Middle-earth canon
The term Middle-earth canon, also called Tolkien's canon, is used for the published writings of
The terms have been used by reviewers, publishers, scholars, authors and critics such as John Garth,[1] Tom Shippey,[2] Jane Chance[3] and others to describe the published writings of J. R. R. Tolkien on Middle-earth as a whole.[4] Other writers look to the entire body of work of the author as a "Tolkien canon", rather than a subset defined by the fictional "Middle-earth" setting.[5]
Tolkien's works
The works on Middle-earth published by Tolkien during his lifetime include
Christopher Tolkien also published the 12-volume History of Middle-earth, containing many texts, drafts, and notes by Tolkien (both early and late), together with Christopher's own extensive notes placing these in context.
Further works authorized by the
The Hobbit
Although Tolkien said that The Hobbit was conceived separately from his mythological stories,
When he revised The Hobbit to bring the story of the finding of the Ring in line with The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien retained the original version as the tale Bilbo told to justify his acquisition of the Ring.
The Lord of the Rings
Other details from The Hobbit don't quite mesh with The Lord of the Rings.
Writings after The Lord of the Rings
According to Christopher Tolkien, despite J. R. R. Tolkien's desire to bring the older Silmarillion stories to a publishable state, much time was spent instead trying to bring consistency to the works already published.[10] The unpublished manuscripts were left in various states of completion. These older stories had existed and changed over many decades, partly in response to The Lord of the Rings; as he reworked the material, he made substantial changes, up to and including the abandonment of major themes and entire tales, and wholesale rewrites and revisions of otherwise seemingly complete narratives.
Towards the end of his life, the focus of Tolkien's writing shifted from story telling inspired by his philological pursuits[11] to more philosophical concerns, and Tolkien never finished a unified, systematic, and internally consistent narrative.
The Silmarillion compilation
The Silmarillion was compiled by Christopher Tolkien (long involved in J. R. R. Tolkien's creative process) and published in 1977, four years after Tolkien’s death. It presents an abridged cycle of Tolkien's drafts of his Elvish legends, in the legendarium that he worked on throughout his life, drawing material from the earliest Book of Lost Tales to drafts written long after The Lord of the Rings. Most of the original texts have subsequently appeared in the History of Middle-earth. Christopher's goal was a version resembling what he thought at the time his father might have produced.
Christopher observed that absolute consistency among the Middle-earth tales could only be achieved by losing much that was good in them:
"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."[12]
He went on to say:
"My father came to conceive The Silmarillion as a compilation... and it is to some extent a compendium in fact and not only in theory."[12]
Throughout his commentaries in Unfinished Tales and the twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien points out differences between various versions of the original texts and the final editorial selections and occasional alterations in The Silmarillion. In the Introduction of Unfinished Tales he observes that such selection was necessary to publishing a unified narrative;
"I think now that this was a mistaken view, and that the undoubted difficulties could have been and should have been, surmounted without so far overstepping the bounds of editorial function."[14]
Editing for consistency can be seen by comparing the chapter "Of the Voyage of Eärendil" in The Silmarillion with its corresponding section in the History of Middle-earth Volume V (The Lost Road and Other Writings). The Quenta Silmarillion of the 1930s was Tolkien's final text for this section, and Christopher carried it forward into The Silmarillion nearly word for word with editorial modifications—for consistency with other works—primarily limited to nomenclature: Fionwë edited to
From The Silmarillion: "In the front of that fire came Glaurung the golden, father of dragons, in his full might; and in his train were
Orcs in multitudes such as the Noldorhad never before seen or imagined." — p. 151.
From The Lost Road: "In the front of that fire came Glómund the golden, the father of dragons, and in his train were Balrogs, and behind them came the black armies of the Orcs in multitudes such as the Gnomes had never before seen or imagined." — p. 280.
In the continuing development of the published history of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien quotes in The Children of Húrin his father's own words on his fictional universe:
"once upon a time... I had in mind to make a body of more or less connected legend... I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched."[15]
Christopher Tolkien offers this justification for exercising his editorial authority to produce The Children of Húrin as a separate book:
"...it has seemed to me that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of the Children of Húrin as an independent work, between its own covers, with a minimum of editorial presence, and above all in continuous narrative without gaps or interruptions, if this could be done without distortion or invention, despite the unfinished state in which he left parts of it."[16]
Ethan Gilsdorf reviewing The Children of Húrin wrote of the editorial function:
"Of almost equal interest is Christopher Tolkien's task editing his father's abandoned projects. In his appendix, he explains his editorial process this way: "While I have had to introduce bridging passages here and there in the piecing together of different drafts, there is no element of extraneous 'invention' of any kind, however slight." He was criticized for having monkeyed with his father's text when putting "The Silmarillion" together. This pre-emptive strike must be meant to allay the fears of Tolkien's most persnickety readers."[17]
Fictional canon for Middle-earth
As a result of the manner of its creation, the secondary world of Middle-earth is complicated. Its creator developed various elements of his fiction over the course of decades, making substantial changes including the abandonment of major themes, facts and entire tales, and undertook wholesale rewrites and revisions of otherwise "complete" narratives. The author's opinions on the relationships of his texts to each other often changed. In his letters, Tolkien comments upon the
"I am doubtful myself about the undertaking [of finishing The Silmarillion]. Part of the attraction of the L.R. [The Lord of the Rings] is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed."[18]
The quest by some readers for a consistent
The desire for a Middle-earth canon arises from the need of some readers to form an internal consistency between the stories, a need related to their "
"... makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. ... The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed."[23]
"Of any imaginary world the reader demands that it seem real, and the standard of realism demanded today is much stricter than in the time, say, of Malory."[24]
See also
References
- ^ Telegraph UK, 25 Apr. 2007, Children of Húrin Book review, by John Garth, "Only now, for the first time since 1977, has any cohesive and complete narrative appeared to join the other three major books in the Middle Earth canon."
- ^ Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Publisher's comments: "Other chapters examine The Hobbit, explaining the hobbits' anachronistic relationship to the heroic world of Middle-earth; the fundamental importance of The Silmarillion to Tolkien's canon". Chicago Sun-Times, Book review, April 22, 2007, Dan Miller, The Children of Hurin: "A superb addition to the Tolkien canon". Times of India, Book Review, 29 Apr. 2007, Hurin Therapy: "The story is not new. There's a condensed version in The Silmarillion, the epic tale of elves and men published in 1977. This shows that the story of Hurin and the curse that blights his family was central to the conception of the Elder Days, Tolkien's Ancient Age when the elves returned to Middle-earth to battle Morgoth, the first Dark Lord. The version we get in Hurin is both alike and different from other works in the canon. Seasoned readers will flag familiar Tolkien markers—an awe-inspiring landscape, courage in the face of hardship, heroism and its fall.
- ISBN 0-8131-9017-7.
- ISBN 0-8131-2418-2, p. 133, Many passages in the Middle-earth canon comment on specific characteristics of trees and forests"; p. 101, "In the total oeuvre of Tolkien's Middle-earth canon, a number of elvish communities are described"; p. 110, "it draws on an aesthetic system running through the whole of the Middle-earth canon"; p. 164, although they are not part of the Middle-earth canon"; p. 170 "Middle-earth canon". Harper Collins Australia: The Silmarillion: Illustrated Edition, Publisher's notes: "J R R Tolkien′s SILMARILLION is the core work of the Middle−earth canon.".
- ^ Understanding the Lord of the Rings, by Rose A. Zimbardo, Neil D. Isaacs: "All this is in Tolkien's canon." Houghton Mifflin, 2004, p. 17; C. S. Lewis, by Michael White,"Christopher, who now lives in France, has written a vast canon of books that fill in the history of Middle-earth." p. 250. I Am in Fact a Hobbit, by Perry C. Bramlett, Joe R. Christopher; p. 91, "... it is part of Tolkien's canon of "juvenile writings".
- Michael D.C. Drout: 'In addition to these invaluable works, there is an ongoing process, still underway today, to collate, edit, and publish the large body of Tolkien's unpublished linguistic writings. This project, headed up by Christopher Gilson, with the assistance of such Tolkien linguistic scholars as Carl F. Hostetter, Arden R. Smith, and Patrick Wynne, has already resulted in the addition of considerable new material to the published canon (in the forms of the journals Parma Eldalamberon and Vinyar Tengwar).' (emphasis added).
- ISBN 0-395-31555-7, Letter 163, Tolkien to W. H. Auden: "The Hobbit was originally quite unconnected, though it inevitably got drawn in to the circumference of the greater construction..."
- ISBN 978-0-00-723555-1. p. 83, (characters and History) p. 17 (geography).
- ISBN 0-395-28665-4, p. 97
- First Agehad appeared in print that he was under far less constraint."
- ISBN 0-395-31555-7, Letter 257, "The germ of my attempt to write legends to fit my private languages..."(emphasis added). Letter 163, "All this only as background to the stories, though languages and names are for me are inextricable from the stories. They are and were so to speak an attempt to give a background or a world in which my expressions of linguistic taste could have a function."
- ^ a b The Silmarillion, p. 8
- ^ Unfinished Tales, Introduction, p. 1
- ^ History of Middle-earth Vol. XI, p. 356
- ISBN 0618894640, p. 9
- ^ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, editor, The Children of Húrin, p. 7
- ^ The Boston Globe Book Review of The Children of Húrin by Ethan Gilsdorf, April 26, 2007.
- ^ Tolkien, Letters, ed. Humphrey Carpenter, Letter #247.
- ISBN 0-87338-699-X.
- ISBN 1-57383-308-8: "A key quality to this other world is believability. Tolkien insists that the secondary world should be presented as true, with an inner consistency of reality, internal logic, and laws that make things explainable. ... Lewis on the other hand, says the writer needs to put only enough science in the story to create a 'willing suspension of disbelief.'"
- ISBN 978-0-313-33441-2, p. 331: "Tolkien's concept of fantasy literature ... is based on the suspension of disbelief."
- ^ Tolkien, J. R. R.; Christopher Tolkien, editor, The Monsters and the Critics, Houghton Mifflin, 1984, pp. 139–141.
- ^ The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, p.132
- New York Times, Book Review, The Fellowship of the Ring, October 31, 1954
External links
- Tolkien societies