skill -- in the end, I think the proof you provide (which is, certainly, that the task of unifying the Legendarium would have been next to impossible) is the compelling thing for me in embarking on all sorts of inconsistent and anti-canon works of my own.

That, though, raises the one distinction I think is worth raising -- that all of this is very useful when we approach things as fans and consumers of media -- who can hold bias and opinion about how a text should be, and very frustrating if we consider ourselves scholars of Tolkien('s authorial canon) -- who are limited by the requirement of impartiality and the pursuit of a proof of how a text is. Hence, I think, the somewhat fearful defense of the minutiae-canon from casual consumers who want to appear knowledgeable and scholarly.
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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?
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I kind of had the impression that the day of the movies is over, that The Hobbit trilogy finished off Peter Jackson's reputation among serious Tolkien readers while, however great were the LOTR movies, part of their dazzle came from cutting edge special effects that now look dated.

The question, I suppose, is whether the Amazon series will continue Jackson's wrong direction, which I suspect will be the case. The result has been and will be the Walt Disneyfication of Middle-earth.
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<snipped>
bilbobaggins764 wrote: Mon Oct 11, 2021 1:25 pm This is a great post, yet I disagree in many ways. But it deserves a proper response. Time does not allow such a post now but I think soon enough I will share my thoughts.
Disagreeing is what this is all about – that none of us can claim to have a complete answer, and not least that we can all learn from our discussions, and rarely more than when disagreeing cordially :smile:

There are some things that I would express differently in the above, if I were to write it today. Not least regarding Tolkien's own desires.

The conclusion, however, would remain the same :grin:
“The love of Faery is the love of love” J.R.R. Tolkien

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Androthelm wrote: Fri Nov 12, 2021 1:44 am Going over some old posts since I've been gone from the Plaza for a while, and I thought I'd drop in here and say I think you make some really compelling points Troels, and that I increasingly agree with you.
I am happy to hear that I am not alone in this :grin: I have spent somewhat more than twenty years in on-line Tolkien fan fora (starting around the turn of the millennium on usenet – the old rec.arts.books.tolkien (RABT) and alt.fan.tolkien (AFT) ... <reminiscing> :wink: ), and I am now past the mid-point of my sixth decade; the
conclusions above are, however, the result of thoughts that has been coalescing only for the past five or so years (with some thoughts stewing for a bit longer).
Androthelm wrote: Fri Nov 12, 2021 1:44 am Once upon a time -- less long ago than I'd like -- I was one of the minutiae-fans Nimoy criticized, but I'm increasingly frustrated with that approach to ... media consumption as a whole, I think, as time goes on.

I am absolutely with you there as well and have been on that same journey myself :smile: I mean, there is nothing wrong with minutiae per se, but I think that there is a tendency to consider these minutiae as absolutes – as more important in some way than the bigger picture. Tolkien himself was, of course, very much a man of minutiae, very interested in the number of leaves on an Elenor bloom, but in the end, he was able to let go of the minutiae to experiment with narrative aesthetics and philosophical positions.
Androthelm wrote: Fri Nov 12, 2021 1:44 am In some ways, especially in works which have such potential to function as a canon in the second (ugh) and third senses, it increasingly feels to me that we're limiting ourselves greatly by attempting to imagine a perfectly consistent world. Even Tolkien's goal of subcreation seems, to me, to need to go only so far as the illusion of secondary belief may be entered by the reader, none of which requires necessarily an entirely unified body of texts (although unity within one text is, of course, helpful!).
YES! :smooch: :clap: Exactly! :nod:
We are, generally, quite good at accepting rather large inconsistencies without having the Art or the enchantment fail
On Fairy-stories wrote:But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.
Tolkien, J. R. R.. “On Fairy-stories” in Tree and Leaf: Including MYTHOPOEIA . HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Incidentally, though I believe that I know what you meant, I stumbled briefly at your phrase, “illusion of secondary belief” – having to re-enter the Secondary World after the spell has been broken would, I think, at best result in an illusion of Secondary Belief, but I would protest that Secondary Belief in and of itself is not illusionary; the Enchantment is real :wink:
Androthelm wrote: Fri Nov 12, 2021 1:44 am The other thing, of course, is that I don't particularly care what Tolkien would have done with infinite time and skill -- in the end, I think the proof you provide (which is, certainly, that the task of unifying the Legendarium would have been next to impossible) is the compelling thing for me in embarking on all sorts of inconsistent and anti-canon works of my own.
Good for you! :smile: There's a lot of license for the reader to invent and fill out the holes. Wasn't it Shippey who said something about Tolkien filling in the holes? I seem to remember him saying something along those lines – probably in connection with Sigurd and Gudrún.

In almost any way, I think that what Amazon is reportedly doing (mostly inventing entirely new stuff for their series, and being bound by not contradicting anything in the books – something, mind you, that not even Tolkien managed :mwahaha: ) will agree more with my range of sympathies than what Jackson did (and it is, evidently, also more acceptable to the Estate).
Androthelm wrote: Fri Nov 12, 2021 1:44 am That, though, raises the one distinction I think is worth raising -- that all of this is very useful when we approach things as fans and consumers of media -- who can hold bias and opinion about how a text should be, and very frustrating if we consider ourselves scholars of Tolkien('s authorial canon) -- who are limited by the requirement of impartiality and the pursuit of a proof of how a text is.
My own experience is rather the other way around. The scholars tend to care only about the first sense of ‘canon’ – can a text be authoritatively ascribed to Tolkien or not? Most of the Tolkien scholars that I have met and discussed with don't care about senses two and three, and they tend to scoff at sense four (though not in public – Flieger is, I believe, the only one to have written anything about this, and she doesn't like the concept inherent in sense four). Scholars tend to read the text for what it is, as placed in its proper context, but for them, context is about source text and the author's contemporary social and cultural context.

Of course, in the sense of looking at minutiae and spending time on wringing out all possible meaning from a single word, scholars still do that in the tradition of Tolkien,
Valedictory Address wrote:I would always rather try to wring the juice out of a single sentence, or explore the implications of one word than try to sum up a period in a lecture, or pot a poet in a paragraph.
Tolkien, J. R. R.. “Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford” in The Monsters and the Critics . HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Though sometimes, this focus on the minutiae of a single sentence tends to obscure relevant context from the scholar (I have seen some fairly exotic claims, e.g. of very complex multilingual puns, where I think the researcher has forgotten what else, Tolkien was involved with, other than constructing very complex linguistic puzzles that only a handful of readers would ever contemplate).
Androthelm wrote: Fri Nov 12, 2021 1:44 am Hence, I think, the somewhat fearful defense of the minutiae-canon from casual consumers who want to appear knowledgeable and scholarly.
Oh, yes!! Definitely!
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<snip intro and reference>
Boromir88 wrote: Sun Dec 26, 2021 5:30 pm 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.
This is, unfortunately, a rather common problem that I have observed more often than I care to think about – commenters confusing the world that Tolkien sub-created with the world of the Jackson films. Curiously, the level of confusion was not as large with the earlier adaptations (here I don't count the Russian adaptations, as I have no idea how they were perceived in Russia).

As indicated in my original post, I rather resent the idea of a “book canon”. I think it might be fair to speak of a “movie canon” specifically for Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy as an example of an adaptation canon (my sense no. 3; also note that Jackson's Lord of the Rings is sufficiently inconsistent with his Hobbit), but no matter what, we can certainly speak of the frustrations of people mixing up films and book.

Too many poeple want a simple solution, I think, and so they tend to oversimplify things way beyond what is logically sustainable. A reductio ad absurdum where people do not see the absurdity of their own conflation of things. There's one neat box titled “The Lord of the Rings” where everything is just thrown together, and then people dig up the first thing that matches the topic of today, and for that day, that thing is “True”. This mechanism, if my speculations have any relation to what actually happens, would probably account both for the tendency to conflate Tolkien's and Jackson's work (something which frustrates me no end! :rage:) as well as the tendency to conflate the 1937 Silmarillion with the 1959 version ...

This is, I think, my one remaining complaint surrounding these films: that too many who have seen the films seem to take Jackson's inventions as expressing Tolkien's intentions. Let's just say, they do not :smile:
Boromir88 wrote: Sun Dec 26, 2021 5:30 pm 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.
Yes, that is certainly true.

And of course the generalisation of “the lands” is ludicrous.

What lands are we talking about here? Surely not the Misty Mountains or Beleriand or the White Mountains or . . .. We see Orcs living in many places, and most of them are quite fertile.

Actually, the description of “fiery” is applied only to Mount Doom, Orodruin (of places – you have the ‘fiery letters’ on the ring, a fiery horse, etc.), and it doesn't seem that many Orcs lived on the sides of that Fiery Mountain. Much of the northern parts of Mordor, and the borderlands to the north, are surely described as desolate, but so is Ithilien, where it is certainly not difficult to find vegetable food.

It may be petty of me to comment in this way on a couple of particularly ill-chosen words in an unwarranted generalisation, but it does speak to the lack of care exerted by whoever wrote the article.

The “desolation that lay before Mordor” is described as “a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing – unless the Great Sea should enter in and wash it with oblivion.” and is elsewhere given the adjective “lifeless”. But there is no indication that any Orcs actually live there, so we can safely disregard this as a description of an Orcish habitat.

The descriptions of the lands about Mount Doom is, of course, not much more inviting, but the implication is that the Orcs that live in those places get their food from elsewhere.
Boromir88 wrote: Sun Dec 26, 2021 5:30 pm 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.
greatly desire” is something of an exaggeration, but Tolkien does present being given man's flesh as something that the Orcs view as a positive thing
LR,3,III:25-26 wrote: ‘Aye, we must stick together,’ growled Uglúk. ‘I don’t trust you little swine. You’ve no guts outside your own sties. But for us you’d all have run away. We are the fighting Uruk-hai! We slew the great warrior. We took the prisoners. We are the servants of Saruman the Wise, the White Hand: the Hand that gives us man’s-flesh to eat. We came out of Isengard, and led you here, and we shall lead you back by the way we choose. I am Uglúk. I have spoken.’
‘You have spoken more than enough, Uglúk,’ sneered the evil voice. ‘I wonder how they would like it in Lugbúrz. They might think that Uglúk’s shoulders needed relieving of a swollen head. They might ask where his strange ideas came from. Did they come from Saruman, perhaps? Who does he think he is, setting up on his own with his filthy white badges? They might agree with me, with Grishnákh their trusted messenger; and I Grishnákh say this: Saruman is a fool, and a dirty treacherous fool. But the Great Eye is on him. ‘Swine is it? How do you folk like being called swine by the muck-rakers of a dirty little wizard? It’s orc-flesh they eat, I’ll warrant.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King (p. 446). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Bold emphasis added. I've retained the whole passage to also emphasise how the eating of orc-flesh is used as an accusation, a derogatory suggestion, which nonetheless manages to hint at cannibalistic practices not being entirely unheard of among Orcs.

Besides this little argument, we are also, in the same chapter, treated to seeing Pippin being given some rations:
LR,3,III:67 wrote: An Orc stooped over him, and flung him some bread and a strip of raw dried flesh. He ate the stale grey bread hungrily, but not the meat. He was famished but not yet so famished as to eat flesh flung to him by an Orc, the flesh of he dared not guess what creature.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King (p. 450). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The implication is here, I think, that Pippin and Merry are being given the same rations as the Orcs themselves, which would strongly imply that they also eat vegetable matter (the bread), even if I also think the general sense is that they are more concerned with their meat.
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Thank you for the reply @Troelsfo. :smile:
Troelsfo wrote:Too many poeple want a simple solution, I think, and so they tend to oversimplify things way beyond what is logically sustainable. A reductio ad absurdum where people do not see the absurdity of their own conflation of things. There's one neat box titled “The Lord of the Rings” where everything is just thrown together, and then people dig up the first thing that matches the topic of today, and for that day, that thing is “True”. This mechanism, if my speculations have any relation to what actually happens, would probably account both for the tendency to conflate Tolkien's and Jackson's work (something which frustrates me no end! :rage:) as well as the tendency to conflate the 1937 Silmarillion with the 1959 version ...
Indeed. Now my own head canon is, unfortunately a blend of movie-canon and Tolkien-canon. I first read the books after seeing the films, so my own mental images of the characters, costumes, and locations have been heavily influenced by the movies. There is always some scene, or costume, or line from the movie (if you've enjoyed them as I have) that will stick out, not be part of the book and it blends into your head-canon.

I'll use Boromir as an example. I like Sean Bean's portrayal, even though objectively - he doesn't look like Boromir as described by Tolkien, and the movies it's a much softer Boromir. The scenes with Merry and Pippin and Aragorn aren't described in the books, but I can imagine them taking place, because in my head canon it fits with my imagination of Boromir's character. So now it's as if "these scenes from the Fellowship's journey happened, but they just aren't described in the book." If that makes sense.

What becomes frustrating to me though, is I know that's my own head canon, and if I'm discussing Tolkien's Boromir then I stick strictly to what Tolkien wrote. That's often not the case as with the article I linked. More often than not what I find on the internet (more so with the LOTR films) is people will mostly use movie lore to try to prove a point, and cherry pick some Tolkien lore if it suits their argument, to try to "bulk it up" and make it seem more authoritative. In my opinion this isn't so much a blending of canon from different sources, it's heavily relying on one type of canon, then cherry picking from others if it suits their argument.
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Magnificent post @Troelsfo.

I agree with much of your perspective here, especially they part about being able to realistically construct such a self-consistent canon. I think, however, it's important to also ask why there is a notion of this Type 4 canon in the first place?

Canon, of any sort, is not a self-serving notion, we use it for other purposes. (1) is used primarily as a way to describe the work of an author (2) is more complicated but generally used in literarily discussion as a shortcut to describe a cohesive set. These tend to be most prominent in discussions about literature, especially "academic" discussions.

(3) and (4) are a bit different and manifest differently and are certainly not restricted to Tolkien's work. As already referenced there are Star Trek canon and Star Wars canon (two of them!) Warhammer etc. So why do we "need" these canons (obviously there was some requirement for something otherwise this notion wouldn't be some common across so many legendarium)? I claim they primarily exist for non-primary author contributions to the legendarium (fan-fiction in Tolkien's case but many authors contribute to other legendarium like star wars of which their works are considered "canon" in contrast to individual fan-fictions posted online), and for "trivia"-style discussions.

If you want to allow non-primary authors to be able to contribute to the lore (which isn't the case for Middle-earth but is for many other fantasy/science-fiction universes), or if you want to have quiz questions (such as trivia games which have become increasingly popular in a modern world) then you need to have some notion of what is "true" and what is not "true" in a given setting. Just like real history not everything needs to be so cut-and-dry -- and I think this is an area that some jointly-written legendarium do better than others -- but there must be some things which are agreed upon to prevent blatant, unsatisfying/immersion breaking, contradictions from occurring, or in the case of trivia to allow for a "correct" answer. This departs from (3) which need not necessarily be wholly consistent as, traditionally, these are not published in such a fashion where such consistency is expected -- like in a trivia game or officially licensed published work. And so from this requirement of a base level of consistency you end up with the Type 4 canon you describe.

I think this solution works well in some instances, in particular those where it is expected that multiple authors will "officially" contribute to the lore (Star Wars, Warhammer being good examples). I think it works quite poorly in other instances, Tolkien's work being one of them. I think, indeed it is an over-simplification of how to imagine Middle-earth and its conception. Since "official" publications set in Middle-earth are, effectively, 'nil' -- if we consider movies to be of the Type 3 canon -- then the only real "purpose" such a canon would serve is for Trivia, but I think any person truly interested in the lore can understand that "it depends" is a perfectly good answer.
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.
Now this I'm not sure I entirely agree. Yes Tolkien had not defined Maia at this point but clearly, at this point, Gandalf is a "Wizard" (whatever that is) and is clearly not a man or an elf or a hobbit and is obviously "magical". That Tolkien later refines this concept I don't think means you are fundamentally mistaken for reading the Lord of the Rings thinking of Gandalf as a Maia, as I see this as a consequence and a explanation of Gandalf that occurred after, ideally an explanation that is self-consistent -- in this case I don't think it's wholly inconsistent to read The Lord of the Rings thinking Gandalf is a Maia.

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Romeran wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 5:57 pm
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.
Now this I'm not sure I entirely agree. Yes Tolkien had not defined Maia at this point but clearly, at this point, Gandalf is a "Wizard" (whatever that is) and is clearly not a man or an elf or a hobbit and is obviously "magical". That Tolkien later refines this concept I don't think means you are fundamentally mistaken for reading the Lord of the Rings thinking of Gandalf as a Maia, as I see this as a consequence and a explanation of Gandalf that occurred after, ideally an explanation that is self-consistent -- in this case I don't think it's wholly inconsistent to read The Lord of the Rings thinking Gandalf is a Maia.
I'd put the point differently, but agree with the qualification. Gandalf is precisely a 'Wizard' when first introduced in the first chapter of The Hobbit, but the meaning of this (and related) terms is in a process of flux or retransformation the moment that Gandalf falls in Moria and is 'sent back'. By the time the story arrives at Edoras, Gandalf is no longer the same Wizard who entered Moria, and if not a Maia in name then already - surely - something like or quite close to what is later named one.
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Chrysophylax Dives wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 1:20 pm I'd put the point differently, but agree with the qualification. Gandalf is precisely a 'Wizard' when first introduced in the first chapter of The Hobbit, but the meaning of this (and related) terms is in a process of flux or retransformation the moment that Gandalf falls in Moria and is 'sent back'. By the time the story arrives at Edoras, Gandalf is no longer the same Wizard who entered Moria, and if not a Maia in name then already - surely - something like or quite close to what is later named one.
Precisely. I think the reader, especially when Gandalf is sent back, is made quite confidant that Gandalf is entirely something else, and even in a certain respect different than he was when we first met him in TH and FotR. That the "elseness" is called Maia later on I don't think fundamentally misconstrues the original reading.

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