Ents, trees, and all that
James Alexander Chokey
>
> I want to make clear that, at least on my part, I have never claimed
>or supported any of the following statements:
>
> 1). LoTR and the Silmarillion are 'real' histories.
> 2). Their characteristics are not due to their separate literary/poetic/
> dramatic requirements.
> 3). They are 100% consistent.
> 4). When they seem to be inconsistent, there is actually a 'true'
> answer that Tolkien knew about, and we can always prove what it
> was.
> 5). When something is left unexplained, Tolkien always had an explanation
> in mind, he just never wrote it down, but we can always find it
> if we look hard enough.
>
> All of these statements, IMHO, are FALSE. LEt me emphasize that: I am
>NOT at any time arguing a position in support of these statements.
That's fair enough, but I wasn't directing my post against you or
anybody else in particular. I was talking about a general phenomenon that
pervades much discussion on both r.a.b.t and a.f.t. Like it or not, there is
a tendency here to discuss the various narrative "inconsistencies" in
Tolkien's Middle-earth writings _as if_ points 1-5 were true. People _do_
talk about "resolving," "reconciling," "discovering answers to" and "figuring
out" contradictions and gaps, as if there were some reality, either extra-
textual or intra-textual, that was being discussed. What they are really doing
is writing fan fiction under the guise of discussing Tolkien's works. It is
their own stories they are talking about-- not Tolkien's. This can be, as
you note below, quite fun and entertaining, but I do think that it is very
easy for people to lose track of the fact that all of these "speculations" are
just fan fictions that have little to do with what Tolkien actually wrote.
And I don't think I'm exaggerating-- some people on this group and on a.f.t.
have actually cited role-playing games as a source of "definitive answers"
about these "inconsistencies" in Tolkien's work and claimed that, since
Christopher Tolkien has "approved" these games, they must be "correct"--
when in fact, these games are only elaborate fan-fictions dressed up in
the form of an RPG. There _is_ a good deal of slippage on r.a.b.t. between
constructing elaborate fan-fictions about Tolkien's work and talking about
these fan-fictions as if they were in some way "real". I think it's
important to distinguish between the two.
> 1). It is entertaining to try and resolve inconsistencies/mysteries
> that we find.
> 2). There is enough "raw data" in Middle-earth that we can pursue this
> entertainment without having to completely sail into the darkness.
I agree with you on the first point, but I do think we should keep
in mind that such discussions, however entertaining they may be, are still
fan-fiction. I'm not sure, however, what you mean by "raw data" or "sail[ing]
into the darkness." If you are just saying something to the effect of, "There
are numerous unexplained allusions and narrative tensions in Tolkien's
fictions that easily lend themselves to the construction of such fan-fiction,"
then I would say we are in complete agreement.
> If you do not enjoy speculations of this type, then please feel free not
>to read or contribute to them.
I usually don't. However, I occasionally like to raise a challenge
to the hermeneutical validity of this sort of discussion. I do not think
that this in any way inappropriate, and I'm sorry if you feel that it is.
> If you do enjoy discussion of the works on a different level, that of
>their literary/stylistic content, please feel free to initiate threads
>discussing those aspects. I also enjoy this level of analysis and will
>be glad to join you in such discussions.
I frequently do. I've been quite busy during the past two months
with other things and I haven't had much time to spend posting on r.a.b.
tolkien, but I've always been a regular contributor to discussions of a
non-fan-fictional nature since the creation of alt.fan.tolkien. I also
included a substantial section in my post discussing at some length the
signficance of forests in LOTR, elaborating upon the fact that Tolkien
repeatedly emphasizes their ancientness and contrasting this with the
relative lack of forests in the Silmarillion. (You did not cite this
part of my post in your response or elaborate upon it.) My post, in
other words, was not entirely negative and critical, as you seem to be
suggesting. I did attempt to introduce a more "literary" level of analysis
into the discussion of trees, forests, Ents, etc. in Tolkien's fictions;
you simply chose not to pursue it yourself and focussed solely on the more
"negative side" of my posting.
-- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
Keith Goodnight
>
> That's fair enough, but I wasn't directing my post against you or
>anybody else in particular. I was talking about a general phenomenon that
>pervades much discussion on both r.a.b.t and a.f.t. Like it or not, there is
>a tendency here to discuss the various narrative "inconsistencies" in
>Tolkien's Middle-earth writings _as if_ points 1-5 were true. People _do_
>talk about "resolving," "reconciling," "discovering answers to" and "figuring
>out" contradictions and gaps, as if there were some reality, either extra-
>textual or intra-textual, that was being discussed. What they are really doing
>is writing fan fiction under the guise of discussing Tolkien's works. It is
I have to disagree with the view that using this sort of language implies
what you say it does. These are linguistic conventions. How would you prefer
us to phrase an attempt to... well, here we see that I cannot even think
of a single alternative for the word "resolve"... resolve some inconsistency
that we find?
Nor do I think that "fan fiction" is the appropriate word for what
we come up with. If I say (to use a conclusion from a recent thread) that
the Ents were created by Yavanna's music and then inhabited by spirits
called from outside, I am citing a firm conclusion based on the text of the
Silmarillion. If I go on to say, "the passage includes mention of a variety
of such spirits, inhabiting both animals and plants, and these probably
produced the various sentient beings we see in LoTR which do not fit the
Children of Iluvatar (plus Dwarves) pattern," then I am venturing into
speculative waters; but I am still basing this conclusion on what I find
in Tolkien. I am not writing fan fiction.
Nor have I *ever* seen anyone in one of the discussions cite any such
conclusion as though it were "authoritative." Conclusions from earlier
discussions are quite often brought up for consideration ("There was a dis-
cussion some time ago where someone suggested X, perhaps that's relevant
here...") but they are not cited as authority, only as a source of good
ideas.
>the form of an RPG. There _is_ a good deal of slippage on r.a.b.t. between
>constructing elaborate fan-fictions about Tolkien's work and talking about
>these fan-fictions as if they were in some way "real". I think it's
>important to distinguish between the two.
I disagree. As I said above, I've never encountered that. I suppose
you could get that mistaken impression if you become too focused on
the necessary phrasing of such debates. It is impossible to even bring
up this kind of issue without saying something to the effect of:
"What do you think this means?"
and then answering it with something to the effect of:
"I think the answer is this--"
I suppose it would make you happier if we conducted our discussions
along the lines of:
"Here's an inconsistency. Let's pretend that Tolkien had a solution
and then make something up about it."
"Okay. Let's pretend that the reason for it is this--"
But frankly, I think such a mode of discussion would rapidly become
extremely tiresome.
Let us remember that it is possible in the real world to deduce some
things you do not know on the basis of some other things you do know. And
it is possible to devise plausible and probable hypotheses even when strict
deduction is impossible. By the same token, we can look at the facts
presentedto us by Tolkien and deduce or hypothesize from them to arrive
at conclusions Tolkien himself never pursued. Such can never be regarded as
authoritative; and if our conclusions contradict some canonical information
presented elsewhere in Tolkien's writings, then it is our conclusions that
must retreat.
But as long as we continue to base our opinions soundly on Tolkien's
writings, we are not just writing "fan fiction" and passing it off as
truth. We are instead trying to understand more about the world of
Middle-earth (fiction though it is) than is there in a superficial reading
of the text.
>
> I agree with you on the first point, but I do think we should keep
>in mind that such discussions, however entertaining they may be, are still
>fan-fiction. I'm not sure, however, what you mean by "raw data" or "sail[ing]
>into the darkness." If you are just saying something to the effect of, "There
>are numerous unexplained allusions and narrative tensions in Tolkien's
>fictions that easily lend themselves to the construction of such fan-fiction,"
>then I would say we are in complete agreement.
You kep using the term 'fan-fiction' the way a priest might use the
term 'atheist.' Let me raise another objection to that term: No one here is
writing stories set in Middle-earth. They are hypothesizing about facts
within Middle-earth. 'Analysis' rather than 'fiction' would be the
appropriate term.
What I meant by "raw data" and "sailing into the darkness" is:
"raw data": basic facts presented in the text which can be used to
deduce other facts which we did not know before, or
which can be used as the basis for hypotheses which we
would not have thought of before.
"sailing into the darkness": Contrasted with the above, the forming
of hypotheses with no basis in the canonical information
about Middle-earth.
Im other words, what I was saying was NOT to observe the number of
inconsistencies/mysteries in Middle-earth and to say that we can then
speculate freely about them (which would be my definition of "sailing into
the darkness"). What I was saying is that there is enough CONSISTENT and
EXPLAINED information in Middle-earth than we can attempt soundly-based
conclusions about those elements that are not consistent or explained. In
other words, there is enough other information in Middle-earth that we can
draw conclusions about things Tolkien left unexplained or ambiguous.
YES, our conclusions are not canonical. YES, they are not definitive.
YES, they are not proved facts about a real world. YES, they must retreat
if contrary information comes to light.
But that does not mean that they are baseless inventions. Every discussion
I have participated in has included and demanded citation of the actual
writings of Tolkien in support of any conclusion offered.
Tolkien himself took great pains to make Middle-earth as logical and
consistent a world as he could. When dramatic/literary requirements
introduced a new character/plot development/historical allusion, he would
almost invariably extend that element forward and backward into the
larger history, considering its implications for other elements and
considering the effect of other elements on it. It was in this way that
Galadriel found her way into the Silmarillion, and the wizards found their
attachment to the Maiar. This is not an activty divorced from (and less
worthy than) the immediate considerations of story and style; it is an
inherent and vital part of that style. It is what makes Tolkien's writing
what it is. It is why Middle-earth, like no other fictional creation EVER,
has an extraordinary sense of "reality" and temporal depth.
If we are inspired by that sense to try and fill in the holes (because
of course Tolkien never got around to them all: it would be impossible to
do so, as each new modification raises other questions elsewhere) then this
is not an unworthy activity, nor is it mere 'fan fiction.' This is what
Middle-earth is all about, and though our conclusions can never have
authority, they are none the less satisfying for that.
>> If you do not enjoy speculations of this type, then please feel free not
>>to read or contribute to them.
>
> I usually don't. However, I occasionally like to raise a challenge
>to the hermeneutical validity of this sort of discussion. I do not think
>that this in any way inappropriate, and I'm sorry if you feel that it is.
I am sorry to seem dim, but I am not familiar with the term
'hermeneutical'. From context my guess is that you mean you like to
challenge that 'canonical' status of our conclusions. But no one
--NO ONE-- in my experience has EVER claimed canonical authority for a
conclusion. They claim canonical authority for the citations they offer
in support of their conclusions, and they often claim that a passage they
cite is so unambiguous that it supports no other conclusion (and sometimes
they are right, and sometimes that aren't) but the validity is always
attached to what Tolkien says, not to what we say.
If you meant something entirely different by the term, then please
post a clarification. If what you meant is that you like to challenge
the worth of such discussions in understanding or enjoying Tolkien's
work, then I'm afraid I must utterly, absolutely, and finally disagree
with you.
>non-fan-fictional nature since the creation of alt.fan.tolkien. I also
>included a substantial section in my post discussing at some length the
>signficance of forests in LOTR, elaborating upon the fact that Tolkien
>repeatedly emphasizes their ancientness and contrasting this with the
>relative lack of forests in the Silmarillion. (You did not cite this
>part of my post in your response or elaborate upon it.) My post, in
>other words, was not entirely negative and critical, as you seem to be
>suggesting. I did attempt to introduce a more "literary" level of analysis
>into the discussion of trees, forests, Ents, etc. in Tolkien's fictions;
>you simply chose not to pursue it yourself and focussed solely on the more
>"negative side" of my posting.
>
My impression of your posting was that the entire purpose of the
discussion of the stylistic function of forests was to refute any
"within-context" explanation of Ents (which was the thread where it arose).
The message I heard (rightly or wrongly) was "No, the Ents have no basis
in the overall picture of Middle-earth, and to prove it I will show you
that they have a valid stylistic role in LoTR."
I therefore felt that the real intent of the message was simply negative,
to argue against the worth of these discussions, so it was that point I
responded to.
I am reminded of an essay by C.S. Lewis in which he hypothetically
asks the following question: In Shakespeare's HAMLET, does Ophelia die
because she fell into a river and drowned, or because Shakespear felt it
was dramatically necessary for her to die?
The answer is obviously yes to both questions, and in fact neither
answer tells on the other one.
By the same token, saying "Ents have a dramatic function in LoTR that
highlights the symbolic presentation of forests, and could therefore not
be filled by beings of some other nature" does not contradict the
statement "Ents originated in the Music of Yavanna, because she wanted
guardians for the trees."
The origin of a feature of Middle-earth in Tolkien's mind is not
necessarily (or even probably) the same as its origin within the context
of Midle-earth; as likely as not, Tolkien invented the within-context
origin after the fact. But that does not invalidate that origin, because
whatever Tolkien's reason for having Ents, or anything else, he DID
include an explanation within his universe.
And if we seek to do the same for elements he never got around to, that
is a perfectly valid form of study. Only intellectual snobbishness would
declare that stylistic analysis is more worthy than analysis of the content;
both have value.
--Keith F. Goodnight
Charles F. Fitzgerald
> I have to disagree with the view that using this sort of language implies
> what you say it does. These are linguistic conventions. How would you prefer
> us to phrase an attempt to... well, here we see that I cannot even think
> of a single alternative for the word "resolve"... resolve some inconsistency
> that we find?
To my understanding, it is not the _term_ or _language_ you are using that
Jim is responding to, it is the actual _process_ that he finds questionable.
Basically, from what I have read in the past and in this discussion, Jim
does not see much purpose in the attempt to ``resolve'' the inconsistencies
that are present within the text of the Lord of the Rings (especially).
He feels that such attempts are speculative at best, and prefers to discuss
the meanings, themes, and prejudices behind the characters and events
of the texts rather than the ``explanations'' of those events or characters.
He is not saying that you are _wrong_ to search for such ``resolutions''
(in fact, he notes in an above article that such a search is often
enjoyable), but he does not seem prone to engage or facilitate such
discussions.
> Nor do I think that "fan fiction" is the appropriate word for what
> we come up with. If I say (to use a conclusion from a recent thread) that
> the Ents were created by Yavanna's music and then inhabited by spirits
> called from outside, I am citing a firm conclusion based on the text of the
> Silmarillion. If I go on to say, "the passage includes mention of a variety
> of such spirits, inhabiting both animals and plants, and these probably
> produced the various sentient beings we see in LoTR which do not fit the
> Children of Iluvatar (plus Dwarves) pattern," then I am venturing into
> speculative waters; but I am still basing this conclusion on what I find
> in Tolkien. I am not writing fan fiction.
Now you are quibbling over terms. To you, fan fiction means one thing.
To me, it probably means something else. To Jim, it means (aside from
anything else) making conclusions, however well based in textural evidence,
about the pre-history of Middle-Earth.
> Nor have I *ever* seen anyone in one of the discussions cite any such
> conclusion as though it were "authoritative." Conclusions from earlier
> discussions are quite often brought up for consideration ("There was a dis-
> cussion some time ago where someone suggested X, perhaps that's relevant
> here...") but they are not cited as authority, only as a source of good
> ideas.
I haven't been reading r.a.b.t. this summer very closely, and even when
I do, I tend to skip a lot of articles, so I can't speak authoritatively
on this topic. I would say, however, that I agree that I don't normally
see many people using speculative arguments to draw conclusions from (of
course there's always the history of dragons ... :-)).
> I suppose
> you could get that mistaken impression if you become too focused on
> the necessary phrasing of such debates. It is impossible to even bring
> up this kind of issue without saying something to the effect of:
> "What do you think this means?"
> and then answering it with something to the effect of:
> "I think the answer is this--"
> I suppose it would make you happier if we conducted our discussions
> along the lines of:
> "Here's an inconsistency. Let's pretend that Tolkien had a solution
> and then make something up about it."
> "Okay. Let's pretend that the reason for it is this--"
> But frankly, I think such a mode of discussion would rapidly become
>extremely tiresome.
I reiterate: this is not a question of appropriate phrasing. It is a
question of the appropriateness of asking ``What do you think this means?''
in the context you mean at all, at all.
> Let us remember that it is possible in the real world to deduce some
> things you do not know on the basis of some other things you do know. And
> it is possible to devise plausible and probable hypotheses even when strict
> deduction is impossible. By the same token, we can look at the facts
> presentedto us by Tolkien and deduce or hypothesize from them to arrive
> at conclusions Tolkien himself never pursued. Such can never be regarded as
> authoritative; and if our conclusions contradict some canonical information
> presented elsewhere in Tolkien's writings, then it is our conclusions that
> must retreat.
This is the heart of the disagreement, in my opinion.
True, it is possible to deduce something you do not know from something
you do know in the real world. It is the ability to do the same in a
world that does not exist except within a writer's text that causes
Jim to use the term ``fan fiction'' to such attempts. Though it may
be argued that the world does exist outside the Tolkien's text (to some
degree of accuracy, in my opinion), Jim does not seem to acknowledge this
most of the time, and I believe it is accurate to say that to him, it
does not. Thus any attempts to provide for ``contexturally sound
conclusions'' to the inconsistencies of Tolkien's texts is, to Jim,
fan fiction.
> You kep using the term 'fan-fiction' the way a priest might use the
> term 'atheist.' Let me raise another objection to that term: No one here is
> writing stories set in Middle-earth.
Obviously, you didn't read that mushroom story :-P. After that story,
I must admit to a certain similarity between the two terms.
> Tolkien himself took great pains to make Middle-earth as logical and
> consistent a world as he could. When dramatic/literary requirements
> introduced a new character/plot development/historical allusion, he would
> almost invariably extend that element forward and backward into the
> larger history, considering its implications for other elements and
> considering the effect of other elements on it. It was in this way that
> Galadriel found her way into the Silmarillion, and the wizards found their
> attachment to the Maiar. This is not an activty divorced from (and less
> worthy than) the immediate considerations of story and style; it is an
> inherent and vital part of that style. It is what makes Tolkien's writing
> what it is. It is why Middle-earth, like no other fictional creation EVER,
> has an extraordinary sense of "reality" and temporal depth.
Jim has expressed apprehension before about treating the Lord of the Rings
as being connected to _the Silmarillion_ (at least intrintrinsically con-
nected); he has refrained from admitting that Gandalf _in the Lord of the
Rings and __the Hobbit__ _ was a Maiar. Basically, he likes to take each
work separately and discuss what is there. No going ``backward'' into
the ``history'' of Middle-Earth. No ``concluding'' what ``happened''
outside the text. To him, all such attempts are, to use his term, fan-
fiction.
> If we are inspired by that sense to try and fill in the holes (because
> of course Tolkien never got around to them all: it would be impossible to
> do so, as each new modification raises other questions elsewhere) then this
> is not an unworthy activity, nor is it mere 'fan fiction.' This is what
> Middle-earth is all about, and though our conclusions can never have
> authority, they are none the less satisfying for that.
Jim is not raising the question of the validity or worthiness of ``try[ing to]
fill in the holes''; he is only saying that he finds such ``fills'' to be
uninteresting normally, and prefers to discuss other aspects of Tolkien's
work.
> Jim Chokey wrote:
> > I usually don't. However, I occasionally like to raise a challenge
> >to the hermeneutical validity of this sort of discussion. I do not think
> >that this in any way inappropriate, and I'm sorry if you feel that it is.
>
> I am sorry to seem dim, but I am not familiar with the term
> 'hermeneutical'. From context my guess is that you mean you like to
> challenge that 'canonical' status of our conclusions. But no one
> --NO ONE-- in my experience has EVER claimed canonical authority for a
> conclusion. They claim canonical authority for the citations they offer
> in support of their conclusions, and they often claim that a passage they
> cite is so unambiguous that it supports no other conclusion (and sometimes
> they are right, and sometimes that aren't) but the validity is always
> attached to what Tolkien says, not to what we say.
I am not certain (since my dictionary is not with me), but I would say
``hermeneutical'' would be better rendered as ``appropriateness'', but
I could be way off base on that. Thus, Jim is basically saying that
he likes to ask if discussions about ``try[ing to] fill in the holes''
are really necessary or productive.
> >non-fan-fictional nature since the creation of alt.fan.tolkien. I also
> >included a substantial section in my post discussing at some length the
> >signficance of forests in LOTR, elaborating upon the fact that Tolkien
> >repeatedly emphasizes their ancientness and contrasting this with the
> >relative lack of forests in the Silmarillion. (You did not cite this
> >part of my post in your response or elaborate upon it.) My post, in
> >other words, was not entirely negative and critical, as you seem to be
> >suggesting. I did attempt to introduce a more "literary" level of analysis
> >into the discussion of trees, forests, Ents, etc. in Tolkien's fictions;
> >you simply chose not to pursue it yourself and focussed solely on the more
> >"negative side" of my posting.
> >
> My impression of your posting was that the entire purpose of the
> discussion of the stylistic function of forests was to refute any
> "within-context" explanation of Ents (which was the thread where it arose).
> The message I heard (rightly or wrongly) was "No, the Ents have no basis
> in the overall picture of Middle-earth, and to prove it I will show you
> that they have a valid stylistic role in LoTR."
> I therefore felt that the real intent of the message was simply negative,
> to argue against the worth of these discussions, so it was that point I
> responded to.
I think you're taking offence when none was meant. I certainly did not
see the Jim's explanation to be directed at you or in any way negative.
I felt that it was an interesting observation on the position of Ents,
forests and trees in the Lord of the Rings.
>
> I am reminded of an essay by C.S. Lewis in which he hypothetically
> asks the following question: In Shakespeare's HAMLET, does Ophelia die
> because she fell into a river and drowned, or because Shakespear felt it
> was dramatically necessary for her to die?
> The answer is obviously yes to both questions, and in fact neither
> answer tells on the other one.
> By the same token, saying "Ents have a dramatic function in LoTR that
> highlights the symbolic presentation of forests, and could therefore not
> be filled by beings of some other nature" does not contradict the
> statement "Ents originated in the Music of Yavanna, because she wanted
> guardians for the trees."
I think you missed the point of Jim's argument. As I understood it,
Jim's thesis was that whereas within LOTR, forests and trees (and with
them, Ents) serve as a ``symbol'' of the ancient world (I'm not sure
``symbol'' is the correct word, but I can't think of a better one).
They do not play the same role in _the Silmarillion_, and consequently,
they are not important to that tale. Ents could be left out entirely,
and the tale would not be altered significantly. That is all he was
saying, not that since Ents have a dramitic function in LOTR they
must not have been created by Yavanna.
> The origin of a feature of Middle-earth in Tolkien's mind is not
> necessarily (or even probably) the same as its origin within the context
> of Midle-earth; as likely as not, Tolkien invented the within-context
> origin after the fact. But that does not invalidate that origin, because
> whatever Tolkien's reason for having Ents, or anything else, he DID
> include an explanation within his universe.
He included an explanation for most, not everything, in his world.
It's just a question of whether these explanations add anything to
the text of LOTR that Jim is questioning.
> And if we seek to do the same for elements he never got around to, that
> is a perfectly valid form of study. Only intellectual snobbishness would
> declare that stylistic analysis is more worthy than analysis of the content;
> both have value.
If Tolkien did it, it is part of Tolkien's work. If we do it, it
is fan-fiction. The people doing it are fans. What they create
is fiction. Hence, fan-fiction. You may not like the term (I don't
particularly care for it myself), but the term is accurate and does
describe the process you are engaging in.
--
Charles F. Fitzgerald | Men were deceivers ever,
Iowa State University | One foot in sea, the other on shore;
cffi...@iastate.edu | To one thing constant never.
James Alexander Chokey
>>
>> That's fair enough, but I wasn't directing my post against you or
>>anybody else in particular. I was talking about a general phenomenon that
>>pervades much discussion on both r.a.b.t and a.f.t. Like it or not, there is
>>a tendency here to discuss the various narrative "inconsistencies" in
>>Tolkien's Middle-earth writings _as if_ points 1-5 were true. People _do_
>>talk about "resolving," "reconciling," "discovering answers to" and "figuring>>out" contradictions and gaps, as if there were some reality, either extra-
>>textual or intra-textual, that was being discussed.
>
> I have to disagree with the view that using this sort of language implies
>what you say it does. These are linguistic conventions. How would you prefer
>us to phrase an attempt to... well, here we see that I cannot even think
>of a single alternative for the word "resolve"... resolve some inconsistency
>that we find?
How about "invent an explanation for which there is no textual
basis"? It's wordy, but it's accurate. Language _does_ matter, particularly
when one is dealing with a literary text. It's important to pay attention
the language and its conventions of use in the text itself, _and_ in the way
we talk about that text. And it's not just a question of verbal economy
or of the preference for short words and phrases over long ones; it's a
question of a whole mindset that involves talking about Tolkien's narratives
_as if_ they were real. It may be a linguistic convention, but it's a
convention that has real effects on the nature of discusion, on the sorts
of questions that get asked, and the sorts of answers that are given.
>>What they are really doing is writing fan fiction under the guise of
>>discussing Tolkien's works.
>Nor do I think that "fan fiction" is the appropriate word for what
>we come up with. If I say (to use a conclusion from a recent thread) that
>the Ents were created by Yavanna's music and then inhabited by spirits
>called from outside, I am citing a firm conclusion based on the text of the
>Silmarillion. If I go on to say, "the passage includes mention of a variety
>of such spirits, inhabiting both animals and plants, and these probably
>produced the various sentient beings we see in LoTR which do not fit the
>Children of Iluvatar (plus Dwarves) pattern," then I am venturing into
>speculative waters; but I am still basing this conclusion on what I find
>in Tolkien. I am not writing fan fiction.
Sure you are. Fan fiction involves the invention of stories by
fans who wish the works they enjoy to contain narrative events that are
not, in fact, recounted in them. They try to ensure that their fictions
contain as few narrative incompatabilities with the original text as possible
and they exploit unexplained allusions, references, or contradictions
in the original narrative for their own stories. What they end up writing
may, in fact, be perfectly compatible with the internal logic of the original
narrative. But, as long as you are inventing characters, events, and narrative
relations that aren't present in the original story/stories, you're still
engaged in the writing of fan fiction.
> Nor have I *ever* seen anyone in one of the discussions cite any such
>conclusion as though it were "authoritative." Conclusions from earlier
>discussions are quite often brought up for consideration ("There was a dis-
>cussion some time ago where someone suggested X, perhaps that's relevant
>here...") but they are not cited as authority, only as a source of good
>ideas.
Really? Your kill file must be larger than mine, as I saw a post
just today offering a "definitive" answer to the question of Earendil's fate.
And in just the past week on a.f.t., someone cited ICE's Middle-earth
role-playing game as an "authoritative" source of information on Tolkien's
fictional world. Comparable assertions have always been made with some
frequency since the groups' respective creations. Perhaps you are just so
accustomed to the convention that you do not always notice its presence.
>>the form of an RPG. There _is_ a good deal of slippage on r.a.b.t. between
>>constructing elaborate fan-fictions about Tolkien's work and talking about
>>these fan-fictions as if they were in some way "real". I think it's
>>important to distinguish between the two.
>
> I disagree. As I said above, I've never encountered that. I suppose
>you could get that mistaken impression if you become too focused on
>the necessary phrasing of such debates.
The phrasing in such debates is hardly "necessary." It is, as you
pointed earlier, a "linguistic convention." It is not, however, a _mere_
linguistic convention, as I tried to explain above. Rather, it is a _dis-
cursive_ convention that has very real effects on the sorts of things that
get discussed and on the ways in which they end up being discussed. (I
assume, by the way, that when you said "I disagree," you were referring
to the existence of this slippage between the creation of fan-fiction and
the actual discussion of Tolkien's texts. Do you agree, at least, that it
_is_ important to distinguish between the two?)
>It is impossible to even bring
>up this kind of issue without saying something to the effect of:
> "What do you think this means?"
>and then answering it with something to the effect of:
> "I think the answer is this--"
Of course it's possible. You give one possible alternative to this
yourself (cited below). You can't assume that just because this is the mode
of speculative discussion that you're most habituated to, that it is the only
possible one or even the best one. Furthermore, you are already slightly
distorting the conventions that govern these discussions. Rather than saying,
"What do you think this means?", initiators of such threads usually say
something more like: "What do you think this _is_?" or "How do you _resolve_
this?" Those who follow it up, usually respond simply with "The answer _is_
this."
> I suppose it would make you happier if we conducted our discussions
>along the lines of:
> "Here's an inconsistency. Let's pretend that Tolkien had a solution
>and then make something up about it."
> "Okay. Let's pretend that the reason for it is this--"
> But frankly, I think such a mode of discussion would rapidly become
>extremely tiresome.
Why? That _is_ what you're doing, after all. Does this sort of
speculative discussion become less enjoyable if you admit that is, in fact,
fan fiction?
> Let us remember that it is possible in the real world to deduce some
>things you do not know on the basis of some other things you do know. And
>it is possible to devise plausible and probable hypotheses even when strict
>deduction is impossible. By the same token, we can look at the facts
>presentedto us by Tolkien and deduce or hypothesize from them to arrive
>at conclusions Tolkien himself never pursued. Such can never be regarded as
>authoritative; and if our conclusions contradict some canonical information
>presented elsewhere in Tolkien's writings, then it is our conclusions that
>must retreat.
You're talking about Tolkien's writings as if they were a set of
empirical data resulting from some sort of scientific experiment rather than
carefully designed and deliberately constructed works of art. You may
respond that this is just a convention, but it's a convention that reveals
an extremely unliterary approach to literature. Talking about metaphor,
imagery, and poetic purpose would be a silly way to approach the data
resulting from a subatomic particle collision or a radio telescope
search. Talking about "deductions," "hypotheses," and "raw data" is no
less inappropriate a way to talk about the internal workings of a painting
or a novel.
Sure, one can take the events in Tolkien's stories and treat them
_as if_ they were a set of factual data and use them as the basis for
creating all sorts of various "hypotheses." In a similar vein, I could
take an image that shows the paths of particles emitted during the decay
of a Z-particle and talk about it in terms of beauty, symmetry, and
aesthetic organization. In doing so, however, I would be I would be
ignoring the purpose for which the image was constructed and would fail to
grasp its true significance. I would, to put it bluntly, be missing the
point. One misses the point in the very same way if s/he treats a work
of art, such as Tolkien's LOTR or Silmarillion, as if it were merely a
narrative of "raw data" from which one is to make "deductions" and about which
one is to produce "hypotheses." A work of art is _not_ a set of raw data.
> But as long as we continue to base our opinions soundly on Tolkien's
>writings, we are not just writing "fan fiction" and passing it off as
>truth. We are instead trying to understand more about the world of
>Middle-earth (fiction though it is) than is there in a superficial reading
>of the text.
No. As I said earlier, you're still engaged in the process of
inventing events and relations that, though based on Tolkien's stories, are
not actually recounted in by Tolkien. That's what fan fan fiction _is_--
a narrative embellishment that is written by a work's fan rather than by
its author.
> You kep using the term 'fan-fiction' the way a priest might use the
>term 'atheist.'
No, I'm using the term just as any scholar or literary critic would
use it to describe the sort of discussion that involves inventing events,
characters, or relations that are not, in fact, in the work that is supposedly
being discussed. I am ascribing no moral status to the term, although I am
ascribing a certain hermeneutical status to it. Why does the term rile you so
much?
>Let me raise another objection to that term: No one here is
>writing stories set in Middle-earth.
Sure they are-- they're just not presenting them as "stories."
Instead, they're presenting them as "hypotheses" and "deductions." In the
same way, ICE presents its Tolkien-inspired fan fiction in the form of
a game. Ultimately, they are all placing in Middle-earth events and
relations that do not actually exist in Tolkien's narrative. They
simply take different forms-- although the writers of some forms of
fan fiction are generally more willing to acknolwedge that that's what
they have written than others are.
>They are hypothesizing about facts
>within Middle-earth. 'Analysis' rather than 'fiction' would be the
>appropriate term.
Facts? What facts? As I said before, this is a literary text,
not a collection of experimental data. You are relying upon the linguistic
convention of talking about the events in Tolkien's narrative as if they
were real in order to make your case-- a highly dubious way of arguing,
IMHO. I also don't see how the term "analysis" is particularly appropriate
here. What is being "analysed" in these sorts of discussion? Folks involved
in such speculations may cite a number of Tolkien's passages, but they
certainly don't "analyze" them in a way that any literary critic would
recognize. Rather, they treat them as given facts and invent elaborate
stories and explanations to try and reconcile these "facts" with each other.
This has _far_ more to do with fictional creation than with literary analysis.
> Im other words, what I was saying was NOT to observe the number of
>inconsistencies/mysteries in Middle-earth and to say that we can then
>speculate freely about them (which would be my definition of "sailing into
>the darkness"). What I was saying is that there is enough CONSISTENT and
>EXPLAINED information in Middle-earth than we can attempt soundly-based
>conclusions about those elements that are not consistent or explained. In
>other words, there is enough other information in Middle-earth that we can
>draw conclusions about things Tolkien left unexplained or ambiguous.
In other words, you can make up explanations for things that
Tolkien, either deliberately or indeliberately, did not actually explain
in his writings. I'm not denying this at all. What I'm saying, however,
is that, in doing this, you are inventing your own stories about Tolkien's
world. Although these stories may be designed to cohere as rigorously
as possible to the stories that Tolkien himself tells, they are not, in fact
part of his narrative-- they're fan fiction.
> YES, our conclusions are not canonical. YES, they are not definitive.
>YES, they are not proved facts about a real world. YES, they must retreat
>if contrary information comes to light.
> But that does not mean that they are baseless inventions. Every discussion
>I have participated in has included and demanded citation of the actual
>writings of Tolkien in support of any conclusion offered.
Of course they have. That's all part of the game of writing
fan fiction-- one tries to make sure that it has its roots thoroughly
imbedded in the work that it is a spin-off from. Good writers of more
conventional forms of fan-fiction usually try to do the same thing-- to
have their stories intermesh as neatly as possible with the originals.
Plenty of Star Trek-oriented fan fictions are based on details mentioned
in one or more of the various episodes, and they are written so as not to
conflict with anything that occurs in any other episodes. That does not,
however, change the status of their stories from "fan-fiction" to "analysis."
> Tolkien himself took great pains to make Middle-earth as logical and
>consistent a world as he could. When dramatic/literary requirements
>introduced a new character/plot development/historical allusion, he would
>almost invariably extend that element forward and backward into the
>larger history, considering its implications for other elements and
>considering the effect of other elements on it. It was in this way that
>Galadriel found her way into the Silmarillion, and the wizards found their
>attachment to the Maiar. This is not an activty divorced from (and less
>worthy than) the immediate considerations of story and style; it is an
>inherent and vital part of that style. It is what makes Tolkien's writing
>what it is. It is why Middle-earth, like no other fictional creation EVER,
>has an extraordinary sense of "reality" and temporal depth.
All very true, although I think some skepticism is warranted over
the claim that Tolkien's various works are "like no other fictional creation
EVER" in this regard. I also think it's important to point out that you
are blurring Tolkien's works together into one when you say that "Middle-
earth" is _a_ fictional creation. In my original post, I emphasized
the need to keep in mind that LOTR, the Hobbit, and the Silmarillion are
three very different, though interconnected, fictions. Middle-earth, that
is to say, is the composite product of at least three different fictional
creations, each of which presents a very different representation of this
fictional world. It's important to keep the differences between these
works in mind; if we don't, it becomes easy to lose track of the fact that
they are different stories written for the purpose of providing very different
aesthetic effects.
> If we are inspired by that sense to try and fill in the holes (because
>of course Tolkien never got around to them all: it would be impossible to
>do so, as each new modification raises other questions elsewhere) then this
>is not an unworthy activity, nor is it mere 'fan fiction.'
Then what is it?
I never said, by the way, that the production of fan-fiction was
"an unworthy activity." On the contrary, I said it could be quite fun and
entertaining. I did say, however,that there is a good deal of unrecognized
slippage between fan-fiction and discussion that goes on here and that
it is important from time to time to have this slippage brought out into
the open and to remind ourselves of difference between talking about Tolkien's
narrative and inventing our own.
>>> If you do not enjoy speculations of this type, then please feel free not
>>>to read or contribute to them.
>>
>> I usually don't. However, I occasionally like to raise a challenge
>>to the hermeneutical validity of this sort of discussion. I do not think
>>that this in any way inappropriate, and I'm sorry if you feel that it is.
> I am sorry to seem dim, but I am not familiar with the term
>'hermeneutical'.
Here's a good old _American Heritage Dictionary_ definition:
"Interpretative; explanatory." The word is the adjectivial form of
"hermeneutics," which on the most general level means "the philosophy and
methodology of interpretation." Usually, it refers to the philosophical bases
for and the methodology of interpretating written texts.
> I am reminded of an essay by C.S. Lewis in which he hypothetically
>asks the following question: In Shakespeare's HAMLET, does Ophelia die
>because she fell into a river and drowned, or because Shakespear felt it
>was dramatically necessary for her to die?
> The answer is obviously yes to both questions, and in fact neither
>answer tells on the other one.
Of course, one question is a lot more interesting than the other.
Simply arguing about whether Ophelia dies because she drowns in a river
is not really going to produce a particular interesting discussion. Dis-
cussing _why_ it was dramatically necessary for Ophelia to die and _why_
Shakespeare chose to have her die in the way that she did seems far
more likely to produce a meaningful discussion of Shakespeare's play.
To take a less clear-cut example, one can argue forever whether Aschenbach,
the main character in Mann's "Death in Venice" dies as a result of eating
the overripe strawberries without reaching any definitive conclusions.
If one spends all one's time bickering about this minor point (which Mann
deliberately left up in the air), one never gets around to discussing
most of what is really significant in the novella.
> By the same token, saying "Ents have a dramatic function in LoTR that
>highlights the symbolic presentation of forests, and could therefore not
>be filled by beings of some other nature" does not contradict the
>statement "Ents originated in the Music of Yavanna, because she wanted
>guardians for the trees."
Of course not. However, to limit one's discussion of the Ents to
"nit-picky" (in the words of the poster who started this thread) questions
of "Who came first-- the Maiar or the Ents," is to miss what the real
signficance of the Ents is in LOTR. In my initial post, I tried to turn the
discussion towards the question of what, IMHO, _is_ really important about
the Ents and their ancientness.
> And if we seek to do the same for elements he never got around to, that
>is a perfectly valid form of study. Only intellectual snobbishness would
>declare that stylistic analysis is more worthy than analysis of the content;
>both have value.
As I said earlier in this post and in my previous post, fan-fiction
certainly is a perfectly valid form of _entertainment_. It would take a
great leap of the imagination, however, to consider it a form of "study"
or "analysis" of Tolkien's text. It's not a question of "snobbishness,"
as you seem to believe, but of good hermeneutical sense. (Unless, of
course, one equates "snobbishness" with being concerned about having
meaningful and sensible discussions of Tolkien's works.) As I said before,
I think it's important for us to keep in mind that much of what passes
as discussion here on r.a.b.t. is not "analysis" but "fan fiction." I
am sorry that hearing this seems to provoke such a strong reaction in
you.
(By the way, the "content" of a work of literature includes its style,
its imagery, _and_ its organization-- not just the chronology of its
narrative. "Stylistic analysis" does not stand in opposition to or apart
from "content analysis" as you seem to be suggesting. Rather, it is a
fundamental part of it. To view the "content" of a story solely as the
narrative events contained within it is to ignore much of what actually
gives that story meaning and direction and makes it a work of art as opposed
to a mere collection of "raw data.")
-- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
Mike McConnell
>what you say it does. These are linguistic conventions. How would you prefer
>us to phrase an attempt to... well, here we see that I cannot even think
>of a single alternative for the word "resolve"... resolve some inconsistency
>that we find?
The word resolve, or the phrase come to a resolution, mean to determine, to
decide, to come to a final answer. Therefore, when you say that you are going to
reslove inconsistencies in JRRT's work, you are saying that you are going to
determine what in appropriate.
Some different wording might be:
"Look at some of the possible answers.."
"Investigate some possible ways to reconcile the inconsistencies.."
etc.
They are longer expressions, but their meaning seems closer to what you 'say'
that you are doing. Sure, we are talking "linguistic conventions", but then
language is meaningless without conventions.
It could be that you are trying to wrap everything your doing into one or two
word phrases, so you prefer resolve or reconcile to longer phrases such as those
I presented. Or it could be, deny it though you will, that you are actually
trying to resolve inconsistencies, and that is why you cannot think of a single
alternative.
Mike McConnell
Keith Goodnight
>
>Jim has expressed apprehension before about treating the Lord of the Rings
>as being connected to _the Silmarillion_ (at least intrintrinsically con-
>nected); he has refrained from admitting that Gandalf _in the Lord of the
>Rings and __the Hobbit__ _ was a Maiar. Basically, he likes to take each
>work separately and discuss what is there. No going ``backward'' into
>the ``history'' of Middle-Earth. No ``concluding'' what ``happened''
>outside the text. To him, all such attempts are, to use his term, fan-
>fiction.
If that is what Jim is saying, then my disagreement with him sharpens.
Certainly on a purely literary level the two works are very distinct both
in style and content. But they *are* clearly linked, in my opinion, in
being set within a single consistent universe.
There's no reason not to discuss each work on its own merits. But neither
is there any justification for criticizing those of us who would like to
study, analyze, and understand the overall world in which both works are
set. Certainly that's a different study than the literary analysis of the
works themselves, and perhaps it is one which is uninteresing to people
who prefer the literary analysis. But that lack of interest is no justification
for denigrating that field of study, or for criticizing those who would
pursue it.
On the general issue of the term 'fan fiction'. You say that Jim means
the term to refer to any discussion about the broader "facts" of Middle-earth.
But there;s more to it than that: he clearly uses the term as a pejorative
one. And if your definition is the one he means, then how is his own style
of analysis different?
As I recall from Literature classes, it is generally considered a fallacy
to report "The author intends us to see..."; we only report what is present
in the text, not what the author intended to put there. The reason is that
we are not mind-readers, and even if we have the author's own commentary on
his intentions it remains true that an author may have put more into his
work than he realizes; and may have failed to put in things he intended. Having
a skill is not the same as being able to analyze that skill.
So we can only comment on what we find in the text. But in that case, all
literary analysis of style, themes, and imagery are "fan fiction" in the
sense that you suggest: we are making things up about the work, things that
*we* find there, but which the author may not have known about or intended.
Now, I don't actually believe that Jim meant the word in that sense. I
think he meant: the baseless invention of information that isn't really there.
And that is *not* what we are doing. Every discussion I have been involved
with has demanded rigorous evidence from Tolkien's writings, and frequently
defense of those citations against contrary evidence from other writings,
which leads to (legitimate) inquiries as to what precendence should be
given to certain sources over other.
For example, the conclusion "Gandalf was a Maia" is most directly
obtained from Tolkien's writings about the Istari from Unfinished Tales,
where the link of the Istari to the Maiar is explicitly stated. In this
case, we're not adding anything to Tolkien's world that he did not
explicitly include himself.
Now, as essays not written originally for publication, Jim may not be
interested in analyzing these writings, or others in Unfinished Tales, but
I expect he'd get an argument about that even from those who agree with him
in restricting all analysis to the literary level. Certainly these writings
are comparable in tone and content to the appendices in LoTR (and by the way,
what about those appendices, concerned almost entirely with the background
information linking LoTR to the larger history? Does Jim reject them, too?
Was Tolkien himself just writing 'fan fiction' about his world?).
But I don't see that you can apply the term 'fan fiction' to a conclusion
explicitly stated by Tolkien himself.
Let's take a purely hypothetical example. Let's say that Tolkien had
written something about Elendil having brought from Numenor a set of
statues of the Numenorean kings (no such thing actually exists in Tolkien's
writing, so far as I am aware: I am inventing a fake reference to discuss
the issue without raising questions of the example's accuracy).
Now suppose that Tolkien wrote about these statues: "There were seven,
and they had the images of the kings... {list follows}"
Someone in r.a.b.t posts the question: "How many statues were there?"
The answer comes back, "Seven", plus the reference.
So far, I think, it must be agreed that no one has invented 'fan fiction'
about the statues, though the discussion hasn't been very interesting.
But what if the reference was: "Elendil brought the statues from Numenor,
and placed three in Gondor and four in Arnor."
Now someone might answer the question "seven", and someone else might
disagree, saying "No, all we know is that it was *at least* seven. There
could be more, not mentioned."
We now have an unresolved question. But I find it hard to say that either
of the two suggested answers is "fan fiction." The second is certainly more
speculative than the first, but on the other hand the second is also more
closely accurate to the text.
Let's go on. Now the reference says: "No one knows how many statues
Elendil brought, but in after years three were found in Gondor and four
were found in Arnor."
Now we have something that could start a long discussion. Does this
passage imply that there were seven, based on those that were found, or
that there were more and only seven preserved? People could argue persuasively
on both sides.
Jim, apparently, would have argued all the ways back to the first and
simplest case, that "There were no statues; it's just a literary element.
Saying there were seven statues is just fan fiction."
Not to be blunt, but in my opinion that's a crock. If Jim were to say,
"I am entirely uninterested in the number of statues, I only wish to discuss
their role as a literary device" then I would have no argument.
But what (I think) he's been saying would, in this hypothetical example,
come out to: "You are wrong to try and decide how many statues there were.
You are wasting your time and just writing fan fiction."
I DISAGREE. Analysis of the wider history of Middle-earth is a valid
study whether Jim is interested in it or not. In pursuit of this study we
must draw on writings other than LoTR and the Silmarillion-- but they are
still writings of Tolkien and there are people out there, even literary
critics, who would consider these writings valid material for study.
Why do you imagine Tolkien ever wrote the appendices to LoTR, or the
essay "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age" in the Silmarillion, or
any of the writings on Celeborn and Galadriel, of Cirion and Eorl, of the
movements of the Nazgul and Rohan's battles with Saruman, all in UT, if
LoTR was in Tolkien's mind unconnected with the Silmarillion?
The fact, supported by *overwhelming* evidence, is that in Tolkien's
mind both LoTR and the Silmarillion were set in the same world, and
consistency and continuity throughout that world were important to him. When
we ask "What is the answer to this inconsistency?" we are trying to get at
information about that world. We are trying to understand the construct that
Tolkien had in his mind, whether he wrote it down or not. Even when we accept
that Tolkien had no answer in mind for some issues, it is still true that
he had a *world* in mind, and other facts of that world may assist us in
filling the gap, and this analysis enhances our overall understanding.
The analysis of Tolkien's "sub-creation" is as valid an approach to
understanding his works as is the analysis of his text.
>
>Jim is not raising the question of the validity or worthiness of ``try[ing to]
>fill in the holes''; he is only saying that he finds such ``fills'' to be
>uninteresting normally, and prefers to discuss other aspects of Tolkien's
>work.
If only that were so. But he is speaking not only of his own preferences;
he is arguing that we all should modify our behavior to suit them. The very
paragraph you quote from him following this statement contradicts your
conclusion. He wrote that he usually doesn't read these discussions, but
likes to question their "hermeneutical validity" anyway. Whatever that may
mean, what he posted was an argument that we just shouldn't do it.
I take no issue with any statement along the lines of "I am not interested
in this and will ignore it." I do take issue with "You are wrong for doing
it."
--Keith F. Goodnight
Keith Goodnight
because I just spent an hour writing a response to a third party's comment
on Jim's and my previous postings.
I'll just be brief:
--Jim, if you find attempts to study and understand Tolkien's "sub-creation"
less interesting than attempts to study and understand the text he used to
tell about that "sub-creation", that is your right. I never try to enforce
a set of preferences on anyone.
--I only ask that you extend those of us who do enjoy the study of the
"sub-creation", with the texts used only as source material for information
about that "sub-creation" the same courtesy.
We are *not* missing out on the value/beauty/anything else of the text
in using it as source material in this way. Believe it or not, we may be
as appreciative of it as you are. We are just not discussing that aspect of
it at the moment.
And I must reiterate that I have never encountered anyone offering their
conclusions as canonical, nor do I have a huge "kill file." I have no kill
file at all, in fact, I read every posting to this newsgroup.
The example you cite, of someone offering a "definitive" answer to a
question about Earendil, is not a case of this. You should take another
look at that message: the claim was that a particular passage in the
Silmarillion was an unambiguous and "definitive" statement about a fact
*stated by Tolkien*. It was not a claim in support of a conclusion drawn
from the works by someone else.
--Keith F. Goodnight
Keith Goodnight
>> I have to disagree with the view that using this sort of language implies
>>what you say it does. These are linguistic conventions. How would you prefer
>>us to phrase an attempt to... well, here we see that I cannot even think
>>of a single alternative for the word "resolve"... resolve some inconsistency
>>that we find?
>
>The word resolve, or the phrase come to a resolution, mean to determine, to
>decide, to come to a final answer. Therefore, when you say that you are going to
>reslove inconsistencies in JRRT's work, you are saying that you are going to
>determine what in appropriate.
Read my original quote (above) again. I said "***attempt*** to resolve."
I did not say that such an attempt must always (or would ever) be
completely successful.
--Keith F. Goodnight
James Alexander Chokey
> There's no reason not to discuss each work on its own merits. But neither
>is there any justification for criticizing those of us who would like to
>study, analyze, and understand the overall world in which both works are
>set. Certainly that's a different study than the literary analysis of the
>works themselves, and perhaps it is one which is uninteresing to people
>who prefer the literary analysis. But that lack of interest is no justification
>for denigrating that field of study, or for criticizing those who would
>pursue it.
I certainly haven't been criticizing anybody personally, and I
rather resent the implication that I have. As I tried to point out in my
first reply to you, I wasn't attacking you personally in any way, shape,
or form. Rather I was raising a challenge to the interpretive validity
of a certain habit of discussion that _is_ prevalent on this group and on
alt.fan.tolkien. It's not simply a question of a "lack of interest";
it's a question of the hermeneutical sensibility of this sort of discussion.
And, as I also said in that post, I think that this is a perfectly valid
thing to do. I'm sorry that, because of _your_ lack of interest in seeing
the status such discussions called into question, you view this challenge
as a "denigrating" attack on posters like yourself, who are particularly fond
of them. That's not how it was intended and I'm quite surprised by your
belief that it is.
> On the general issue of the term 'fan fiction'. You say that Jim means
>the term to refer to any discussion about the broader "facts" of Middle-earth.
>But there;s more to it than that: he clearly uses the term as a pejorative
>one.
Oh? That's news to me.
>[Much deleted]
> The analysis of Tolkien's "sub-creation" is as valid an approach to
>understanding his works as is the analysis of his text.
Sure, but as soon as the discussion of this sub-creation leaves
the realm of events, characters, and relations that are actually
included in the text, it ceases to be analysis and instead becomes
fan-fiction.
>
> If only that were so. But he is speaking not only of his own preferences;
>he is arguing that we all should modify our behavior to suit them. The very
>paragraph you quote from him following this statement contradicts your
>conclusion. He wrote that he usually doesn't read these discussions, but
>likes to question their "hermeneutical validity" anyway. Whatever that may
>mean, what he posted was an argument that we just shouldn't do it.
Rubbish. What I posted was challenge to the status of such
speculations as "analysis" or as "discussion of Tolkien," claiming instead
that it such speculations are more accurately considered fan fiction. No
where did I say _anything_ to the effect of "You should stop this!" or
"You should modify your behavior!" Nor could I imagine ever posting anything
of the sort. I've always been an avid defender of the discussion of _all_
Tolkien-related topics here and in alt.fan.tolkien, as anyone who remembers
my responses to posters who complained that the pornographic fan-fiction
story "The Mushroom Thief" was inappropriate for alt.fan.tolkien and those
who complained about the presence of threads discussing the construction
of race and gender in Tolkien's fiction knows. You are misinterpreting
my attempt to challenge the hermeneutical validity of discussions as an
appeal for them to cease-- which is not at all what I was saying or am
trying to accomplish. If you are not interested in reading or discussing
posts that address broad questions about the philosophy and methodology
of discussing Tolkien, may I suggest that you take your own advice and
simply "feel free not to read or contribute to them"?
-- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
James Alexander Chokey
>
> --Jim, if you find attempts to study and understand Tolkien's "sub-creation"
>less interesting than attempts to study and understand the text he used to
>tell about that "sub-creation", that is your right. I never try to enforce
>a set of preferences on anyone.
>
> --I only ask that you extend those of us who do enjoy the study of the
>"sub-creation", with the texts used only as source material for information
>about that "sub-creation" the same courtesy.
I am puzzled by your belief that I am trying to "enforce" a certain
type of discussion on you. As I pointed out in a previous post, I have
_never_ said that these fan-fictional discussions are inappropiate on
rec.arts.books.tolkien. Clearly, they are perfectly appropriate. By the same
token, however, posts questioning what constitutes meaningful discussion of
Tolkien and what constitutes fan-fiction are equally as appropriate. If you
don't enjoy such posts, you are, as I also pointed out before, perfectly free
to skip over them. If, by "extending courtesy" to you and others who
enjoy threads of a speculative, rather than analytical, nature, you
mean never posting anything that calls into question the hermeneutical
status of such threads, then you are indeed trying to "enforce a set
of preferences on others."
-- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
Keith Goodnight
[Some material disputing my interpretation of his intentions in raising
this issue.]
Okay, if I have misinterpreted your intentions, I apologize. I was not
attempting to to charicature or misrepresent your views: I was honestly
mistaken about the tone I thought I heard in them.
I hope that my apology is satisfactory and that we can continue to debate
this interesting issue without either of us feeling personally attacked.
>
>> The analysis of Tolkien's "sub-creation" is as valid an approach to
>>understanding his works as is the analysis of his text.
>
> Sure, but as soon as the discussion of this sub-creation leaves
>the realm of events, characters, and relations that are actually
>included in the text, it ceases to be analysis and instead becomes
>fan-fiction.
Do you recognize any distinction between the invention of new information
about Middle-earth, and an attempt to understand/examine/discover information
that is already present?
In my opinion, there is a clear distinction between the two and it is the
second of the two that is the primary focus of discussions in this newsgroup.
But only the first of the two deserves the term 'fan fiction.' Attempts at the
second goal are not equivalent, even when the evidence is insufficient to
unambiguously prove a single interpretation is the 'true' one.
To refer back to the hypothetical example I presented in a previous posting,
in which I presented varying degrees of ambiguity in an invented account of
statues brough back from Numenor by Elendil:
If I presented a description or account of such statues as an actual aspect
of Middle-earth, that would be 'fan fiction': the invention of data with
no basis in Tolkien's writings, however carefully I kept them consisten with
information which *is* in Tolkien's writings.
However, if such a passage as I made up were actually there, and was in
some way ambiguous as to their number, asking what their number was and offering
various arguments or citations in support of an answer, would *not* be
'fan fiction.' In the words of the message cited above, this would not be
speculation outside "the realm of events, characters, and relations that are
actually included in the text." It would be an attempt to interpret information
which *is* in the text.
In my opinion, the fact that no single answer can be given canonical authority
does not make this activity the same as the invention de novo of new material.
It is true that people sometimes cite non-canonical sources, such as
role-playing games or various reference works compiled by other authors, in
support of their views. But I have never seen anyone do so without a prompt
and disapproving response follow. All discussions, it seems to me, only
proceed on citations from Tolkien himself.
It must be remembered (in my opinion) that the creation of Middle-earth and
its history was an activity that Tolkien pursued for its own sake, above and
beyond the immediate requirements of a particular published work. It is only
for that reason that he kept working on the Silmarillion after being convinced
it would never be publishable (a view which seems to have come and gone in
his mind). It is only for that reason that he felt the need to write up
background and histories for characters and places first introduced in LoTR,
histories never related in LoTR itself and therefore outside the narrative
requirements of that work.
The point I'm trying to make here is that the "sub-creation" was a work in
its own right, separate from and independent of the various published works--
at least to the same extent that the published works are independent of each
other. And like any separate work, it may be usefully studied-- and with
'hermeneutical validity'-- as itself, and not merely as the servant of
something else (e.g. LoTR).
But unlike the published writings, we cannot see the 'sub-creation' laid out
whole and concrete in front of us. Much of it no doubt existed only in the
author's mind, and the various writings, published an unpublished, are only
windows on that construct, variously general or specific, definitive or
speculative. If we wish to study this work-- a highly different kind of work
than a literary composition whether narrative or documentary-- then we are
forced to pull together evidence from a miscellany of sources, and we must
attempt to deduce the whole from these fragmented parts.
Our attempts will not always be clear-cut, will not always be definitive;
indeed they will rarely be so, for the obvious answers are already there
before us and need no discussion. But clear or ambiguous, our attempt
*does* deserve the name of 'study' and-- at the risk of redundancy I must
reiterate-- is an entirely different thing from the baseless invention of
our own creation, however skillfully grafted onto Middle-earth.
Turning to a (partially) related thought that has come up a couple of
times since this discussion began: Do discussions on r.a.b.t sometimes
continue beyond any reasonable interest? Do they sometimes focus on
nit-picky trivia rather than on broad issues of more pressing interest?
Sure they do. But so might any discussion, with any mode of examination.
>trying to accomplish. If you are not interested in reading or discussing
>posts that address broad questions about the philosophy and methodology
>of discussing Tolkien, may I suggest that you take your own advice and
>simply "feel free not to read or contribute to them"?
>
> -- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
>
>
But I am interested in such discussions. I am, in fact, fascinated by them.
You don't think I would compose such lengthy postings to a conversation in
which I had no interest, do you?
--Keith F. Goodnight
Keith Goodnight
>enjoy threads of a speculative, rather than analytical, nature, you
I do not agree that 'speculative' and 'analytical' are mutually
exclusive terms, and as I posted moments ago I believe that attempts to
understand Middle-earth are as deserving of the term 'analytical' as are
discussions about its mode of presentation, and discussions about how
it was crafted by the author. All three of these things are differenty but
valid subjects for study, and all three have value in understanding Tolkien
and his work.
>mean never posting anything that calls into question the hermeneutical
>status of such threads, then you are indeed trying to "enforce a set
>of preferences on others."
>
> -- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
Misunderstandings all around, it seems, on the issue of whether
disagreement is equivalent to a claim that an opinion should never have
been posted. I never said that anymore than you did (I apologized for my
own side of the misunderstanding i my last posting: just in case the vagaries
of net transmission cause you to see this message before that one).
But I think there is a difference between us in terms of who is attempting
to "enforce a set of preferences." You argue that an entire mode of discussion
which you find uninteresting is invalid. I only argue that it *is* valid; I
make no claim that your preferred mode of discussion is not.
I only 'shoot down' examples of that mode of discussion when they are used
as weapons to try and halt discussion ongoing in the 'within-context' mode. For
example, if in a thread on the question of (say) how long Galadrial had lived
in Lothlorien at the time the Fellowship arrived, someone posted a message
starting from her remark that she 'passed over the mountains' 'ere the fall of
Nargothrond or Gondolin' and used that to calculate an approximate duration,
and then someone else posted 'This question is silly because LoTR and the
Silmarillion are separate works and the fall of Nargothrond and Gondlin are
features of the Silmarillion and only vague references in LoTR for historical
effect.'
I would respond to such a message (probably rather harshly) in defense of
the right of those discussing the issue to usethe dating to be found in
Tolkien's works to calculate a length of time for Galadriel's residence.
The contrary type of attack seems hardly possible, except by a deluded or
at least very naive person:
"Galadriel's reference to Nargothrond and Gondolin is another example
of Tolkien's use of historical references to give a very effective sense
of the temporal depth of Middle-earth in the Third Age."
"No, it's not! Tolkien couldn't have made that up for effect because she
really had lived there that long."
As unlikely as it seems to me that such an attack would be made, I would
be just as firm in disagreeing with it as the other; mixing modes in this
way leads not to insight but only to confusion.
--Keith F. Goodnight
Mike McConnell
> If that is what Jim is saying, then my disagreement with him sharpens.
>Certainly on a purely literary level the two works are very distinct both
>in style and content. But they *are* clearly linked, in my opinion, in
>being set within a single consistent universe.
Here is where, for some of us anyways, the question arises. I have not, nor do I
think that Jim Chokey or Charles Fitzgerald has tried to say that there is no
connection between the different works. But we have said that these works are
not, as written, consistent with one another. You yourself say:
>we ask "What is the answer to this inconsistency?"
So you at least tacitly acknodlwedge that inconsistencies exist; that is, that
the works of JRRT are not consistent. One of the important things that Charles
Fitzgerald pointed out is that these inconsistencies are *between* books, not (at
least generally) *within* a single book. So "problems" arise when you try to
connect LotR with the Sil., and you interpret sections of LotR under this light
so as to resolve the problems you see (such as what is the Willow-man). I see
this as slighting the passages in LotR, since you often ignore the spirit and
style of the writing of that book in attempt to satisfy a preconceived answer.
The separate works are *not* mutually consistent. As Jim Chokey wrote some months
ago, JRRT worked with the idea that they were from a consistent world, Middle
Earth, with a consistent history, cosmology, etc. Many of us voluntarily suspend
our disbelief and accept this concept. From this, we take another step and wonder
about the inconsitencies and how they might be answered.
Jim Chokey calls this step 'fan-fiction'. Since he says he finds it un-interest-
ing, you infer that he uses the term perjoratively. If so, we can put other
terms on it that don't have thi negative connotation for you. Call it "creative
speculation" if you will. Or look at it this way. Yes, while he was alive,
Tolkien tried to resolve as many inconsitencies as possible. But he was not
writing about the real world. He was writing fiction. Everything he wrote about
Middle Earth is fiction. You are now attempting to do the same thing--that is,
you are creating fiction around JRRT's word. You are, I can safely say, a fan of
JRRT. Therefore your fiction is fan-fiction.
I have no problem, in general, with this. I, too, like to spend time doing
fan-fiction (or creative speculation, or what have you). But, like Jim Chokey,
I think it a good idea to occasionally step back and ask ourselves just what it is
that we're doing. What I see is that, though you deny it, you tend to step past
speculation to having answers. Telling, for me, is the language that you use.
In an earlier post, you said that you try to "resolve" issues, and that you can't
think of a different way to express what you do. In this post you write
> When
>we ask "What is the answer to this inconsistency?"
^^^^^^^^^^
as if there is an answer and you can find it. Sure, if JRRT were still alive, he
would make one up, and show how it fit into his creation. If you plan to do the
same thing, make up an answer and show that it can fit into his creation, then you
are doing fan-fiction. If you then claim that it resolves the inconsitency or
that it is "the answer", you are entertaining hubris.
Mike McConnell
Mike McConnell
I see any *attempt* to *resolve* any inconsistency doomed to failure. You clearly
don't feel that it is. I'll stand by my argument.
Mike McConnell
Keith Goodnight
>
>So you at least tacitly acknodlwedge that inconsistencies exist; that is, that
>the works of JRRT are not consistent. One of the important things that Charles
>Fitzgerald pointed out is that these inconsistencies are *between* books, not (at
>least generally) *within* a single book. So "problems" arise when you try to
>connect LotR with the Sil., and you interpret sections of LotR under this light
>so as to resolve the problems you see (such as what is the Willow-man). I see
>this as slighting the passages in LotR, since you often ignore the spirit and
>style of the writing of that book in attempt to satisfy a preconceived answer.
Of course this is true; since Tolkien's 'sub-creation' continued to evolve
throughout his lifetime, works written at widely different periods (or
consisting of material written at different periods, such as the published
Silmarillion) will have inconsistencies between them, arising inevitably from
the fact that the 'sub-creation' itself had changed from the time of one
work to that of another. Christopher Tolkien pointed this out in his preface
to the published Silmarillion.
I do not believe that this makes it invalid to attempt to determine what
the nature and content of that sub-creation was. In terms of small details,
we must add the qualification 'at any given time' to such a goal. But in the
broader issues, that 'sub-creation' remained very stable and I believe that
by pulling together all available sources, both published and unpublished (or
rather, unpublished in Tolkien's lifetime), we can obtain a clear picture of
it. The fact that some our conclusions must sometimes be tentative, or that
the available evidence supports more than one possibility, does not reduce
such an effort to the same level as the introduction of entirely new material
of our own invention. After all, discussions of literary themes or elements
belonging only to a single work must also be justified and may also be
challenged.
One thing that impresses me about many of these discussions is how
frequently a seeming contradiction evaporates upon closer examination, and
how often an intially difficult or obscure point of 'fact' may be answered
from Tolkien's own writings, if we are willing to look. And when there is
no evidence to sustain any conclusion-- an event more rare than those
arguing against me on this issue seem willing to admit-- then I at least
do not hesitate to say: "I do not know," and sometimes even more strongly,
"We cannot know." For an example, I would refer you to a recent posting on
among other things-- the nature of dwarvish 'souls' or 'spirits.' I cited
differing view expressed by or attributed to characters within Middle-earth,
and finished with the express conclusion: We just don't know.
So if, in attempting to 'resolve' an inconsistency, I discover that I
can find no resolution, I say so. If I find a possible resolution that
seems unsatisfactory because it requires adding new assumptions to Tolkien's
work or simply because it seems 'clumsy' or 'forced', then I will probably
present it-- but I will note my dissatisfaction and generally will accompany
the posting with a call for better ideas.
Now, all of this frequently requires making an interpretation about what
a given passage of text *means* when it says something: but this does not
invalidate the activity either. Because that requirement is universal to
every mode of study of any literary work, from the most superficial reading
to the most in-depth literary analysis. And whatever such interpretations
are applied to, they may be questioned by those who make differing
interpretations. If the possibility of such challenges reduces an analysis
to the same status as a baseless, de novo invention, then all analysis is
futile. I don't believe that it is.
--Keith F. Goodnight
Keith Goodnight
>
>I see any *attempt* to *resolve* any inconsistency doomed to failure. You clearly
>don't feel that it is. I'll stand by my argument.
>
Really? *Any* attempt? Have you never seen any thread in which a claimed
inconsistency turned out not to be? I've seen plenty. Have you never seen
a hard question asked and then answered by a citation from Tolkien? I've
seen plenty of those, too.
I stand by my argument as well.
--Keith F. Goodnight
Greg Skinner
>> And if we seek to do the same for elements he never got around to, that
>> is a perfectly valid form of study. Only intellectual snobbishness would
>> declare that stylistic analysis is more worthy than analysis of the content;
>> both have value.
>If Tolkien did it, it is part of Tolkien's work. If we do it, it
>is fan-fiction. The people doing it are fans. What they create
>is fiction. Hence, fan-fiction. You may not like the term (I don't
>particularly care for it myself), but the term is accurate and does
>describe the process you are engaging in.
I'm not so sure I agree with this. Why isn't attempting to resolve
certain inconsistencies in JRRT's works a form of scholarly
analysis? Isn't this what Christopher Tolkien did? Should we only
consider fact what JRRT wrote himself, and everything else compiled or
collected by Christopher to be fiction?
Personally, I don't like the term 'fan-fiction' and I would call what
some of us do when we attempt to resolve inconsistencies
'speculation'. (I vaguely recall that Christopher speculates on the
meanings of some of his father's writings in the Lost Tales.)
--gregbo
James Alexander Chokey
>>
>>> The analysis of Tolkien's "sub-creation" is as valid an approach to
>>>understanding his works as is the analysis of his text.
>>
>> Sure, but as soon as the discussion of this sub-creation leaves
>>the realm of events, characters, and relations that are actually
>>included in the text, it ceases to be analysis and instead becomes
>>fan-fiction.
>
> Do you recognize any distinction between the invention of new information
>about Middle-earth, and an attempt to understand/examine/discover information
>that is already present?
The phrasing and word choice of your question reveals a profound
misconception of the nature of literary works. As I pointed out at some
length in my previous post, a work of art is not a body of "raw data" about
which one is to make "deductions" or produce "hypotheses." It is not a
bundle of "information." To treat it as such is to miss the point-- just as
one misses the point if one treats a graph or chart displaying data from a
scientific experiment in terms of "beauty" and "composition." One can, of
course, do so-- but in doing so one misses what is really significant about
it. If one talks about Tolkien's writings as if they were simply a medium
through which pseudo-factual "information" is conveyed, their true signficance
is also missed. (Yeah, this is basically a summary of what I said in my post
yesterday, but it seems like it might be worth repeating.)
If your question were rephrased so as to ask whether I recognized any
distinction between the invention of new stories/information based on Tolkien's
works and the discussion of Tolkien's actual texts, I would say that such
a distinction has been what I've been driving at from the very beginning.
> In my opinion, there is a clear distinction between the two and it is the
>second of the two that is the primary focus of discussions in this newsgroup.
>But only the first of the two deserves the term 'fan fiction.'
On the contrary, the first-- the invention of stories/information
that aren't actually present in Tolkien's own narratives-- is the primary
focus of discussions in this newsgroup. It's just that many of these
"creative speculations" (to borrow Mike McConnell's phrase), these "fan-
fictions" (to use my own), masquerade themselves as analyses of Tolkien's
writings. It's one thing to talk about what Tolkien actually work; it's
another to add one's own embellishments to it. This distinction, however, is
not usually conveyed in the style of the postings themselves, as many of these
fan-fictional discussions assume the form of a discussion of Tolkien's text.
Earlier, you said that this was a mere "linguistic convention" that was used
by people who knew quite well that they were not _really_ talking about what
was in Tolkien's texts. This "convention," you claimed, is mere semantics
and does not really matter. Now, you seem to be saying that this is _not_ a
"convention" at all, and that the speculations and narrative inventions that
go on in such threads really do constitute an analysis of Tolkien's text.
Which is it? (Either way, I'm in disagreement-- I'd just like to know
exactly what it is that you're claiming.)
> In my opinion, the fact that no single answer can be given canonical authority
>does not make this activity the same as the invention de novo of new material.
>
> It is true that people sometimes cite non-canonical sources, such as
>role-playing games or various reference works compiled by other authors, in
>support of their views. But I have never seen anyone do so without a prompt
>and disapproving response follow.
Trying to talk about "canonical authority" is, IMHO, a fundamentally
misguided endeavor in the first place. The term "canon," as I'm sure you
know, is derived from the medieval tradition of biblical interpretation
(which incidentally, is also where the term "hermaneutics" comes from),
which ascribed to certain works the status of sacred scripture and relegated
others to the level of "Apocrypha" or mere "commentary." "But," you may
say, "this is just what we're doing-- we're not trying to claim for our
speculations canonical status, we think of them simply as commentary." This
is undoubtedly true. Underlying the whole notion of canonicity, however,
are a set of extremely dubious hermeneutical assumptions: (1) the assumption
that all of the various writings that have been labelled "canonical" fit
together into a complete and consistent whole, (2) the assumption that any
contradictions or discrepencies between the various parts of the canon
can be "resolved" by looking somwhere else in the canonized works and do not
pose a serious challenge to the canon's unity, (3) the assumption that certain
parts of the canon should take priority over other parts (as Christians claim
that the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament, and as many Tolkien fans
presume that LOTR is best understood through the lens of the Silmarillion),
and (4) the assumption that the various stories related within works that
have been labeled canonical are facts-- or at least that they can be discussed
and treated as if they were facts. These assumptions, I cannot help but note,
bear more than a superficial resemblance to points 1-5 that you outlined
earlier. The assumptions that underly the notion of canonicity are the same
assumptions that underlie the construction of speculative fan-fiction in the
guise of analysis.
> It must be remembered (in my opinion) that the creation of Middle-earth and
>its history was an activity that Tolkien pursued for its own sake, above and
>beyond the immediate requirements of a particular published work. It is only
>for that reason that he kept working on the Silmarillion after being convinced
>it would never be publishable (a view which seems to have come and gone in
>his mind). It is only for that reason that he felt the need to write up
>background and histories for characters and places first introduced in LoTR,
>histories never related in LoTR itself and therefore outside the narrative
>requirements of that work.
> The point I'm trying to make here is that the "sub-creation" was a work in
>its own right, separate from and independent of the various published works--
>at least to the same extent that the published works are independent of each
>other. And like any separate work, it may be usefully studied-- and with
>'hermeneutical validity'-- as itself, and not merely as the servant of
>something else (e.g. LoTR).
> But unlike the published writings, we cannot see the 'sub-creation' laid out
>whole and concrete in front of us.
That's because it _doesn't_ really exist outside of the texts (both
published and unpublished) that create it. There is no Middle-earth outside
of the stories in which it is represented. Those stories, furthermore, do
not all represent the same Middle-earth. In fact, I think one can safely say
that the notion of "Middle-earth" isn't really a signficant part of _The
Hobbit_ or the _Adventures of Tom Bombadil_ at all. Yes, Tolkien ultimately
tried to tie together most of his fictional works and set them in the same
invented world, but his primary purpose was always poetic. The stories
made avaialable in the _Unfinished Tales_ and HoMe are, except when they
are truly fragmentary scribbles or earlier versions of later stories), were
intended to be independent works of art-- individual tales, lays, songs, etc.
There are, of course, countless intertextualities between them and between
Tolkien's published works, but they were intended to be independent works
of art that could stand on their as literature-- not mere conveyors of
"information" or "raw data" to flesh out the artificial world. To treat
them as such is to mistake the cart for the horse and, once again, to miss
the point.
>Much of it no doubt existed only in the
>author's mind, and the various writings, published an unpublished, are only
>windows on that construct, variously general or specific, definitive or
>speculative. If we wish to study this work-- a highly different kind of work
>than a literary composition whether narrative or documentary-- then we are
>forced to pull together evidence from a miscellany of sources, and we must
>attempt to deduce the whole from these fragmented parts.
But there is no "whole" except in the imagination of you and others.
Like it or not, there are only independent works of art-- some complete
and some incomplete. Tolkien's novels, poems, stories are not mere
"fragmented parts"-- they are _all_ that there is. Pretending that there is
anything beyond may be fun, but it's _not_ analysis-- it's pure narrative
invention and it should be recognized as such.
> Our attempts will not always be clear-cut, will not always be definitive;
>indeed they will rarely be so, for the obvious answers are already there
>before us and need no discussion. But clear or ambiguous, our attempt
>*does* deserve the name of 'study' and-- at the risk of redundancy I must
>reiterate-- is an entirely different thing from the baseless invention of
>our own creation, however skillfully grafted onto Middle-earth.
Study? What's being studied? Certainly not Tolkien's texts-- at
least not to any degree more than is necessary to find some roots from
which one can cultivate their own embellishments to the story. (Simply
because these embellishments are rooted in Tolkien's text does not mean
that they are any less fan-fictional; fan-fiction is rarely "baseless.")
Inventing supplementary fictions to explain things in Tolkien's stories that
are left unexplained or undeveloped _is_ fan-fiction. In doing so, you-- a
fan-- are adding things to Tolkien's story that he did not put in there.
-- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
James Alexander Chokey
>
> I do not agree that 'speculative' and 'analytical' are mutually
>exclusive terms, and as I posted moments ago I believe that attempts to
>understand Middle-earth are as deserving of the term 'analytical' as are
>discussions about its mode of presentation, and discussions about how
>it was crafted by the author. All three of these things are differenty but
>valid subjects for study, and all three have value in understanding Tolkien
>and his work.
"Speculative" and "analytical" are not necessarily mutually exclusive
terms. Most analysis- at least most analysis that is at all interesting--
involves some form of speculation. However, not all forms of speculation
are analytical; many of them involve narrative invention rather than
text-based analysis.
Throughout the course of a.f.t. and rec.arts.books.tolkien, I have
posted numerous analyses of elements in Tolkien's writings, all of which
involve lots of speculation-- speculation on what the presence of certain
patterns of imagery means, speculation on why Tolkien included foregrounded
some things and marginalized or excluded others-- in general: speculation
on why he wrote his stories the way he did and what those stories _mean_.
This is something altogether different from speculating about how
Tolkien _might_ have explained or expanded upon some minor textual detail if
he had actually decided to write more about it than he did. (Which, of course,
he did not.) The former involves speculating on why Tolkien wrote his
stories the way they did and speculating on what they mean-- it does not,
however, involve adding any new elements to the actual course of Tolkien
narratives. The latter form of speculation does-- it entails making up
things that are not present in one of Tolkien's stories and adding them
to the narrative. It's not analysis-- it's fan-fiction.
-- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
Markus Moenig
trees, and all that":
>I have participated in has included and demanded citation of the actual
>writings of Tolkien in support of any conclusion offered.
And it would be a great shame if all this effort from the various
contributors would be lost. Would perhaps somebody be willing to
maintain some sort of a FAQ, where the main quotations and results
of a thread (like that of the origin of the ents) would be preserved for
future reference ?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Markus Moenig Fido 2:242/7.13 |
| 52074 Aachen Internet moe...@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de |
| Germany ADSP mar...@tolkien.adsp.sub.org |
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Bill Taylor
|>
|> I'm not so sure I agree with this. Why isn't attempting to resolve
|> certain inconsistencies in JRRT's works a form of scholarly
|> analysis? Isn't this what Christopher Tolkien did? Should we only
|> consider fact what JRRT wrote himself, and everything else compiled or
|> collected by Christopher to be fiction?
I would just like to back up Greg's remarks here. I agree that such concerns
can be a form of scholarly analysis, even though they are usually light-hearted.
I like Keith Goodnight's last few posts on this topic very much.
|> Personally, I don't like the term 'fan-fiction' and I would call what
|> some of us do when we attempt to resolve inconsistencies 'speculation'.
Well, I don't mind the term "fan-fiction" at all, when used sensibly. But I
agree that it doesn't really apply to what Greg and Keith are describing,
which could well be called speculation, or, if that isn't specific enough,
background speculation, ME-speculation, or perhaps best of all,
just "in-frame chat", (to borrow Bill Loos' in-frame/out-of-frame distinction).
But definitely not fan-fiction. There has been a rather bullying tone adopted
by some who insist that in-frame chat is fully-fledged fan-fiction. I accept
that the tone wasn't intentional, but that's the way it comes across. James
Chokey says he's using the term "as any scholar or literary critic would".
This seems a rather large claim, and I tend to doubt it. James - please - I'm
*not* flaming you; far from it. As I've said both publicly and privately to you,
I love most of your posts. I've learnt masses from them, and hesitate to write
anything that might lessen the flow. Heaven forbid ! But as you *are* so
widely respected on the newsgroup, perhaps there is just an extra responsibility
on you to be careful not to become to extreme when responding to criticism, for
fear of shutting off debate too early. Anyone can make an unguarded
overstatement, but it isn't becoming a scholar to defend one at all costs.
I suspect you may have done this with "fan-fiction".
"When *I* use a word" said Humpty Dumpty,"it means just what I choose it to mean"
"The question is" said Alice,"whether you *can* make words mean different things"
"The question is" said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master".
Please Jim, don't try to be master too much. IMVHO, fan fiction would be
understood by most of us here to mean actual *stories*, written with an ME
background. *Not* mere speculation about such things. The most one could say
is that this in-frame chat is chat about fan-fiction that someone could have
written, or wished to write, but never did. But it is not fan-fiction itself,
surely. And as Keith and Greg have said, it is usually not even the former.
Please don't let me turn you aside from the way you like to write, but if you
wanted to be just a tad more effective in communication, perhaps you could
use words the way most of your intended audience would.
I apologize if my own tone has been too immoderate, but I'm sure you wouldn't
want to seem to be too bullying or dismissive. And please, James, *do* keep
writing your informative, insightful and fascinating posts.
Actually, considering the often excellent array of replies your high tone
seems to generate, perhaps I'll withdraw my request that you moderate it.
Yes indeed; please ignore this post altogether....
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Taylor w...@math.canterbury.ac.nz
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_________________________________________________________
______| |______
\ | Sweeping generalizations are always wrong. | /
> |_________________________________________________________| <
/______\| |/______\
Mike McConnell
|> >Keith Goodnight writes:
|> >> And if we seek to do the same for elements he never got around to, that
|> >> is a perfectly valid form of study. Only intellectual snobbishness would
|> >> declare that stylistic analysis is more worthy than analysis of the content;
|> >> both have value.
|> >If Tolkien did it, it is part of Tolkien's work. If we do it, it
|> >is fan-fiction. The people doing it are fans. What they create
|> >is fiction. Hence, fan-fiction. You may not like the term (I don't
|> >particularly care for it myself), but the term is accurate and does
|> >describe the process you are engaging in.
|>
|> I'm not so sure I agree with this. Why isn't attempting to resolve
|> certain inconsistencies in JRRT's works a form of scholarly
|> analysis? Isn't this what Christopher Tolkien did? Should we only
|> consider fact what JRRT wrote himself, and everything else compiled or
|> collected by Christopher to be fiction?
Wait a minute here. Everything that JRRT wrote himself is fiction. LotR,
The Silmarillion, et al. are fiction. Middle Earth is fiction.
|>
|> Personally, I don't like the term 'fan-fiction' and I would call what
|> some of us do when we attempt to resolve inconsistencies
|> 'speculation'. (I vaguely recall that Christopher speculates on the
|> meanings of some of his father's writings in the Lost Tales.)
|>
|> --gregbo
Mike McConnell
Szymon Sokol
: The phrasing and word choice of your question reveals a profound
: misconception of the nature of literary works. As I pointed out at some
: length in my previous post, a work of art is not a body of "raw data" about
: which one is to make "deductions" or produce "hypotheses." It is not a
: bundle of "information." To treat it as such is to miss the point-- just as
: one misses the point if one treats a graph or chart displaying data from a
: scientific experiment in terms of "beauty" and "composition." One can, of
: course, do so-- but in doing so one misses what is really significant about
Well... this thread is becoming a meta-discussion... but when we are at this:
Why do you think that "beauty" and "composition" in science are not
significant? I have heard that many scientists (mainly mathematicians, but
physicists too) were so uneasy with working, but not elegant enough theories,
that they took effort to create a new -more elegant- ones. It is claimed that
someone (Einstein? Bohr?) said about Maxwell equations: "They are not only
useful, they are beautiful".
Of course nobody is going to modify theories (or experimental data) just
for pretty look, losing the relation to truth. But we are not going to "strip"
Tolkien's books of literary values! So, IMHO, your analogy is not a very good
one.
--
U U M M M M Szymon Sokol -- Network Manager
U U MM MM MM MM University of Mining and Metallurgy, Computer Center
U U M M M M M M M M ave. Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Krakow, POLAND
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Matthew Woodford
>Tolkien, either deliberately or indeliberately, did not actually explain
>in his writings. I'm not denying this at all. What I'm saying, however,
>is that, in doing this, you are inventing your own stories about Tolkien's
>world. Although these stories may be designed to cohere as rigorously
>as possible to the stories that Tolkien himself tells, they are not, in fact
>part of his narrative-- they're fan fiction.
Are we all in that case thinking 'fan-fiction' when we read the Lotr and
wonder what a certain reference means , what new worlds it may point us to?
You may describe the feeling of realism and historicity induced by such
details and mysterious references (eg 'they are surer of finding there way home
on a black night than the *cats of queen Beruthiel*' emphasis mine) as a
purely literary effect. However Tolkien himself tells us in the foreword that
what mainly interested him was creating the 'history' of his world. Those who
like his work should be expected to share this interest in tracing references
back to the stories behind them ,of tieing up inconsistencies, or at least of
finding where they come from. According to your definition this *is* fan
-fiction but I agree with Keith Goodnight that the problem with your
definition is that it lumps people who keep closely to the letter of Tolkien's
work with those who come up with any old story e.g 'the names of the nine
nazgul are ....'. That is not a useful definition. Of course no-one else can
write Tolkien - the more talented they are the more they take middle earth
over and make it their own , and the less talented the more boring (Terry
Brooks go shoot yourself). But we can at least talk about what we thought the
story behind this or that reference was and thus clear up misunderstandings.
For example alot of people post articles saying they thought the watcher in
water was a Kraken and we can say definitively that although it resembled a
Kraken it was never stated to be such and an 'air of mystery' hangs about it.
In the case of the nature of old man willow we can state that Treebeard mentions
the vast extent of the ancient forest and mentions the old forest as a known
bad area. He also mentions that trees are always becoming like Ents and Ents
are always becoming like trees. You would say that if we draw the obvious
conclusion either that old man willow was an evil Ent gone 'tree-ish' or an
evil tree gone 'Ent-ish' then we are inventing 'fan-fiction' because Tolkien
deliberately did not state it. It seems to me that the most likely reason why
he didn't would be because his characters could not
have possessed that information or if they did that they would not have been
interested in discussing it *at that point in the story* (many discussions were
held after the war was over) , moreover that to have everything stated
explicitly detracts from the historific feel of the story. In other words the
reason for it was probably a *literary* one. Do you allow that we can make
reasonable assumptions about Tolkien's literary devices but not about his
world? Do you allow that some assumptions are reasonable and some less so?
Matt.
--
Matthew Woodford.....mjw@uk.ac.cov.ccrowan.....Gollum Fan Club!
Keith Goodnight
debate each point of his last posting, I want to try and develop a new
line of argument.
I will begin with a question:
Is it 'fan fiction' to say: There were twenty Great Rings?
After all, Tolkien never says 'twenty' in the finished text of LoTR; he
says (in a poem, and also variously throughout the text), Three (Elves),
Seven (Dwarves), Nine (Men), and One (Sauron).
Is it 'fan fiction' to say that 3+7+9+1=20? If so, is it the same order
of 'fan fiction' as (to cite again an example I developed earlier) an
invented bit of information about statues of the kings of Numenor brought
back by Elendil? I simply cannot concede that these two things are the same.
Nor would they be the same if (say) there had ben no ring-verse, and the
references to three, seven, nine, and one had to be variously collected
from different parts of the text: mentions by Elrond, by Gimli, by Gandalf,
mentioning the number of one or the other kind of ring at different times.
No you may dispute whether the collection of such information has any
value. I might respond in two ways:
--Who are you to say what does and does not enhance my appreciation and
enjoyment of Tolkien's work?
--Do you really feel it is reasonable to claim that there is only one
"right way" to look at literature, or anything else?
However, my chief response would be:
We're not debating its value, just whether it consitutes embellishments
beyond what Tolkien invented.
Let's consider another commentary, from outside this newsgroup. In
"Master of Middle-earth" (I regret that the name of the author escapes me
at the moment, and I don't have the book handy-- but I will post it if people
ask) there is a chapter on the character of Aragorn.
This chapter discusses-- in my mind effectively-- the personality and
motivations of Aragorn, how Tolkien develops this character, how he at
various times displays the qualities that will make him a good king, etc.
He cites various remarks and actions on Aragorn's part that suggest
his unerlying motivations: how he has worked all his life toward the goal
of gaining the kingship to which he is entitled by birth, how the love of
Arwen and Elrond's condition for approval of their marriage (related in
the "Tale of Arwen and Aragorn" in the appendices) drives Aragorn forward.
The author notes moments of great emotional significance for Aragorn,
given these goals and motivations, and notes how Aragorn's reactions tell
on these motivations.
Now, I haven't really presented the author's conclusions, just his topics
of discussion, because without the book at hand I could not present his
conclusions either with assurance of accuracy or with the support he brings
to them. But anyway:
Do you feel that this is 'fan fiction'? Do you feel that this analysis
of character and motivation is useless or inappropriate to the understanding
of Lord of the Rings?
Because in order to reach his conclusions, the author must pull together
scattered references from throughout LoTR. He must make deductions from
various remarks and actions about emotions that are never stated directly
by Tolkien. He includes in his set of significant and revealing scenes some
that took place between Bree and Rivendell (or in Bree itself), scenes in
which Aragorn's actions and much of his dialog were preserved unchanged from
a time in which Aragorn was a hobbit name Trotter, who wore wooden shoes and
hated Mordor only because he was once tortured there and had his feet cut off.
By your argument, all of these modes of investigation are faulty. Since the
actions are unchanged from Trotter-the-hobbit to Strider-the-man, you
apparently would claim that that they are just inconsistent ( or at best,
coincidentally consistent) with the characterization of Aragorn the
descendant of Elendil.
Let us turn to discussions that have proceeded within this newsgroup.
Do you really maintain that there is nothing to be learned about Tolkien's
philosophy or about the importance in his works of free will and moral choice
by discussin the question of why we see no 'repentant' or 'good' Orcs?
That recent discussion was interrupted by a posting from your 'camp' (perhaps
even you, I don't recall) saying that it was just a flaw, Tolkien didn't
think about it. In other words: no insight to be gained.
Others (including me) drew on Tolkien's description of the origin of the
Orcs to suggest various reasons why they might be as they are shown to us:
creatures wholly lost to evil, incapable of moral choice. Our suggestions
were bolstered by comments on Tolkien's theology and philosophy, such as
we could determine it from sources such as his letters.
Taking this approach to the question may lead us to a better understanding
of these issues as they pertain to Tolkien's work. Then again, it may not--
but we don't know until we try. You would simply throw up your hands and
abandon the attempt.
In a more trivial 'point-of-fact' discussion, the thread that our present
debate interrupted involved the question of both Bombadil and Treebeard
being referred to as 'Eldest' by Gandalf and others. Your explanation
would be: Tolkien messed up. It's just a meaningless inconsistency.
I, on the other hand, might point out that issues of when characters
apeak with the voice of the author and when they do not is an interesting
and relevant issue in understanding the philosophy of the work and of the
author, and indications of occasional errors on the part of a character
tell on that question. After all, at a point very close in the text to
the scene in which Gandalf tells Theoden that Treebeard is the oldest
living thing in Middle-earth, Treebeard himself tells Merry and Pippin
that there are trees in Fangorn older than he; so we don't have just two
contradictory statements as widely different point in the book and which
arose at widely different stages of composition: the contradiction is
immediate, both sides produced at the same phase of the writing. Saying,`
therefore, that Gandalf was wrong about that is not equivalent to making
up a new fact ('fan fiction') to explain away a problem.
Some posted to that discussion suggestions that Gandalf did in fact know
better, that he was simply speaking to Theoden about things which Theoden
was likely to understand/know about/ whatever. Now this is a highly speculative
claim-- but then it is really no different from the author of 'Master of
Middle-earth' speculating that one reason Aragorn was so torn about
deiciding whether to go to Minas Tirith or go with Frodo to Mordor (after
Gandalf was lost) was that he knew helping Frodo was the 'right' thing to
do, but that it also meant the sacrifice of his life's ambition to
restore his kingship.
In my opinion, by claiming that to analyze the works by their 'factual'
content represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what literature is,
you are essentially claiming that considerations of plot, character and
incident are all equally misguided, that we can comment only on the
poetic wording of the text.
I freely grant that discussion of any given 'trivia' point may not lead
us to any sort of insight at all; but such discussion is not conceptually
different from a consideration of broader, but still 'factual' issues that
may be of vital importance.
Do you claim that the great pains Tolkien took in matters of geography,
the correct accounting of dates, the history of each place in Middle-earth,
the relationships of languages, and so on, and on, were all just wasted
effort, ultimately meaningless?
After all, "November 4" has the same poetic value (or lack thereof) as
"November 8", and if when during Frodo's journey Tolkien refers to the
actions of Gandalf at Isengard, 'delayed by treason', that the date turns
out to be incorrect, that would not diminish the poetic impact of that
moment.
And yet Tolkien took great pains to make sure it was accurate. As related
in HoME, when during the writing he realized that he was a few days out of
sync on certain events, he evidently was very concerned to correct the
problem. You, I gather, would argue that he was wasting his time.
Or at least, that we are wasting our time by observing and commenting on
the results of such labor; which amounts to the same thing.
I, on the other hand, maintain that if Tolkien went to such pains to
include details of this type in his work, and to assure that they were
accurate (to the best of his ability), then he must have intended that his
audience should observe and appreciate them. And our attempts to do so are
therefore of value both in understanding the artistic purpose of the work,
but also in enhancing our own enjoyment of it.
--Keith F. Goodnight
Greg Skinner
>I wrote:
>> I'm not so sure I agree with this. Why isn't attempting to resolve
>> certain inconsistencies in JRRT's works a form of scholarly
>> analysis? Isn't this what Christopher Tolkien did? Should we only
>> consider fact what JRRT wrote himself, and everything else compiled or
>> collected by Christopher to be fiction?
>Wait a minute here. Everything that JRRT wrote himself is fiction. LotR,
>The Silmarillion, et al. are fiction. Middle Earth is fiction.
I worded this posting badly. What I meant to ask was why don't we
consider Christopher's Tolkien's synthesis of his father's original
writings to be fan-fiction (when they are regarded as scholarly work,
at least in some circles), since this is what some of us do when we
attempt to resolve certain questions in certain Tolkien writings in the
context of all of his writings?
Robert Rosenbaum
I'm sorry to jump into this thread late. Based on it's subject: line,
I judged it to be uninteresting. Now I see I'm wrong, and would like
to add my thoughts. I'll try to be brief.
I'm one of the people who is being 'accused' of fan-fiction. I'll
wear that shoe if it fits, but I woulf like to say a few things in
defense of the practice.
>>> Sure, but as soon as the discussion of this sub-creation leaves
>>>the realm of events, characters, and relations that are actually
>>>included in the text, it ceases to be analysis and instead becomes
>>>fan-fiction.
I don't think `leaving the realm of events...' is a good criteria for
distinguishing between analysis and fan-fiction. Perhaps that
criteria was discussed earlier.
>>
>> Do you recognize any distinction between the invention of new information
>>about Middle-earth, and an attempt to understand/examine/discover information
>>that is already present?
>
> The phrasing and word choice of your question reveals a profound
>misconception of the nature of literary works. As I pointed out at some
>length in my previous post, a work of art is not a body of "raw data" about
>which one is to make "deductions" or produce "hypotheses." It is not a
>bundle of "information." To treat it as such is to miss the point-- just as
>one misses the point if one treats a graph or chart displaying data from a
>scientific experiment in terms of "beauty" and "composition." One can, of
Fiction which asks for suspension of disbelief should be
self-consistent, and scientific graphs should have aesthetic balance.
Read comp.graphics.visualization to read about people who spend their
lives trying to make graphs look beautiful. Of course, these aren't
always the same people who perform the experiments. Analogously, most
of us aren't the ones who write literature.
>course, do so-- but in doing so one misses what is really significant about
>it. If one talks about Tolkien's writings as if they were simply a medium
>through which pseudo-factual "information" is conveyed, their true signficance
>is also missed. (Yeah, this is basically a summary of what I said in my post
>yesterday, but it seems like it might be worth repeating.)
The "true significance" of a work is subjective.
> On the contrary, the first-- the invention of stories/information
>that aren't actually present in Tolkien's own narratives-- is the primary
>focus of discussions in this newsgroup. It's just that many of these
You may not like the treatment of the text as "information", but at
least accept that doing so is not the same as inventing new
information. If we conclude via discussion/fan-fiction that something
not explicitly stated in the text is the only consistent explanation
for events which occur in the published works, nothing has been
invented. If many possible explanations exist, then claiming that any
one of them is "what happened" is invention. The latter occurs all
the time, which is why I draw the distinction. You may find the
distinction unimportant, but others do not.
>"creative speculations" (to borrow Mike McConnell's phrase), these "fan-
>fictions" (to use my own), masquerade themselves as analyses of Tolkien's
Really? who exactly claimed it was "literary analysis" ? And to whom
does it matter?
>writings. It's one thing to talk about what Tolkien actually work; it's
>another to add one's own embellishments to it. This distinction, however, is
>not usually conveyed in the style of the postings themselves, as many of these
>fan-fictional discussions assume the form of a discussion of Tolkien's text.
I don't think most of us intend to "discuss" JRRT's works in the sense
of "scholarly analysis". Any assumption of that form by most of us is
purely accidental.
>Earlier, you said that this was a mere "linguistic convention" that was used
>by people who knew quite well that they were not _really_ talking about what
>was in Tolkien's texts. This "convention," you claimed, is mere semantics
>and does not really matter. Now, you seem to be saying that this is _not_ a
>"convention" at all, and that the speculations and narrative inventions that
>go on in such threads really do constitute an analysis of Tolkien's text.
>Which is it? (Either way, I'm in disagreement-- I'd just like to know
>exactly what it is that you're claiming.)
You talk about "real analysis", but I haven't seen you say what it is.
Anyone who claims that "the Bombadil question" has scholarly merit is
guilty of pretention, not convention. That doesn't mean the question
is not worth discussing. It may help to shed light on the themes of
the work as a whole.
> Trying to talk about "canonical authority" is, IMHO, a fundamentally
>misguided endeavor in the first place. The term "canon," as I'm sure you
>know, is derived from the medieval tradition of biblical interpretation
The word "canon" has a certain meaning in this group. It is defined in
the FAQ. Its meaning in other contexts is not relevant, and
discussion of any other meaning only obfuscates the discussion.
>
> That's because it _doesn't_ really exist outside of the texts (both
>published and unpublished) that create it. There is no Middle-earth outside
>of the stories in which it is represented. Those stories, furthermore, do
Ever see a Seurat? Up close, it's just a bunch of dots. Step back,
and the full picture emerges. In the same way, ME perceived as a
whole has as much reality as the individuial texts.
>not all represent the same Middle-earth. In fact, I think one can safely say
>that the notion of "Middle-earth" isn't really a signficant part of _The
>Hobbit_ or the _Adventures of Tom Bombadil_ at all. Yes, Tolkien ultimately
>tried to tie together most of his fictional works and set them in the same
>invented world, but his primary purpose was always poetic. The stories
So ME is the same ME according to this explanation, but not for
reasons which you judge to be suffiently good.
>made avaialable in the _Unfinished Tales_ and HoMe are, except when they
>are truly fragmentary scribbles or earlier versions of later stories), were
>intended to be independent works of art-- individual tales, lays, songs, etc.
>There are, of course, countless intertextualities between them and between
>Tolkien's published works, but they were intended to be independent works
>of art that could stand on their as literature-- not mere conveyors of
Huh? Some of UT is out-takes from LotR. Other parts were written
specifically to explain events which occurred in the story. Taken
independently, many of these bits are unintelligible.
>"information" or "raw data" to flesh out the artificial world. To treat
>them as such is to mistake the cart for the horse and, once again, to miss
>the point.
If you think "The Istari" is supposed to exist as a completely
independent work, I think it is you who miss the point.
>>attempt to deduce the whole from these fragmented parts.
>
> But there is no "whole" except in the imagination of you and others.
>Like it or not, there are only independent works of art-- some complete
>and some incomplete. Tolkien's novels, poems, stories are not mere
>"fragmented parts"-- they are _all_ that there is. Pretending that there is
That's nothing but your own opinion. In the opinion of much of his
readership, and possibly the author himself, the sum of parts
constitute a whole.
>anything beyond may be fun, but it's _not_ analysis-- it's pure narrative
>invention and it should be recognized as such.
I think you are arguing a point which most of feel is not central. If
you attach special meaning to "analysis", then we need not call it
that. As long as you are willing to concede that our "not-analysis"
has worth in its own right.
> Study? What's being studied? Certainly not Tolkien's texts-- at
>least not to any degree more than is necessary to find some roots from
>which one can cultivate their own embellishments to the story. (Simply
>because these embellishments are rooted in Tolkien's text does not mean
>that they are any less fan-fictional; fan-fiction is rarely "baseless.")
> -- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
I take it then that you feel these discussions are not worthwhile.
You haven't justified the value of "analysis", but I'll try to justify
our discussions.
Let's say that I conclude, for instance, that a closer reading of the
text reveals that Elladan and Elrohir chose to be human in the Fourth
Age. The implications of this are fairly important, because some of
the themes of LotR rest on the importance the characters placed on
death and immortality. It strengthens the idea that mortality is a
gift that few immortal would refuse if given the choice. That's a
point which Tolkien tried to make, but people find it hard to accept.
If, on the other hand, the sons of Elrond chose immortality, it
softens Tolikens point on the matter. Maybe he thought immortality
is worthwhile even if one must forsake ME to retain it, and death is
to be feared.
We would prefer to consult the text directly on the matter, but only
indirect evidence is given. If we piece together different fragments,
maybe we can find that only one answer is consistent. Is that answer what the
author intended? I think it is, except in rare circumstances. If we
stick to interpolating from the text instead of extrapolating, I think
the thematic consistencies can be traced along with the logical
consistencies.
Maybe this wasn't as short as I said it would be. Sorry about that.
Rob
--
Robert Rosenbaum rro...@caip.rutgers.edu (email)
(609) 829-9218 (home voice) 708 Cornell Ave 08077-3522 (home address)
(908) 932-3807 (work voice) CAIP, CoRE Bldg 08855-1390 (work address)
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Champion R.
>fans who wish the works they enjoy to contain narrative events that are
>not, in fact, recounted in them. They try to ensure that their fictions
>contain as few narrative incompatabilities with the original text as possible
>and they exploit unexplained allusions, references, or contradictions
>in the original narrative for their own stories. What they end up writing
>may, in fact, be perfectly compatible with the internal logic of the original
>narrative. But, as long as you are inventing characters, events, and narrative
>relations that aren't present in the original story/stories, you're still
>engaged in the writing of fan fiction.
Excuse me, I don't wish to give offense but;
You are EXTREMELY annoying.
I for one can do without the 20 page rants of sub logic in which you attempt
to prove that people are doing what they are not doing by quoting everything
they say and discounting it without any reference to the actual items under
discussion. You've repeatedly said that fan fiction is being written... I'd
like to see you quote from a single article that contains a piece of fan
fiction. Until you can do so please spare us your thoroughly annoying rants
on the matter.
No one here is creating new characters. No one here is writing stories. No
one here is making up 'historical' outlines for Middle Earth. We are
discussing esoteric details of the EXISTING material and citing references to
these. There are also efforts to determine the nature of various things and/or
resolve inconsistencies... again these are handled by references to the actual
texts... NOT the independent creations of the indivuals on this newsgroup.
James Alexander Chokey
>James Alexander Chokey (jch...@leland.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
>: The phrasing and word choice of your question reveals a profound
>: misconception of the nature of literary works. As I pointed out at some
>: length in my previous post, a work of art is not a body of "raw data" about
>: which one is to make "deductions" or produce "hypotheses." It is not a
>: bundle of "information." To treat it as such is to miss the point-- just as
>: one misses the point if one treats a graph or chart displaying data from a
>: scientific experiment in terms of "beauty" and "composition." One can, of
>: course, do so-- but in doing so one misses what is really significant about
>
>Well... this thread is becoming a meta-discussion... but when we are at this:
>Why do you think that "beauty" and "composition" in science are not
>significant? I have heard that many scientists (mainly mathematicians, but
>physicists too) were so uneasy with working, but not elegant enough theories,
>that they took effort to create a new -more elegant- ones. It is claimed that
>someone (Einstein? Bohr?) said about Maxwell equations: "They are not only
>useful, they are beautiful".
I'm not saying that "beauty" and "composition" are not significant
in science generally. What I am saying, however, is that they are not
a particularly appropriate way for approaching a set of scientific data,
as it does not take into account what those data are, why they were produced,
and what they can tell us about the nature of the world-- which, I think
it's fair to say, is the area in which their greatest signficance and deepest
meaning lies.
>Of course nobody is going to modify theories (or experimental data) just
>for pretty look, losing the relation to truth. But we are not going to "strip"
>Tolkien's books of literary values!
Well, that's not entirely true. Those who defended the Ptolemaic
model of the universe (with the earth at the center) against Copernicus's
heliocentric model frequently did so on aesthetic grounds, talking about
the "beauty" and "harmony" of the Ptolemaic model with its crystalline
spheres emitting their music and so on. On a more recent note, Einstein never
accepted quantum mechanics because he could not bear the idea of the universe
being so random and so disorderly. (Is there an alt.philosophy.science any-
where that we might move this if we wanted to pursue this question for its
own sake?)
Now, maybe it's not entirely fair to say that such folks completely
lost "the relation to truth," but their insistence on the primacy of
aesthetic concerns did lead them to ignore something profound about the
nature of the universe. Conversely, those who treat Tolkien's carefully
crafted fictions as mere masses of empirical data, IMHO, are ignoring
much of what is so profound, rich, and meaningful about Tolkien's art.
Maybe they are not "stripping" Tolkien's works of all literary value, but
they are leaving a lot of it stranded at the wayside, including the basic
fact that his stories are, above all else, works of art.
-- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
Robert Rosenbaum
> I'm not saying that "beauty" and "composition" are not significant
>in science generally. What I am saying, however, is that they are not
>a particularly appropriate way for approaching a set of scientific data,
>as it does not take into account what those data are, why they were produced,
>and what they can tell us about the nature of the world-- which, I think
>it's fair to say, is the area in which their greatest signficance and deepest
>meaning lies.
This seems to be flying off on a tangent, but let's at least keep the
tangent on track. If you are drawing an analogy, please be more
specific. Are you saying that aesthetics are tertiary to science? to
theories? to graphs? to data? At first, you were talking about
graphs. In that case I disagree, and argue that the aesthetic value of
a graph is closely tied to its ability to convey information.
If you are talking about data, then I think the concept of beauty does
not apply. Data are meaningless until interpreted, as is a book
written in a foreign language.
>>Of course nobody is going to modify theories (or experimental data) just
>>for pretty look, losing the relation to truth. But we are not going to "strip"
>>Tolkien's books of literary values!
>
> Well, that's not entirely true. Those who defended the Ptolemaic
>model of the universe (with the earth at the center) against Copernicus's
I don't know what the relevance of the Platonic "beauty is truth" is
to modern science. I do know that a very important tenet of modern
science is the principle of Sir Willam of Occam -
Occam's razor: Do not multiply entities beyond neccessity.
That is, choose the simplest explanation which explains all the facts.
Occam's razor is, to my understanding, a purely aesthetic criteria
which is rigorously applied to scientific theories. One could argue
that simpler theories are more beautiful.
> Now, maybe it's not entirely fair to say that such folks completely
>lost "the relation to truth," but their insistence on the primacy of
>aesthetic concerns did lead them to ignore something profound about the
>nature of the universe. Conversely, those who treat Tolkien's carefully
I disagree. I feel their theories were inadequate for entirely
different reasons. But that is another discussion.
>crafted fictions as mere masses of empirical data, IMHO, are ignoring
>much of what is so profound, rich, and meaningful about Tolkien's art.
>Maybe they are not "stripping" Tolkien's works of all literary value, but
>they are leaving a lot of it stranded at the wayside, including the basic
>fact that his stories are, above all else, works of art.
>
>
> -- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
I think you have to support this point. Why do you think that looking
at individual bits "strips" the work of value? I think it's merely a
case of appreciating his work on more than one level.
In my opinion, it is the more professional kind of literary analysis
which ends up bleeding a work dry. How do questions about "the
effectiveness of the imagery" or "shifts in narrative tone" help LotR
as art to hit us on the gut level? I think most literary analysis is
aimed at writers, not readers. Hyperanylize LotR if it helps you to
improve your own craft, but please don't insist that those outside the
business would be better off by seeing Tolkien's work in those terms.
(When I say "you", I'm not referring to Jim Chokey in particular. )
James Alexander Chokey
>In article <1993Aug...@IASTATE.EDU> cffi...@IASTATE.EDU (Charles F. Fitzgerald) writes:
>>If Tolkien did it, it is part of Tolkien's work. If we do it, it
>>is fan-fiction. The people doing it are fans. What they create
>>is fiction. Hence, fan-fiction. You may not like the term (I don't
>>particularly care for it myself), but the term is accurate and does
>>describe the process you are engaging in.
>
>I'm not so sure I agree with this. Why isn't attempting to resolve
>certain inconsistencies in JRRT's works a form of scholarly
>analysis? Isn't this what Christopher Tolkien did? Should we only
>consider fact what JRRT wrote himself, and everything else compiled or
>collected by Christopher to be fiction?
To a certain degree, yes. Resolving narrative consistencies is
not a "scholarly" activity; it is an _editorial_ one. It involves trying
to create one singular story out of many different, disparate ones. Doing
that necessarily involves changing the stories. It _is_ the creation of
a new fiction-- abeit it one that is derived from J.R.R.'s own writings
(which as Mike McConnell has pointed out are themselves fiction).
Personally, I wish Christopher hadn't edited his father's unpublished
works, forming them into coherent stories, and had simply published the
manuscripts, disparate and incomplete as they are. It's true that, in
more recent volumes of HoMe, he has used a much lighter editorial
hand than he did in the early ones, in the _Unfinished Tales_, and in the
_Silmarillion_, but I don't think that hand should have been there in the
first place. It makes for a more readable _story_, to be sure, but it
raises in my mind a whole lot of questions about what is J.R.R. and what
is Christopher. It's sort of like reading _The Will to Power_ and wondering
what was Friedrich and what was his sister.
>Personally, I don't like the term 'fan-fiction' and I would call what
>some of us do when we attempt to resolve inconsistencies
>'speculation'.
Well, regardless of whether or not you are fond of the term "fan-
fiction," these speculations are simply fan fiction that is presented in the
guise of analytical discussion.
-- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
James Alexander Chokey
>|> some of us do when we attempt to resolve inconsistencies 'speculation'.
>
>Well, I don't mind the term "fan-fiction" at all, when used sensibly. But I
>agree that it doesn't really apply to what Greg and Keith are describing,
>which could well be called speculation, or, if that isn't specific enough,
>background speculation, ME-speculation, or perhaps best of all,
>
>But definitely not fan-fiction . . . . . IMVHO, fan fiction would be
>understood by most of us here to mean actual *stories*, written with an ME
>background. *Not* mere speculation about such things. The most one could say
>is that this in-frame chat is chat about fan-fiction that someone could have
>written, or wished to write, but never did. But it is not fan-fiction itself,
>surely.
OK, if you prefer to reserve that term for only those speculations
that self-consciously label themselves as "fan-fiction" and adopt all of the
conventional trimmings, let's say then that these "in-frame speculations" have
_the same hermeneutical status_ as fan-fiction. As you point out, this sort
of chat requires one to presume the existence of a "fan-fiction that someone
could have written . . . but never did." I agree, but I would also note that
most people who engage in this sort chat presume the existence of a set of
fictions that _Tolkien_ could have written, but never did. In any case, they
are chatting about a story that was never actually written by anyone. It
would, in fact, be perfectly accurate to say that, in chatting about this
non-existent story, they are themselves inventing it. After all, it didn't
exist until they (or some other fan) chatted about it. Thus this chat is
also fiction-writing; by talking about a story that doesn't exist, they
are themselves writing it. And, of course,these people are fans, not
Tolkien himself. Consequently, I think it _perfectly_ appropriate to call
what they write "fan-fiction."
-- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
James Alexander Chokey
>
>Excuse me, I don't wish to give offense but;
>
>You are EXTREMELY annoying.
>
>I for one can do without the 20 page rants of sub logic in which you attempt
>to prove that people are doing what they are not doing by quoting everything
>they say and discounting it without any reference to the actual items under
>discussion. You've repeatedly said that fan fiction is being written... I'd
>like to see you quote from a single article that contains a piece of fan
>fiction. Until you can do so please spare us your thoroughly annoying rants
>on the matter.
If you honestly find the debates on the hermeneutical issues that
underlie Tolkien discussion so "annoying" and "can do without them," there's
a simple solution-- don't read them. It's _that_ simple. Really. All
you have to do if you see a post that is too long or too abstract for your
tastes, just move your finger to the 'n' key and press it. *Poof!* The
nasty annoying article is gone, and something else has taken its place.
What's that? You say that the next article is on a similar topic? No problem,
just hit the 'n' key again. *Poof!* It's gone, too. You can repeat
this procedure as often as you need to and you'll never have to read any
long articles on "annoying" topics that "you can do without." If there
are so many of these articles that it becomes such an inconvenience for
you hit the 'n' key, you can always create a subject line kill file to
get rid of them. Asking people not to post on Tolkien-related topics because
you find such discussions "annoying" is rude, selfish, and smacks of
playing netcop. This group is rec.arts.books.tolkien, not rec.arts.books.
tolkien.only.short.posts.on.what.r.champion.likes.to.talk.about.and.nothing.
else. Hermeneutical discussions on the ways in which people read/discuss/
embellish Tolkien's works are as welcome here as any other Tolkien-related
topic. If you have a problem with that then maybe you should go and create
the group I mentioned two sentences ago and serve as its moderator.
BTW, I know the tone of this is quite nasty, and I apologize for that.
There are few things that annoy me more than posters who try to play netcop and
tell others not to post things that they are not personally interested in.
And since, just two days ago, a few people were mistakenly accusing _me_
of such actions, I found R. Champion's post to be particularly offensive
and a little more vitriol than necessary slipped into my response. Further
posts by would-be netcops will be promptly ignored.
-- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
Stephen Linhart
As far as I can tell, you are saying that it is not possible to
discuss people, places, things or events that occur within a work
of literary fiction because literary fiction is composed only of
words not people, places, things or events - and therefore, in
your view, we can only discuss the aesthetic and symbolic
properties of the words. Is this a fair interpretation of your
position?
- Stephen
Keith Goodnight
> Conversely, those who treat Tolkien's carefully
>crafted fictions as mere masses of empirical data, IMHO, are ignoring
>much of what is so profound, rich, and meaningful about Tolkien's art.
>Maybe they are not "stripping" Tolkien's works of all literary value, but
>they are leaving a lot of it stranded at the wayside, including the basic
>fact that his stories are, above all else, works of art.
>
cannot help but believe that you intend "those who..." to refer to me (at least
among others); the reason I feel that way is that the attitude you then cite
is quite similar to the charicature of my own views that you often presented
in our discussion.
If you did not have me in mind at all, then ignore the rest of this posting,
for no presentation of my own subjective views can have any relevance for the
subjective views of others: others must speak for themselves.
With that disclaimer-- I do not and never have claimed that Tolkien's works
are 'mere masses of empirical data.' I would especially take issue with the
modifer 'mere', which suggests the (IMHO) insulting claim that my mind is
so tiny that I cannot examine one characteristic of a work without rejecting
all others.
More generally, I would also disagree with the description 'masses of
empirical data.' You have spent a great deal of time dwelling on my use of
the term 'raw data' in my first posting to our debate; it might be worthwhile
for you to observe that, when it became clear that an actual serious discussion
was to ensue, I have not used it since except to clarify my original usage
at your request.
I am a scientist, and I naturally make use of scientific terminology. The
term 'raw data' as I originally used it means simply 'the source material of
any analysis.' Thus, for example, if you wished to examine (as you did in one
posting) the poetic or stylistic role of trees and forests in LoTR, then
references to trees and forests in LoTR would be the 'raw data' of your
analysis. In my original posting, I was discussion the possibility of examing
the presented information about the logical sequence of the plotline, the
'biographies' or personalities of characters, or the description and history
of various settings. For that type of examination, references in the text to
these matters would be the 'raw data.'
The term as I used it does not imply any sort of 'sterility' or any lack
of artistic justification for any of the references used in such examination.
Nor is the examination of these elements an activity separate from the
esthetic and artistic enjoyment of the work. One of Tolkien's major artistic
goals (IMHO) was the creation (or as he would say, 'sub-creation') of a
logical and internally consistent setting for his stories. The fact that he
did not succeed in achieving internal consistency at every point does not
alter the fact that he tried (and I think it clear that he DID try. I can
think of no conceivable narrative, dramatic, or poetic requirement of
the Silmarillion taken alone which would require adding references to explain
the origin of things in LoTR, and yet such references were added. Nor do I
see any literary reason at all for purely 'documentary' essays giving
background to various events/places/characters not used in the published
works, except the goal of creating that background as an end unto itself).
Nor does the view that this goal was unworthy or unnecessary alter the
fact that Tolkien pursued it. I can imagine no sensible school of literary
study that would take the view 'We will pretend that only those artisitic
goals we find worthwhile were really a part of the artist's work.' It seems
to me that you must be willing to examine all aspects of that work, good and
bad.
For my part, I do not even accept that it was a poor artistic goal, even
when its pursuit bridged multiple works. I find i an extremely pleasing and
rewarding aspect of Tolkien's overall 'Cycle' (as he termed it in certain of
the Letters).
The bottom line: For me, taking pleasure in Tolkien's 'sub-creation' does
not require me to reject, ignore, or 'strand at the wayside' the artistic
considerations that shaped it. Indeed, quite the opposite, for if it were
built with no such considerations, I cannot imagine that it would have ended
up as elegant and beautiful a structure as it is.
--Keith F. Goodnight
James Alexander Chokey
> My disagreement with Jim Chokey continues; rather than reproduce and
>debate each point of his last posting, I want to try and develop a new
>line of argument.
Fair enough. I would, however, still be interested in hearing how
you would respond to the points I made in my last two replies to you.
>
> I will begin with a question:
>
> Is it 'fan fiction' to say: There were twenty Great Rings?
> After all, Tolkien never says 'twenty' in the finished text of LoTR; he
>says (in a poem, and also variously throughout the text), Three (Elves),
>Seven (Dwarves), Nine (Men), and One (Sauron).
> Is it 'fan fiction' to say that 3+7+9+1=20?
The spirit of Dan Peters lives! :-) (It's an inside joke--
no malice intended. A more substantive response appears below.)
>If so, is it the same order
>of 'fan fiction' as (to cite again an example I developed earlier) an
>invented bit of information about statues of the kings of Numenor brought
>back by Elendil? I simply cannot concede that these two things are the same.
>Nor would they be the same if (say) there had ben no ring-verse, and the
>references to three, seven, nine, and one had to be variously collected
>from different parts of the text: mentions by Elrond, by Gimli, by Gandalf,
>mentioning the number of one or the other kind of ring at different times.
>
> No[w] you may dispute whether the collection of such information has any
>value.
If I may instead respond with what I will actually say . . . :-)
Once again, I dispute whether or not it makes any sense to regard
the number of the Rings primarily as "information" or "raw data" to be
"collected" and whether one is not trampling over the beauty of Tolkien's
art in treating it as such. (I still stand on what I said in my previous two
posts in this regard.)
There is a _reason_, or to be more precise, a set of reasons,
why Tolkien described the number of Rings in the way he did-- using the
3+7+9+1 method in verse, rather than simply writing in bland prose, "There
were 20 rings." While I wouldn't pretend to state authoritatively
or exhaustively these reasons, some of them are fairly obvious. The
numbers 3, 7, 9, and 1 have traditionally been invested with metaphysical
and mythopoeic signficance in a way that 20 has not. Although we would
undoubtedly agree that there is nothing essentially mystical or magical about
these numbers, they still possess a widespread poetic resonance that Tolkien
is aware of and is exploiting. In addition, Tolkien achieves an ominous
effect through his use of these numbers in the poem, building from three,
seven, and nine and suddenly dropping to "one," which he repeats four times.
By treating these numbers as mere conveyors of information instead of poetic
tools and building blocks, you are ignoring the fact that Tolkien had a
purpose for writing the Ring-poem in the way that he did, and are indeed
ignoring the fact that he wrote it in verse because he wanted the reader to
read it _as a poem_, not as a set of "raw data" or "information" to be
compiled and processed.
> I might respond in two ways:
> --Who are you to say what does and does not enhance my appreciation and
> enjoyment of Tolkien's work?
I'm not at all talking about your enjoyment of Tolkien; I'm talking
about the hermeneutics of a manner of discussion that frequently takes place
here on r.a.b.t. You are, of course, free to enjoy Tolkien's writings in
whatever way you like.
> --Do you really feel it is reasonable to claim that there is only one
> "right way" to look at literature, or anything else?
No. However, I think it is reasonable to claim that some ways are
better-- or at least more sensible-- than others. Every approach may be
subjective, but that does not mean that every approach is equally as good.
A methodology that treats Tolkien's writings as if they were mere repositories
of facts, instead of carefully constructed literary creations is, IMHO,
hermeneutically inferior to one that accords primacy to the fact that they
are works of art.
> Let's consider another commentary, from outside this newsgroup. In
>"Master of Middle-earth" (I regret that the name of the author escapes me
>at the moment, and I don't have the book handy-- but I will post it if people
>ask)
Paul H. Kocher. A former Stanford professor of English, actually.
He died a few years ago, before I came to Stanford.
>there is a chapter on the character of Aragorn.
> This chapter discusses-- in my mind effectively-- the personality and
>motivations of Aragorn, how Tolkien develops this character, how he at
>various times displays the qualities that will make him a good king, etc.
> He cites various remarks and actions on Aragorn's part that suggest
>his unerlying motivations: how he has worked all his life toward the goal
>of gaining the kingship to which he is entitled by birth, how the love of
>Arwen and Elrond's condition for approval of their marriage (related in
>the "Tale of Arwen and Aragorn" in the appendices) drives Aragorn forward.
> The author notes moments of great emotional significance for Aragorn,
>given these goals and motivations, and notes how Aragorn's reactions tell
>on these motivations.
> Now, I haven't really presented the author's conclusions, just his topics
>of discussion, because without the book at hand I could not present his
>conclusions either with assurance of accuracy or with the support he brings
>to them. But anyway:
>
> Do you feel that this is 'fan fiction'? Do you feel that this analysis
>of character and motivation is useless or inappropriate to the understanding
>of Lord of the Rings?
Hmm. Good questions. I'll try to answer them as best I can, but
I'm going to do it in a slightly roundabout way.
First of all, let me say that I think that what Kocher is doing in
this chapter is a little silly. He wrote this chapter as a response to
to critics (most notably Edmund Wilson) who had claimed that Tolkien's
characters in LOTR are dull, undeveloped, and uninteresting. The character
usually seized upon by such critics was Aragorn. Essentially, Kocher's
argument in this chapter is: "Aragorn is an interesting character." A
debatable point, perhaps, but it's not a particularly scholarly question
in the first place. But, Kocher's goal in this chapter is not scholarly,
it's polemical; he's trying to defend Tolkien's greatness as a writer
by contending that Aragorn is not nearly as dreary a character as these
critics have made him out to be.
I find this silly for a few reasons. First of all, I think that
the whole project of "defending" Tolkien's status as a writer is unnecessary.
It may appeal to Tolkien fans who wish to see their high opinion of Tolkien
affirmed by someone else, but Kocher's really preaching to the choir. Second,
I think Kocher's whole premise-- that a defense of Tolkien's status of a
writer depends on rebutting the claim that Aragorn is an uninteresting
character-- is based on a faulty pair of assumptions. Assumption #1 is that
the interestingness of a character is a question that can be objectively
answered by looking at the text and its history. Assumption #2 is that
LOTR must have "developed characters" of the sort that Tolkien's critics want
to see in order for it to be a great piece of literature.
If Kocher were really interested in analysing or discussing LOTR
as a scholar, he should have examined just what Tolkien _does_ with his
characters, and tried to explain _why_ he does what he does with them, rather
than simply trying to prove that a particular character is "interesting". I
think, for example, that he might profitably have raised the question of _why_
Tolkien changed Aragorn as he did as he did throughout the writing process,
relating the presentation of Aragorn to Tolkien's changing poetic purpose,
instead of simply citing these changes as proof that Aragorn was a "developed
character." I think he could have also raised some interesting questions by
asking why "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" is presented as a separate story in
the appendices, and why most of what he sees as signs of Aragorn's
interestingness are not present in the main narrative, but are found
elsewhere-- either in appendices or in early drafts of LOTR. Doing this
could also have served as a sort of "defense" of Tolkien, as it would have
pointed out that Tolkien had a purpose for making Aragorn and other characters
in the way that he did. But Kocher remained so trapped within the language
and mindsets of the critics to whom he was responding and thus only sought
to demonstrate that Aragorn was "interesting."
Anyway, you asked whether or not I would consider this to be fan-
fiction. Let me give a bold definitive answer and say, "sort of, but not
exactly." :-) Above all else, Kocher's analysis is a polemic designed
to defend Tolkien's status. He's not trying to resolve "inconsistencies,"
or trying to explain unexplained characters, names, events, and/or vague
"references." He is not, in short, trying to inject new narrative elements
into Tolkien's story in the same way that much of the discussion here on
r.a.b.t. does. In the process of arguing that Aragorn is an "interesting"
character, however, I do think Kocher makes the same fallacious hermeneutical
assumptions that underlie these in-frame-speculative/fan-fictional
discussions. He treats Aragorn, for instance, as if he were a real person
instead of a literary character, regarding textual references to Aragorn as
simple conveyors of "information" and using them to make "in-frame" conjectures
In short, while Kocher's _intention_ is polemical rather than fan-fictional,
I would say that he slips into a hermeneutical mindset that is the same as
that that underlies the writing of fan-fiction.
All things considered, however, Kocher's not that bad compared to
what other published authors have written on Tolkien. There's one book
I read-- can't remember the name, though-- that was trying to "prove
definitively" that Bombadil was Aule the Vala, and was thus fan-fictional
both in terms of approach and intent.
> Let us turn to discussions that have proceeded within this newsgroup.
>Do you really maintain that there is nothing to be learned about Tolkien's
>philosophy or about the importance in his works of free will and moral choice
>by discussin the question of why we see no 'repentant' or 'good' Orcs?
>That recent discussion was interrupted by a posting from your 'camp' (perhaps
>even you, I don't recall) saying that it was just a flaw, Tolkien didn't
>think about it. In other words: no insight to be gained.
I didn't follow the good Orc/bad Orc thread, I'm afraid. (And I
certainly don't have a "camp".) However, I contend, as I have always
contended on a.f.t. and r.a.b.t., that what's _not_ in a book can be (and
often is) as signficant as what is in it. I think the question of why Tolkien
chose not to include any "good" Orcs is very interesting and that the answers
to it might be very insightful. However, I think that any answer that involves
inventing "in-frame" explanations for the lack of "repentant orcs" produces
fan-fiction rather than actual insight.
> In a more trivial 'point-of-fact' discussion, the thread that our present
>debate interrupted involved the question of both Bombadil and Treebeard
>being referred to as 'Eldest' by Gandalf and others. Your explanation
>would be: Tolkien messed up. It's just a meaningless inconsistency.
Not at all. I don't think Tolkien messed up, I don't think it's
meaningless, and I don't think it's an inconsistency. As you may remember, I
provided a sort of explanation in my first post on this thread, one that
involved the use of forests and their inhabitants as "symbols" of ancientness
and the past in LOTR. This was, as you may also remember, the part of my post
that you completely omitted in your reply, which focused only on the
hermeneutical issues I raised.
> In my opinion, by claiming that to analyze the works by their 'factual'
>content represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what literature is,
>you are essentially claiming that considerations of plot, character and
>incident are all equally misguided, that we can comment only on the
>poetic wording of the text.
Not at all. Discussions of plot, character, etc. can be
done perfectly sensibly, so long as they adhere to the what the text
actually says, and not what we would like it to say instead.
> I freely grant that discussion of any given 'trivia' point may not lead
>us to any sort of insight at all; but such discussion is not conceptually
>different from a consideration of broader, but still 'factual' issues that
>may be of vital importance.
I'm not really sure what you're saying here.
> Do you claim that the great pains Tolkien took in matters of geography,
>the correct accounting of dates, the history of each place in Middle-earth,
>the relationships of languages, and so on, and on, were all just wasted
>effort, ultimately meaningless?
> After all, "November 4" has the same poetic value (or lack thereof) as
>"November 8", and if when during Frodo's journey Tolkien refers to the
>actions of Gandalf at Isengard, 'delayed by treason', that the date turns
>out to be incorrect, that would not diminish the poetic impact of that
>moment.
But _not_ all of the dates presented possess the same poetic value.
Time has meaning and can be symbolic, as Tolkien is well aware. In the
appendix, he has Frodo and company set out from Hobbiton on Sept. 23, at
the vernal equinox (the beginning of fall, and the time when the days
become shorter and shorter);, he has them depart from Rivendell on December
25 (approx. the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, and, of
course Christmas); and he has the Ring destroyed on March 25, just after
the spring equinox, when the days begin to get longer and brighter again.)
Some dates _do_ add to the poetic impact of events in the main narrative.
On a broader level, however, I gather that what you are getting
at is _why_ the appendices are at the back of LOTR in the first place--
that is to say, why Tolkien chose to present part of his work in the form
that he does. For me, this has always been one of the most intriguing
questions about LOTR-- and I have to admit, that I don't have a lot of
answers that are beyond the vague and nebulous stage. One of the answers,
I think, is pragmatic, rather than poetic. Remember that Tolkien was trying
to get the _Silmarillion_ published as well. I think that the inclusion
of the stories in the appendices was an attempt to whet reader's appetites
for more so that his publishers would be reconsider publishing _The
Silmarillion_. I think that the appendices, however, also have a number
of poetic purposes, the most obvious of which is to make the reader suspend
his/her disbelief even more than is possible than with a straight narrative.
This does, not, however, entirely explain the "form" of some of the stories
in the appendices-- the fact that Tolkien presents some of them as family
trees, as lists of dates, as analysis of language, etc. One possible
explanation is that Tolkien was doing the same sort of experimentation
with genre that James Joyce explored in _Ulysses_, exploring the possibilities
and limitations of telling stories through means other than the conventional
narrative. Such an explanation, of course, would necessitate rethinking
Tolkien's place in literary history; instead of seeing him primarily as
the progenitor of the genre of modern fantasy and/or as a holdover from
ninetheenth century romantic medievalism in the tradition of Scott, Tennyson,
Morris, etc., but seeing him also as a modernist alongside Joyce, Yeats,
Pound, Eliot, Mann, Lawrence and others-- all of whom, of course,
intertwined their experimentation with genre and form with a profound
attempt to "mythicize" their writings-- just as Tolkien did. (Perhaps this
is the germ of another thread?)
-- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
James Alexander Chokey
Well, yes and no. I agree with everything up to the part about
"we can only discuss the aesthetic and symbolic properties of the words."
I agree that we can discuss quite sensibly things other than the purely
textual elements of literature, namely their *real* historical context,
rather than the *imaginary* historical context that they convey. I think
for instance, that it makes perfect sense to discuss the historical
context of _The Song of Roland_ so long as one remembers that that
context is the 11th century rather than the 8th (which is the time in
which the chanson is set). In a similar vein, I think it's perfectly
possible to talk sensibly about the historical context of T's works so long
as one remembers that that the real historical context of these works
is the twentieth century and not the imagined times and places in which
his works are set.
-- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
Ron Mayer
<CB7LD...@rice.edu> kei...@is.rice.edu (Keith Goodnight):
> The contrary type of attack seems hardly possible, except by a deluded or
>at least very naive person:
Who me? :-) ...Looks like flame bait... ...Ok, I'll bite!
> "Galadriel's reference to Nargothrond and Gondolin is another example
>of Tolkien's use of historical references to give a very effective sense
>of the temporal depth of Middle-earth in the Third Age."
> "No, it's not! Tolkien couldn't have made that up for effect because she
>really had lived there that long."
I think the response you called "hardly possible" seems quite
reasonable, if a bit poorly worded.
"No, it's not! Tolkien couldn't have" developed an emotionally
moving sense of temporal depth if he simply "made ... up" references
to the First Age for "effect". The passage is effective only because
it is presented through the eyes of the Lady Galadriel herself, who
"really had lived there that long" and the reader shares in her
feelings reminiscing about empires long lost in her past.
Whether or not Galadriel's past was structured in order to have her
make references which invoke a sense of temporal depth is a valid
topic of debate. However isolating those references from their
context, like the first speaker attempted suggests IMHO an incomplete
understanding of Tolkiens writing process. If Joe Random Elf walked
up and made the same references the effect would have been lost.
Without an understanding of Galadriel the person, why she made these
comments, and the feelings these memories invoked in her, you
can not productively analyze Tolkien's use of historical reference.
In any case, I agree with the second speaker: Tolkien had Galadriel
make these references not for any "effect", but because such
comments are perfectly consistant with her character's personality
and history. Galadriel's implied emotional response to those
references, not merely the references themselves, are largely
responsible for the effectiveness of the passage.
Was my analysis above "deluded" or just "very naive"?
> As unlikely as it seems to me that such an attack would be made, I would
>be just as firm in disagreeing with it as the other; mixing modes in this
>way leads not to insight but only to confusion.
Feel free to disagree; but IMHO the history of the character Tolkien
developed is extremely valid in the above discussion.
Yeah, I originally intended this posting to have a :-) but the more I
think about it the more seriously I agree with what I just wrote. Was
the above fan fiction? No. Did I need to make inferences about
Middle Earth which weren't explicitly stated? Yes, regarding
Galadriel's personality and emotional response when she made these
comments. Was it valid to make such inferences? Probably.
Did this analysis regarding what Tolkien was probably thinking add
insight to why he wrote the passage; and why such writing is
effective? I think so.
Ron Mayer
ma...@orthanc.acuson.com
Keith Goodnight
[I wrote]
>> My disagreement with Jim Chokey continues; rather than reproduce and
>>debate each point of his last posting, I want to try and develop a new
>>line of argument.
[Jim wrote]
>
> Fair enough. I would, however, still be interested in hearing how
>you would respond to the points I made in my last two replies to you.
I would be happy to, but unfortunately these posts have been dismissed
from my newsfeed; if you would restate the points you want me answer (or
just cite them briefly as a reminder) I will try to answer them.
Unless, of course, your mesage below is such a restatement...
Before I go on with citations/responses from your last message (or last
I've read so far, anyway) I want to present a thought I've recently had
about our discussion and ask what you think of it:
It has ocurred to me that we may have been talking at cross-purposes,
with the result that each of us is getting a false impression of what
the other is saying. There are actually a variety of correlated points that
have been at issue here, but I think we have seen different pictures of the
central issue.
Partly this belief arises from your recent observation that I seem to have
changed my position. I have not; but that you have that impression raises
the question of whether your view of my position really reflects what it is.
So here is a brief summary of the claim I am trying to defend. I present
it in outline form to facilitate your citation/discusion of each point
separately as you wish.
1. One of Tolkien's artistic aims was to create, or 'sub-create', a
highly detailed world with its own geography, history, mythology,
theology, languages, etc. (From all accounts, it appears that the
last was the primary motivation: Tolkien subscribed to the view of
linguistics that held a language could only be properly understood
in the context of the mythology told by it)
2. Tolkien was not perfectly successful in his attempt to make his
sub-creation completely consistent or fully explained.
3. He did, however, generate a huge mass of writings containing a huge
mass of both 'trivia' on names, places, histories, etc. and broader
conceptual issues of theology and philosophy that governed how
things work in Middle'earth.
4. Because of (3), none of us is omniscient with respect to what is in
the text.
5. Because of (4), when faced with a seeming contradiction or unexplained
phenomenon, we cannot at first be sure whether it is a result of point
(2) or simply a result of our missing something.
6. The best way to resolve the dilemma in (5) is to discuss the question
with others who may remember other details.
7. If the explanation of the problem raised in (5) really IS that Tolkien
just didn't explain it, or overlooked the inconsistency, then attempts
to resolve/explain it must necessarily fail. i.e. none proposed will
find any support in the text.
7A. I must note that I consider the statements "The text fails to
contradict my conclusion" and "The text positively supports
my conclusion" to be very different, and the difference is
important in the issue of whether we are finding what is in
the text, or embellishing the text.
8. Because of point (1), all of this is a worthwhile activity in the
study of Tolkien and his works.
9. None of any of this denies that the nature of the 'sub-creation' and
the actual set of details that comprise it were built up according to
artistic and literary criteria.
I don't really know if that outline makes anything more clear, but I had
to try. And now, to Jim's latest posting:
>
> Once again, I dispute whether or not it makes any sense to regard
>the number of the Rings primarily as "information" or "raw data" to be
>"collected" and whether one is not trampling over the beauty of Tolkien's
>art in treating it as such. (I still stand on what I said in my previous two
>posts in this regard.)
You continue to be bothered by my original offhand use of the term
"raw data"; but since I have addressed that issue recently I won't repeat
myself here. In any case, on raising the question of saying there were
20 Great Rings I was not arguing that saying so is just as good as, or in
any way equivalent to, the vastly superior way in which Tolkien presented
their number (as seen in 'Return of the Shadow', he did have Gandalf say
in early drafts 'There were twenty Great Rings', but he removed the
reference, no doubt for good reasons). I was only asking: Does saying so
represent an embellishment of the text, adding something that was not there,
in your terms 'fan fiction'?
It would seem not, since you now argue that it is actually a stripping
away of what is in the text, rather than an addition to it, but I don't
dispute that. '20 Rings', so baldly stated, has little or no poetic
value. But it is an item of 'Middle-earth trivia' which, if reported (say
in answer to a newbie's question), is NOT an invention of the person saying
it.
> There is a _reason_, or to be more precise, a set of reasons,
>why Tolkien described the number of Rings in the way he did-- using the
>3+7+9+1 method in verse, rather than simply writing in bland prose, "There
>were 20 rings." While I wouldn't pretend to state authoritatively
I agree, but then I have never denied that or even implied that I am
denying that.
>By treating these numbers as mere conveyors of information instead of poetic
^^^^
>tools and building blocks, you are ignoring the fact that Tolkien had a
^^^^^^^^
>purpose for writing the Ring-poem in the way that he did, and are indeed
>ignoring the fact that he wrote it in verse because he wanted the reader to
^^^^^^^
>read it _as a poem_, not as a set of "raw data" or "information" to be
>compiled and processed.
As I have recently posted, I take issue with your repeated use of modifiers
like 'mere' in connection with my view, and also with verbs like 'ignore'.
Both imply that I am rejecting literary/artistic considerations whenever I
observe a reported detail. I do not. I 'merely' say that it is posible to
say something like 'Aragorn is a descendant of Elendil' without being
guilty of 'fan fiction.'
While the "information" in Middle-earth was clearly shaped by artistic
considerations, it nonetheless remains information. Every sentence in the
Silmarillion or LoTR which has a declarative grammatical form is conveying
a piece of information; Most of the other sentences as well. It is possible
to cite this information without it being equivalent to 'fan fiction'. Indeed,
we MUST do so in order to reach any conclusion about anything OTHER than
some mechanical trivia such as Tolkien's preferred sentence structure.
>
>
>> I might respond in two ways:
>> --Who are you to say what does and does not enhance my appreciation and
>> enjoyment of Tolkien's work?
>
> I'm not at all talking about your enjoyment of Tolkien; I'm talking
>about the hermeneutics of a manner of discussion that frequently takes place
>here on r.a.b.t. You are, of course, free to enjoy Tolkien's writings in
>whatever way you like.
You advance the claim that I would not be interested in Middle-earth
information, or that I could not attempt to discover more of it, without
divorcing myself from literary or esthetic considerations. That is the
claim my rhetorical question was intended to dispute.
>
>> --Do you really feel it is reasonable to claim that there is only one
>> "right way" to look at literature, or anything else?
>
> No. However, I think it is reasonable to claim that some ways are
>better-- or at least more sensible-- than others. Every approach may be
>subjective, but that does not mean that every approach is equally as good.
>A methodology that treats Tolkien's writings as if they were mere repositories
^^^^
>of facts, instead of carefully constructed literary creations is, IMHO,
>hermeneutically inferior to one that accords primacy to the fact that they
>are works of art.
Again your use of the word 'mere' here changes a picture of my view into
a straw-man charicature that is easily dismissed. But the phrase 'MERE
respositories of facts' has no place in what I am actually saying.
[Part of my posting described Kocher's discussion of Aragorn deleted; it
ended with the question: is this analysis 'fan fiction'?]
>
> First of all, let me say that I think that what Kocher is doing in
>this chapter is a little silly. He wrote this chapter as a response to
>to critics (most notably Edmund Wilson) who had claimed that Tolkien's
>characters in LOTR are dull, undeveloped, and uninteresting. The character
As I have never read any of these other critic's work, I did not have
this perception of Kocher's analysis. It may be correct regarding Kocher's
motivations, but motivation or no what he did (IMHO) was to analyse the
motivations and character traits of Aragorn, not simply advance the claim
'he is interesting.' Certainly such a claim is implicit in devoting a
chapter to him in the first place, and certainly portions of that chapter
are devoted to praising Tolkien's handling of the character, but I perceived
both of those a tangential to the principle analysis.
> If Kocher were really interested in analysing or discussing LOTR
>as a scholar, he should have examined just what Tolkien _does_ with his
>characters, and tried to explain _why_ he does what he does with them, rather
>than simply trying to prove that a particular character is "interesting". I
As I said, I believe believe he DID examine what Tolkien _does_ with his
characters, and perhaps (though not as certainly, I agree), _why_ he does
it, regardless of his motivations for doing so.
>to defend Tolkien's status. He's not trying to resolve "inconsistencies,"
>or trying to explain unexplained characters, names, events, and/or vague
>"references." He is not, in short, trying to inject new narrative elements
>into Tolkien's story in the same way that much of the discussion here on
>r.a.b.t. does. In the process of arguing that Aragorn is an "interesting"
Here is one of the reasons I have begun to form the opinion that we are
talking at cross-purposes (see the beginning of the posting). I am not
arguing that there is scholarly value in adding new elements to Tolkien's
story. I am arguing that discussion in r.a.b.t. (or at least most of it)
is NOT trying to add new narrative elements, and is instead trying only
to locate and identify narrative elements already presents, thereby increasing
the particpant's overall knowledge of and appreciation of Tolkien's work.
>discussions. He treats Aragorn, for instance, as if he were a real person
>instead of a literary character, regarding textual references to Aragorn as
>simple conveyors of "information" and using them to make "in-frame" conjectures
It seems to me that analysis of character-- by which I mean the analysis
of what a character thinks, why (in-frame) they do what they do, etc. -- is
a very common feature of scholarly analysis of a work. Since a character in
a fiction is a creation of the author, at a different level from but not
conceptually different from the text that describes him, the investigation
of that creation is (IMHO) a worthwhile means to study the author's work.
Saying "Aragorn is motivated by his desire to regain his kingship" is not
conceptually different from saying "Aragorn has dark hair", although it
is certainly a more interesting observation. Neither statement requires us
to pretend that Aragorn is real; they simply make observations about Tolkien's
work without distracting disclaimers reiterating that obvious fact that
Tolkien's work is fiction.
>
> I didn't follow the good Orc/bad Orc thread, I'm afraid. (And I
>certainly don't have a "camp".) However, I contend, as I have always
>contended on a.f.t. and r.a.b.t., that what's _not_ in a book can be (and
>often is) as signficant as what is in it. I think the question of why Tolkien
>chose not to include any "good" Orcs is very interesting and that the answers
>to it might be very insightful. However, I think that any answer that involves
>inventing "in-frame" explanations for the lack of "repentant orcs" produces
>fan-fiction rather than actual insight.
I used the word 'camp' in a purely figurative sense, referring only
to 'those who agree with what I perceive your position to be in this debate.'
In point of fact I agree with you that the question of why there are
no 'good' Orcs, or even signs that Orcs are capable of moral choice, is
an interesting one. (The posting that I attributed to 'your camp' argued
that it is not, because the absence of such Orcs is simply a flaw in the
work). I also agree with you that 'inventing' an in-frame explanation would
be valueless in addressing this question. I maintain only that if there
IS an in-frame explanation already put there by Tolkien, then might might
indeed be valuable in addressing the question.
>
>> In my opinion, by claiming that to analyze the works by their 'factual'
>>content represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what literature is,
>>you are essentially claiming that considerations of plot, character and
>>incident are all equally misguided, that we can comment only on the
>>poetic wording of the text.
>
> Not at all. Discussions of plot, character, etc. can be
>done perfectly sensibly, so long as they adhere to the what the text
>actually says, and not what we would like it to say instead.
More evidence of my 'talking at cross-purposes' theory. What I claim is
that our goal in most of these discussions IS to adhere to what the text
says.
>
>
>> I freely grant that discussion of any given 'trivia' point may not lead
>>us to any sort of insight at all; but such discussion is not conceptually
>>different from a consideration of broader, but still 'factual' issues that
>>may be of vital importance.
>
> I'm not really sure what you're saying here.
Basically just an aside here, I am saying that the existence of discussions
of truly insignificant trivia does not mean that all discussions of 'factual'
issues are equally without import.
> On a broader level, however, I gather that what you are getting
>at is _why_ the appendices are at the back of LOTR in the first place--
Not just the appendices, but all the careful accounting of dates and
the concern to keep the time-frames properly 'synchronized' in the two
very different plotlines of Frodo-in-Mordor and War-of-the-Ring. Also
the existence of additions to the Silmarillion to provide background
for LoTR incidents, and the numerous 'documentary' essays that provide
nothing but background information for one thing or another.
>that he does. For me, this has always been one of the most intriguing
>questions about LOTR-- and I have to admit, that I don't have a lot of
>answers that are beyond the vague and nebulous stage. One of the answers,
>I think, is pragmatic, rather than poetic. Remember that Tolkien was trying
>to get the _Silmarillion_ published as well. I think that the inclusion
So in other words it is in this case you who are denying an artistic
motive and claiming that the appendices are mere commericial advertisements?
(Yes, I know that two sentences later you propose some artistic motives
as well: I'm just pointing out the kind of charicaturing which you have
been doing of my views.)
>of the stories in the appendices was an attempt to whet reader's appetites
>for more so that his publishers would be reconsider publishing _The
>Silmarillion_. I think that the appendices, however, also have a number
>of poetic purposes, the most obvious of which is to make the reader suspend
>his/her disbelief even more than is possible than with a straight narrative.
>This does, not, however, entirely explain the "form" of some of the stories
>in the appendices-- the fact that Tolkien presents some of them as family
>trees, as lists of dates, as analysis of language, etc. One possible
>explanation is that Tolkien was doing the same sort of experimentation
>with genre that James Joyce explored in _Ulysses_, exploring the possibilities
>and limitations of telling stories through means other than the conventional
Why do you find 'sub-creation' so unacceptable as an artistic motive
in its own right?
--Keith F. Goodnight
Keith Goodnight
>
><CB7LD...@rice.edu> kei...@is.rice.edu (Keith Goodnight):
>> The contrary type of attack seems hardly possible, except by a deluded or
>>at least very naive person:
>
>Who me? :-) ...Looks like flame bait... ...Ok, I'll bite!
>
>> "Galadriel's reference to Nargothrond and Gondolin is another example
>>of Tolkien's use of historical references to give a very effective sense
>>of the temporal depth of Middle-earth in the Third Age."
>> "No, it's not! Tolkien couldn't have made that up for effect because she
>>really had lived there that long."
>
>I think the response you called "hardly possible" seems quite
>reasonable, if a bit poorly worded.
>
> "No, it's not! Tolkien couldn't have" developed an emotionally
> moving sense of temporal depth if he simply "made ... up" references
> to the First Age for "effect". The passage is effective only because
> it is presented through the eyes of the Lady Galadriel herself, who
> "really had lived there that long" and the reader shares in her
> feelings reminiscing about empires long lost in her past.
I have the queer sort of sideways feeling of suddenly meeting someone
coming in at right angles to the debate that Jim Chokey and I have been
engaged in.
What I intended you to see in the (supposedly deluded) statement:
"No, it's not! Tolkien couldn't have made that up for effect because she
really had lived there that long."
is not "made up the reference to Nargothrond and Gondolin", but rather
"Made up Galadriel as a character with a long history."
In other words, I was presenting as a charicature someone who would argue
that there is no artistic purpose in Tolkien's creation because there is
actually a 'real' Middle-earth out there and Tolkien was constrained only
to write what 'really' happened in it.
I think what you're claiming in contrary is exactly what I have been
claiming all along: That it is an important part of Tolkien's artistic
motives (and his artistic success) that such references are not arbitrary but
are tied to a wider (though invented) history.
--Keith F. Goodnight
S. Kleinman
[A Great Deal Deleted On Both Sides Of These Comments]
> 1. One of Tolkien's artistic aims was to create, or 'sub-create', a
> highly detailed world with its own geography, history, mythology,
> theology, languages, etc. (From all accounts, it appears that the
> last was the primary motivation: Tolkien subscribed to the view of
> linguistics that held a language could only be properly understood
> in the context of the mythology told by it)
> 2. Tolkien was not perfectly successful in his attempt to make his
> sub-creation completely consistent or fully explained.
> 3. He did, however, generate a huge mass of writings containing a huge
> mass of both 'trivia' on names, places, histories, etc. and broader
> conceptual issues of theology and philosophy that governed how
> things work in Middle'earth.
> 4. Because of (3), none of us is omniscient with respect to what is in
> the text.
> 5. Because of (4), when faced with a seeming contradiction or unexplained
> phenomenon, we cannot at first be sure whether it is a result of point
> (2) or simply a result of our missing something.
Tom Shippey has pointed out that an aspect of Tolkien's sub-creation
was the production of many "false starts", giving a great mass of
different versions of the same stories, some contradictory, and
some showing different stages of development. This, he said, mirrored
the real-world confusion of early literature with its complex manuscript
relation, differing motifs, &c. The implication is not that Tolkien
was deliberately creating a confused picture but that unconsciously he
found that that confused picture was necessary to his work, to the
believability of his Secondary World.
I think this is an extremely good point. Of course, it does imply that
the author had not final intent, and it is pointless for us to seek
one. But such a conclusion would signify Tolkien's ultimate failure
in this regard. Tolkien's work mirrors the situation we find in
early mediaeval literature (for instance) - but in the case of Beowulf,
Sir Gawain, &c. we can assume that the author *did* originally have
a final intent, and therefor we are justified in seeking one, even if
the task is theoretically impossible (unless we have a seance). What
I mean is that whilst we are in Tolkien's world we must treat it as
a world which *is* internally consistent, though, just as in the
real world, we cannot quite see how. If Tolkien can get us to do this,
he has succeeded (and I think he has). But when we step back and
look at Tolkien's work from the outide, and look at it as the product
of an artist in the real world, we have to admit that the artist
was as uncertain as we are about aspects of his world, but that
very uncertainty in the end is one of the most intriguing aspects
of his art.
--
Scott Kleinman sk1...@cus.cam.ac.uk
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre delicat,
- Hypocrite lecteur, - mon semblable, - mon frere!
William D.B. Loos
In article <1993Aug4.2...@leland.Stanford.EDU>, jch...@leland.Stanford.EDU (James Alexander Chokey) writes...
>
> [a great deal]
I must say, I'm still somehow not altogether clear on where you're coming
from. If you're saying that "viewing Middle-earth as 'imaginary history'
should not be the only way one approaches it" then I don't think anyone
would disagree with you. On the other hand, if you're saying that "viewing
Middle-earth as 'imaginary history' is an approach that's intrinsically
flawed and is basically *wrong*, in and of itself", then hardly anyone would
agree, including Tolkien himself (as I'll show in a moment). It's not
fully clear, but I seem to detect definite overtones of the latter in your
most recent post.
Obviously there are many ways of approaching a story -- in a similar discussion
on the Tolkien mailing list I came up with six different ways (which I'll get
to presently), one of which was treating the secondary reality (Tolkien's term)
as though it had a real existence (note the "as though") and one of which was
standard literary analysis, which, I think, is what you've been pushing. My
conclusion was that while Tolkien engaged in both, he probably didn't consider
either one as the primary way in which any story should be approached. Rather,
I suspect he would have said that the first approach should be as a Story, a
notion which I believe all the Inklings shared; they included myth under the
heading of Story, felt that myths did express truth, and thought that such
truth as could be expressed was best expressed (or perhaps even only expressed)
in the mode of stories. I hasten to note that this is a horrible over-
simplification of a complicated attitude which in any event is only imperfectly
understood by this writer. The point is that the Story was the primary
concern and that *both* the "sub-creational" approach *and* the literary
analysis approach can be traps, that both of them can lead to anti-story
attitudes if they aren't kept under control.
But this doesn't mean that neither one should be engaged in, merely that one
must keep in mind that both are different but valid aspects of the Story.
Tolkien himself certainly did both. I'll give the list of different
approaches, but before that I want to show how much of the sub-creational
stuff Tolkien himself did, but before that ...
Will you please, please, *please* stop using the term "fan fiction". It must
be obvious by now that I'm not the only one who finds this at best irritating
(let's leave out the "at worst"). You say it isn't your intention to be
baiting anyone, and as a point of courtesy I'll take your word for it, but
surely you must have noticed how many nerves you've been hitting. Your
response may be that we deserve to have our nerves hit, but I can't believe
that's really your intent. I must say that your insistence on using the
phrase over and over and over and over and over isn't really helping anything.
It's distracting, and lessens the chance that people will respond to you on
the merits (yes, I know, in a perfect world that wouldn't be the case). It
has definite conotations which I can't quite put my finger on, but whatever
they are I don't like them.
Moreover, speaking denotatively, the phrase seems ill-chosen. I'm of the
school that takes the more conventional view that "fiction" refers to actual
stories, which in this case would be stories set in Middle-earth. There have
really been very few of those. Something you've repeated more than once is
something like "Middle-earth is fictional anyway". Well. Indeed. But this
makes me wonder if you aren't missing the point. The distinction being made
is between the Primary Reality and the Secondary Reality (Tolkien's terms),
and naturally the perspective is different depending on from where one is
looking. Now, before you respond to that, let's examine it in more detail,
and let's start with Tolkien's own views:
From letter #154 (to Naomi Mitchison, 25 Septempter 1954) (p. 196):
You have been most kind and encouraging to me, and your generous and
perceptive review puts me in your debt. Yours is the only comment that I
have seen that, besides treating the book as 'literature', at least in
intent, and even taking it seriously (and praising or ridiculing it
accordingly), also sees it as an elaborate form of the *game* of inventing
a country -- an endless one ...
From letter #160 (to Rayner Unwin, 6 March 1955) (p. 210):
I now wish that no appendices had been promised! For I think their
appearence in truncated and compressed form will satisfy nobody: certainly
not me; clearly from the (appalling mass of) letters I receive not those
people who like that kind of thing -- astonishingly many; while those who
enjoy the book as an 'heroic romance' only, and find 'unexplained vistas'
part of the literary effect, will neglect the appendices, very properly.
I am not now at all sure that the tendency to treat the whole thing
as a kind of vast game is really good -- cert. not for me, who find that
kind of thing only too fatally attractive. It is, I suppose, a tribute
to the curious effect that story has, when based on very elaborate and
detailed workings of geography, chronology, and language, that so many
should clamour for sheer 'information', or 'lore'. But the demands of
such people would again require a book ...
Now, the way I read that Tolkien saw nothing wrong with the "game" approach,
even though he felt it had to be kept under control in those who had a taste
for it (a group which included himself), even though the ultimate purpose of
the sub-creation is to contribute to the believability of the story. What's
more, even though in these early letters he was a trifle unsure, he went
right on "playing the game". He took it as a sign of his successful effort
at sub-creation that many people wrote as though about a real place about
which his "reporting" had been inaccurate or incomplete, and he answered them
in the same spirit. Sometimes he adopted that perspective even when people
didn't address their questions explicitly from that point of view.
Obviously he didn't do this all the time -- he spent a great deal of time
discussing technical aspects of the work or the theological and philosophical
ideas behind it. Sometimes he spoke as the "editor/translator" (from within
the secondary reality), other times as the Author. (I myself identify a third
voice, that of Sub-creator, when he spoke within the story and yet spoke of
matters that no editor could have known about -- what he was actually doing
of course was propounding theology and philosophy in mythical guise.) What's
more, he often switched back and forth within a single letter (a practice which
has gotten several commentators in big trouble).
The point of all this is that he plainly saw nothing wrong with the "game"
aspect. It most certainly wasn't the whole picture, but he had taken great
pains to make the world of Middle-earth appear realistic, and taking it on
its own terms seemed perfectly natural. When *we* take this attitude on this
list we're doing precisely what Tolkien did. Literally. I mean that the
tone adopted by the posts you seem to find objectionable is exactly the tone
of Tolkien's own letters. Which is why I'm puzzled at the intensity of your
reaction. Are you saying that appreciation of Tolkien shouldn't be limited
to examination of its imaginary 'history' from within the secondary reality?
I don't think anyone would disagree with that. Are you saying that you don't
want to play? Fine. Don't. But you seem to be condemning the game itself
(or maybe you've simply inadvertantly fallen into the appearence of this in
the twists this long thread has taken?). All of which makes me wonder if
you've read the Letters at all. If not, then I must wonder if you have any
business saying the things you've been saying -- well, I guess you do, but
if you read the Letters at the very least you'll have to admit that Tolkien
himself must be among the targets of your displeasure.
As for the larger question, my feeling is that Tolkien thought that the
most important approach to a story was as a story, with whatever enjoyment
(and secondarily, insight or truth) that that brought. He was always
particularly pleased when people praised LotR on those grounds. What we
should beware of, then, is that any other approach might lead to anti-story
tendencies. This is my list of the possible approaches. (Note that this is
not intended to be a hierarchy, except for the first one).
1) As a Story. Here I think we all agree, and Tolkien (and the other
Inklings) with us, that stories should first and foremost be approached as
stories. In this view, the secondary world exists only (or mainly) to
contribute to the story. Details of the sub-creation are a means to an end
(increasing the verisimilitude of the setting of the story) and not ends in
themselves. This, I think, is why no one has ever approached Tolkien's
achievment: too many people start out with the subcreation and expect the
story to look after itself; Tolkien was writing a story, and all his
infinite pains were directed towards that end.
2) Obsession with the minutiae of the secondary world. This, I gather, is
what bothers you. Tolkien himself loved doing this, as he noted in the
letter quoted above; moreover, he couldn't very well have created Middle-
earth at all if he didn't like the technical aspects of sub-creation. The
danger which he brought up is a real one: it is possible to be overwhelmed
by lore to the exclusion of the story which the lore exists to support.
Well, all we can do is keep that in mind (but I have found that frequent
doses of straight LotR are helpful ...)
3) The mechanical aspects of how the story was achieved strictly from the
point of view of the craft of writing: how the narrative evolved, how he
managed to produce its uniquely subtle dynamic balance. Tolkien didn't
by any means rule out such considerations, and even discussed them in a
few letters. (HoM-e, Vols VI - IX, have much to contribute here.)
4) Allegorizing. This, as we all know, is the one Tolkien hated most, and
also the one which is the most misguided. This may be common enough to
be a category of its own or it may be a subset of
5) Literary analysis, the search for philosophical, theological, and
literary themes, the danger being that the story may wind up being reduced
to a collection of such themes. Which is not to say that such themes
aren't there. As Tolkien himself more-or-less put it, an author is a
person with a worldview and naturally the aspects of the worldview will
manifest themselves in some way in any story the author writes. Tolkien's
certainly appeared in his, as he observed himself. But the themes are
part of the story, not what the story is about (one might say that that
broad themes are clothing for the story, not the other way around).
6) The tendency to try to analyze the story by analyzing the author. Tolkien
found this one pretty irritating too. This is not to say there's anything
wrong with identifying elements as having come from Tolkien's own life,
it's just that such identifications have nothing to do with the story.
That Tolkien shared Faramir's dream of the sinking of Numenor (Atlantis)
tells something about Tolkien, not Faramir. That Treebeard's "hoom, hoom"
was modeled on C.S. Lewis' booming voice tells us nothing in particular
about anything, but it seems to me to be a charming sort of thing to have
happened.
The point is that after (1), none of the other five have any monopoly as the
only way to go. All have something to contribute. Even (2). It's true
that there's one school of thought that what the author intended is
irrelevant, that it's only what he said that matters. Indeed, there are
times when authors are intentionally ambiguous, and that also can be
illuminating. However, in many places Tolkien was not doing this. Some
people may find it worthwhile to examine the ending of LotR as though
Frodo's journey over the Sea was death, and it may in fact be worthwhile.
Nevertheless, surely there's some importantance in examining an author's
conception the way he intended it, especially when it's as carefully
considered as Tolkien's (in this particular case, Frodo's journey, even
though he was travelling to the equivalent of heaven, was not in any
way intended to be death).
Note also that there are dangers to (5). Tolkien wrote an entire lecture,
"Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics", in which he addressed this very
problem. I believe he's credited with freeing Beowulf from the rut it had
fallen into, in which it had become a bundle of historical and linguistic
themes, and getting people to start reading it as poetry again (he used to
walk into class and start reciting it in Anglo-Saxon without any preamble).
Now, about some of your particular points:
> The phrasing and word choice of your question reveals a profound
>misconception of the nature of literary works. As I pointed out at some
>length in my previous post, a work of art is not a body of "raw data" about
>which one is to make "deductions" or produce "hypotheses." It is not a
>bundle of "information."
This is that basic distiction between primary and secondary reality. Viewed
from the primary reality, of course it doesn't contain data. However, from
within the secondary reality, especially when it's as carefully put together
as Tolkien's was, its elements can indeed be viewed as facts, or, if you
prefer, as "facts", as "elements" of an "imaginary history". I think it's
important to point out that this particular work of art was put together in
a very particular way, and the sub-creational aspect of it was a very important
component. Of course, that's not the whole picture.
>To treat it as such is to miss the point
Well, to treat it *only* as such would certainly be very limiting -- but is
anyone here really doing that?
>One can, of course, do so-- but in doing so one misses what is really
>significant about it.
This may be a matter of opinion -- I think many of us feel that the sub-
creational aspect is indeed part of what is "really" significant about it
(though I'm not sure any of us should claim complete knowledge on this score).
>If one talks about Tolkien's writings as if they were simply a medium
>through which pseudo-factual "information" is conveyed, their true signficance
>is also missed.
Here we agree, though the key word is "simply" -- obviously it can't be the
only approach -- but again, I find it hard to believe that anyone here is
limiting themselves to that extent.
> On the contrary, the first-- the invention of stories/information
>that aren't actually present in Tolkien's own narratives-- is the primary
>focus of discussions in this newsgroup.
Now here I'm baffled -- not by the distinction, which of course I and anyone
would agree with, but with the phrase "new stories/information that aren't
actually present in Tolkien's own narratives" -- who are you talking about?
I already pointed out that there haven't been any new stories, and where does
this notion of "new information" come from? The invariable practice, as far
as I know, is to find some explicit comment by Tolkien himself on a given
matter, and if he didn't make one then the question can't be answered.
>It's just that many of these
>"creative speculations" (to borrow Mike McConnell's phrase), these "fan-
>fictions" (to use my own), masquerade themselves as analyses of Tolkien's
>writings.
(There's that phrase again). I think that "creative speculation" is too
strong here -- in every case it's either the uncovering and elucidation of
things that Tolkien said himself or it's the filling in of fairly narrow gaps,
not with the freedom of true creativity but by carefully following the many
guidelines Tolkien already laid down. "Speculation" it may be, in certain
cases, but it's not as outside of and independant of Tolkien's work as you
seem to be suggesting. What's more, "deduction" and "analysis" would seem to
be the correct terms. It's not *literary analysis*, to be sure, but, then,
nobody said it was. It's analysis of elements of the imaginary history and
sub-creation from a point of view within the secondary reality itself. I
really don't see why you're so bent out of shape over it -- no one's insisting
that everyone as to play.
>It's one thing to talk about what Tolkien actually work; it's
>another to add one's own embellishments to it.
I hope you'll be able to provide some examples of this.
>This distinction, however, is
>not usually conveyed in the style of the postings themselves, as many of these
>fan-fictional discussions assume the form of a discussion of Tolkien's text.
>Earlier, you said that this was a mere "linguistic convention" that was used
>by people who knew quite well that they were not _really_ talking about what
>was in Tolkien's texts.
(That phrase again). Well, in my experience it's always been understood by
the context whether someone is viewing the writings from the primary or from
the secondary reality. It's always been presumed that people can tell the
difference (between the two viewpoints and also between the two realities!).
In fact, it's always seemed sort of obvious. The postings you object to are
the latter, which treat the writings as though they were history; this is the
tone of much of the writings themselves, and is precisely the tone of many
of Tolkien's letters. Surely you don't think that when people received such
letters, in which he wrote as though answering questions about the history of
a real place, that they concluded that his mind was disordered? Again, what
puzzles me is your seeming frenzy to insist on one approach to the exclusion
of the other. Why not both?
> Trying to talk about "canonical authority" is, IMHO, a fundamentally
>misguided endeavor in the first place. The term "canon," as I'm sure you
>know, is derived from the medieval tradition of biblical interpretation
>which ascribed to certain works the status of sacred scripture and relegated
>others to the level of "Apocrypha" or mere "commentary."
I can't imagine what offends you so much about using the term "canonical"
(or is it religious -- in that case I can be sympathetic). We weren't even
the ones who started using this term for modern fiction (it was the
Sherlockians, though I believe they have some questions even about whether
everything that Doyle wrote was canonical -- but that's another story).
Yes, the things that Tolkien himself wrote are canonical, and secondary
sources aren't -- surely it's no more than a convenient way of sorting
sources into categories -- why the pother?
>Underlying the whole notion of canonicity, however,
>are a set of extremely dubious hermeneutical assumptions: (1) the assumption
>that all of the various writings that have been labelled "canonical" fit
>together into a complete and consistent whole,
Well, it depends how much of a literalist one is being. If you want every
miniscule detail worked out, then of course there are lapses. However,
there's no question that Tolkien was working from what approached a complete
picture in his mind.
>(2) the assumption that any
>contradictions or discrepencies between the various parts of the canon
>can be "resolved" by looking somwhere else in the canonized works and do not
>pose a serious challenge to the canon's unity,
In the general world of literature this is probably true, but the reason
people get so caught up in Tolkien in this particular way is precisely
because his creation has so few of these problems. There are very few
insoluble contradictions that I know of, certainly fewer than a dozen
(and probably fewer than five), and given the size of the body of writing,
that's quite remarkable.
>(3) the assumption that certain
>parts of the canon should take priority over other parts (as Christians claim
>that the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament, and as many Tolkien fans
>presume that LOTR is best understood through the lens of the Silmarillion),
Here I'm baffled again -- of course certain parts take priority, namely those
ones which were published, about which Tolkien had presumably made firm
decisions about how he wanted things to be. That seems as natural a view as
there could be. And I don't know anyone who tries to view LotR solely through
the Silm: yes, the Silm illuminates LotR; yes, it was ultimately more important
to Tolkien, in a personal sense. But I don't know of anyone who's ever tried
to reduce LotR to "mere" foreground material to the Silm (though on the other
hand attempts to reduce the Silm to mere background material to LotR should
also be resisted).
>and (4) the assumption that the various stories related within works that
>have been labeled canonical are facts-- or at least that they can be discussed
>and treated as if they were facts.
Well, why on earth not? Tolkien did so all the time and so do we. Of
course they're only "facts", not facts; of course it's only a game. It
just seems odd that it should bother you so much. Well, actually, I can
see how it can get tiresome if you don't want to play, as I've found by
talking too much to people around here who aren't interested. Still, it
seems like you've picked an odd forum for this particular line of argument,
since this is precisely that place where people come to do this kind of thing.
>> But unlike the published writings, we cannot see the 'sub-creation' laid
>>out whole and concrete in front of us.
>
> That's because it _doesn't_ really exist outside of the texts (both
>published and unpublished) that create it. There is no Middle-earth outside
>of the stories in which it is represented.
As for whether there's more to Middle-earth than what we've been shown
explicitly, here I think you're flat wrong. And not just about Tolkien.
Surely any writer who thinks carefully about the story "knows" more than he
tells us? Part of writing fiction is judicious selection, and what we're
shown is always only certain facets of what is in the author's mind. Which
again is not to say that all authors have everything worked out. Indeed,
usually they don't, and achieve the affect of believable secondary reality by
art (Tolkien himself noted that in the works he admired, esp. Beowulf, this
was the case). But then, Tolkien was a special case -- he often seemed
to like taking an element introduced for artistic reasons and turning it
into "history", which is why there's so much of it. (Also, of course,
he would create elements of the "history" and then work them in artistically
afterwards). The point being that there was a great deal more in his
head than was revealed in any of the works. This is the main reason that
people find the Letters so intoxicating, because many of the hints he gave
were *not* mere hints thrown out for effect -- there was real secondary
reality behind them.
>Those stories, furthermore, do
>not all represent the same Middle-earth.
Well, it depends on whether one concentrates on the disparities (few)
or the links (many).
>In fact, I think one can safely say
>that the notion of "Middle-earth" isn't really a signficant part of _The
>Hobbit_ or the _Adventures of Tom Bombadil_ at all.
Re: TB, you're on fairly firm ground here (the Preface does give us some
new information). Although in a way it shows how unified Tolkien's
overall vision was, since even those poems which had nothing to do with
M-e but were based on Anglo-Saxon tales, like "The Hoard" and "The Last
Ship", fit almost effortlessly into the M-e worldview.
Re: The Hobbit, yes, this is the weak link in the chain. Originally it
certainly had nothing to do with the Silm, but LotR was written on the
core of the background it provided, and, as Christopher has said, The
Hobbit was "drawn into" the world of the Silm by LotR. By the time LotR
was finished, the Hobbit was firmly part of M-e. (Such discrepancies as
remain we "explain" as the intrusions of an overzealous translator, but
that notion will probably upset you.)
>Yes, Tolkien ultimately
>tried to tie together most of his fictional works and set them in the same
>invented world, but his primary purpose was always poetic.
If we want to be strictly accurate, his primary purpose was linguistic,
and all the stories were written to provide a background for the evolution
of the Elven languages. For all I know, he may really have viewed them
all along as a bag to contain the languages. I don't, though -- I see the
languages as one more component in one of the most extraordinary examples
of dynamic balance in literature that I know of ...
>The stories
>made avaialable in the _Unfinished Tales_ and HoMe are, except when they
>are truly fragmentary scribbles or earlier versions of later stories), were
>intended to be independent works of art-- individual tales, lays, songs, etc.
>There are, of course, countless intertextualities between them and between
>Tolkien's published works, but they were intended to be independent works
>of art that could stand on their as literature-- not mere conveyors of
>"information" or "raw data" to flesh out the artificial world. To treat
>them as such is to mistake the cart for the horse and, once again, to miss
>the point.
Here I'm baffled again. Re: HoMe, that OK -- it is indeed a mixed bag; most
of it is rough drafts, and some parts of it (like the Lays) could stand
alone, but what's this stuff about UT? The screaming complaint of the
non-Tolkien types was precisely that none of it *could* stand on its own;
that only people who knew about all the rest of what had been published
could appreciate it. I think you'd be hard pressed to name even one portion
of it which could stand on it's own, and, as someone pointed out, much of
it was explicitly intended to expand on aspects of the earlier writings.
Truly, they weren't intended "just" to convey information (though it's
hard to think of annals as doing anything else) -- they were written with
Tolkien's inimitible style -- but that was certainly their main function.
>>Much of it no doubt existed only in the
>>author's mind, and the various writings, published an unpublished, are only
>>windows on that construct, variously general or specific, definitive or
>>speculative. If we wish to study this work-- a highly different kind of work
>>than a literary composition whether narrative or documentary-- then we are
>>forced to pull together evidence from a miscellany of sources, and we must
>>attempt to deduce the whole from these fragmented parts.
>
> But there is no "whole" except in the imagination of you and others.
Here I disagree with you completely, mainly on the strength of the Letters,
and again I wonder if you've read them.
>Like it or not, there are only independent works of art-- some complete
>and some incomplete. Tolkien's novels, poems, stories are not mere
>"fragmented parts"-- they are _all_ that there is. Pretending that there is
>anything beyond may be fun, but it's _not_ analysis-- it's pure narrative
>invention and it should be recognized as such.
This may be an insoluble disagreement, since it depends on how much faith
one has in the fertility of Tolkien's imagination. However, many people
have sincerely concluded that Tolkien really did perceive a unity, and
this is not a pretense, not part of a game. I really think you may be
underestimating Tolkien -- he wasn't faking it. (Incidentally, you again
seem to be confounding conventional literary analysis with more general
analysis -- the notion of studying the sub-creation for it's own sake
really does bug you, doesn't it?)
> Study? What's being studied? Certainly not Tolkien's texts-- at
>least not to any degree more than is necessary to find some roots from
>which one can cultivate their own embellishments to the story. (Simply
>because these embellishments are rooted in Tolkien's text does not mean
>that they are any less fan-fictional; fan-fiction is rarely "baseless.")
>Inventing supplementary fictions to explain things in Tolkien's stories that
>are left unexplained or undeveloped _is_ fan-fiction. In doing so, you-- a
>fan-- are adding things to Tolkien's story that he did not put in there.
This is what I object to most strongly: "embellishments", "supplementary",
and "adding things". I now call on you to produce your examples of anything
that wasn't explicitly verified by Tolkien somewhere.
And I guess summarizing brings me back to where I started from. If you
think people are overdoing the sub-creational analysis to the exclusion of
other aspects of the stories, then it's a valid objection in the abstract,
though not, I think, correct in terms of what people are actually doing.
On the other hand, if you're condemning the whole effort as somehow "wrong"
in every respect, then I think you're adopting an extreme position.
Let's end with something from Tolkien himself (it's from Monsters and the
Critics, p. 120, but I copied it from the Preface of The Annotated Hobbit);
I think it can be applied to all five of the other approaches to a story
mentioned above:
... In Dasent's words I would say: 'We must be satisfied with the soup that
is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it
has been boiled' ... By 'the soup' I mean the story as it is served up by
its author or teller, and by 'the bones' its sources or material -- even
when (by rare luck) those can be with certainty discovered. But I do not,
of course, forbid criticism of the soup as soup.
===============================================================================
| Still round the corner there may wait
| A new door or a secret gate;
William D.B. Loos | And though I oft have passed them by,
| The day will come at last when I
lo...@frodo.mgh.harvard.edu | Shall take the hidden paths that run
| West of the Moon, East of the Sun.
| -- Frodo Baggins, in The Red Book
===============================================================================
S. Kleinman
>
[Much material deleted]
[Approaches to Tolkien's work:]
>
> 1) As a Story. [Explanation deleted]
>
> 2) Obsession with the minutiae of the secondary world. [Explanation
deleted]
>
> 3) [Evolution of the story - I am paraphrasing William's words here]
>
> 4) Allegorizing. [Explanation deleted]
>
> 5) Literary analysis, the search for philosophical, theological, and
> literary themes, the danger being that the story may wind up being reduced
> to a collection of such themes. Which is not to say that such themes
>
> 6) The tendency to try to analyze the story by analyzing the author.
One approach you forgot is the stylistic approach and the examination of
narrative technique. This has not received enough attention in Tolkien
scholarship.
I'm sorry I have completely butchered your long article, which was
very interesting. Unfortunately, I don't have time to comment on
what you say. Such is the way of things.
Champion R.
> If you honestly find the debates on the hermeneutical issues that
>underlie Tolkien discussion so "annoying" and "can do without them," there's
>a simple solution-- don't read them. It's _that_ simple. Really. All
Oh, indeed I assure you that I have made extensive use of the 'n' key in
regards to this topic. Largely because it is NOT a hermeneutical discussion
at all. What was going on BEFORE you began this thread was hermeneutical
discussion... what has gone on SINCE is groundless argument.
> BTW, I know the tone of this is quite nasty, and I apologize for that.
Do not fear... I can take it. :)
>There are few things that annoy me more than posters who try to play netcop and
>tell others not to post things that they are not personally interested in.
I would like to point out that at no time did I say you could not post. I
stated several personal opinions. One of which was that I would like it very
much if you would either 'put up or shut up.' A 'netcop' would likely have
pointed out that your messages take up excessive bandwidth, that you tend to
quote the entire message you are responding to (including those parts that are
quoted from an older message of yours), that your topic has disrupted the
standard fare of the newsgroup, or any of a number of other such annoying
holier than thou stuff.
I was merely rude on a more personal level. You have stated often and most
loquaciously that there is "fan fiction" on this newsgroup and then argued
to support your claim. My POINT in the previous message was that for all the
quoting you do you have never taken an article and quoted it and said...
'here, THIS is fan fiction.' I note that you have still not done so...
preferring merely to quote the entirety of my message and then rant at it
without answering it (as you have done elsewhere).
I do not dispute your right to talk about something Tolkien related on this
newsgroup. If you wished to loudly proclaim at every oppurtunity that Morgoth
was really a very nice guy you could do so... taking up pages and pages of
space disputing other respondents and never citing an example of what Morgoth
did that was so nice.
You may well do that. And I would get on your case for it. If you are going
to make a point you'd better provide EVIDENCE for it or you are just 'pissing
in the wind' as it were. Show me some 'fan fiction'
Again, I'm not saying you can't post on any topic you want. But if you don't
have EVIDENCE for the claims you make then you are being rather obnoxious to
post so much VOLUME on an unsubstantiated claim.
James Alexander Chokey
along with much that is not really worthy of citing, except perhaps
on alt.flame:
>
>I was merely rude on a more personal level. You have stated often and most
>loquaciously that there is "fan fiction" on this newsgroup and then argued
>to support your claim. My POINT in the previous message was that for all the
>quoting you do you have never taken an article and quoted it and said...
>'here, THIS is fan fiction.' I note that you have still not done so...
The articles at the beginning of this thread were fan-fiction of the
sort that I was talking about-- that's what inspired me to raise the
hermeneutical questions I did in the first place.
>You may well do that. And I would get on your case for it. If you are going
>to make a point you'd better provide EVIDENCE for it or you are just 'pissing
>in the wind' as it were. Show me some 'fan fiction'
Take a look at your recent article insisting that Bombadil was not a
Maia. That's exactly the sort of discussion that I''m talking about.
Nobody else, btw, seems to have had much difficulty understanding
what sorts of discussions are being referred to here, including my main
"opponents"; they simply don't like the fact that I consider them to be fan-
fiction and disagree with the apellation. Once you've read the group for a
longer time, perhaps you too will have a better sense of what we're talking
about.
-- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
Raymond Macon
Scott Kleinman makes a good point in his thread with which I am in total
agreement. I point to Christopher Tolkien's remarks regarding his
father's writings on Galadriel that "greatest of elf women". He pointed
to the contradictions in her history himself and in his short essay in the
"Unfinished Tales" said that the contradictions could be viewed as the
result of "various traditions" which would have been handed down amongst
the bards of Middle-earth. He also offered the realistic explanation that
her role developed slowly as JRRT struggled with the ongoing evolution of
her character. In fact, Christopher Tolkien refers to a partially
"illegible note" in pencil set down in the last month of his father's life
(August 1973) concerning both Galadriel and Celeborn. I offer this as
"proof", if you will, that the `sub-creation' of Middle-earth was a vital
concern to Tolkien down to the last weeks of his life.
If, therefore, Middle-earth and its history were ongoing concerns for the
author, it should come as no great surprise that continuing speculations
are entertained by students of his works. There is no doubt that Tolkien
himself was aware of the inconsistencies and seeming contradictions in his
work and he labored at `polishing it up', to paraphrase Bilbo in Rivendell.
This newsgroup is an extension of the process Tolkien himself initiated.
I have learned a great deal from the "loremasters" who have contributed
the fruits of their own study and research. My only regret is that JRRT
himself cannot participate. I fancy that he would have profited greatly.
--
Raymond Macon
Boulder Public Library
(303) 441+4108, FAX: (303) 442+1808
INTERNET: mac...@boulder.lib.co.us
Keith Goodnight
What a dreadful way to represent a long a fascinating article!
I don't have anything really to add either in disagreement or approval to
William Loos' posting, I just want to offer applause for saying (in those
parts I do agree with) most of the same things I've been trying to say to
Jim Chokey throughout this thread, only much better than I've been able to
say them.
--Keith F. Goodnight
Charles F. Fitzgerald
> Jim Chokey writes...
> >
> > [a great deal]
> Will you please, please, *please* stop using the term "fan fiction". It must
> be obvious by now that I'm not the only one who finds this at best irritating
> (let's leave out the "at worst"). You say it isn't your intention to be
> baiting anyone, and as a point of courtesy I'll take your word for it, but
> surely you must have noticed how many nerves you've been hitting. Your
> response may be that we deserve to have our nerves hit, but I can't believe
> that's really your intent. I must say that your insistence on using the
> phrase over and over and over and over and over isn't really helping anything.
> It's distracting, and lessens the chance that people will respond to you on
> the merits (yes, I know, in a perfect world that wouldn't be the case). It
> has definite conotations which I can't quite put my finger on, but whatever
> they are I don't like them.
Why do you dislike the term so much? Could it be that Jim uses it so
often to bring this question out? I do not like the term used in this
sense, either, but I don't strongly object to its use. It is, after all,
used correctly, though I may not like that fact. I just don't use it
personnally.
In my opinion, the strong dislike for the ``fan-fiction'' term comes
because people view ``fan-fiction'' to be ``wrong'' or against the
wishes of the author. Those who create such writings are ``violating''
the writer's creations and are, therefore, miscreants. In the case
of Tolkien, however, as William Loos cited, we have not only the
author's permission, but even his commendation upon our doing so. So
what's the big deal if we call a spade a spade?
> The point of all this is that he plainly saw nothing wrong with the "game"
> aspect. It most certainly wasn't the whole picture, but he had taken great
> pains to make the world of Middle-earth appear realistic, and taking it on
> its own terms seemed perfectly natural. When *we* take this attitude on this
> list we're doing precisely what Tolkien did. Literally. I mean that the
> tone adopted by the posts you seem to find objectionable is exactly the tone
> of Tolkien's own letters. Which is why I'm puzzled at the intensity of your
> reaction. Are you saying that appreciation of Tolkien shouldn't be limited
> to examination of its imaginary 'history' from within the secondary reality?
> I don't think anyone would disagree with that. Are you saying that you don't
> want to play? Fine. Don't. But you seem to be condemning the game itself
> (or maybe you've simply inadvertantly fallen into the appearence of this in
> the twists this long thread has taken?). All of which makes me wonder if
> you've read the Letters at all. If not, then I must wonder if you have any
> business saying the things you've been saying -- well, I guess you do, but
> if you read the Letters at the very least you'll have to admit that Tolkien
> himself must be among the targets of your displeasure.
I have yet to read a post in which Jim seems ``to be condemning the game
itself.'' He has said that the ``game'' should be called ``fan-fiction.''
Okay. I don't see any real argument against this. It must be called
something. He said that most posters to r.a.b.t. are ``playing'' this
``game.'' You don't seem to deny this. He has not said that it was
not a good ``game'' to play or that those who play it are idiots, insane,
or otherwise mentally challenged, though he has admitted to not enjoying
the game much. I don't see how his statement that he does not enjoy the
game can be construed as being a ``condemnation''.
The only other statement he has made that I have read that may be alluded
to in this paragraph is Jim's comment that this ``game'' is not
``analysis''. Again, I fail to see how the comment could be regarded
as a ``condemnation'' of an activity.
In point of fact, in the very first few posts Jim made on this thread,
he said that the ``game'' was ``enjoyable''. Calling an activity
``enjoyable'' seems as far from a ``condemnation'' as is possible in
the English language, so I would conclude that ``you've simply inadver-
tantly fallen into ... the twists this long thread has taken''.
> 2) Obsession with the minutiae of the secondary world. This, I gather, is
> what bothers you. Tolkien himself loved doing this, as he noted in the
> letter quoted above; moreover, he couldn't very well have created Middle-
> earth at all if he didn't like the technical aspects of sub-creation. The
> danger which he brought up is a real one: it is possible to be overwhelmed
> by lore to the exclusion of the story which the lore exists to support.
> Well, all we can do is keep that in mind (but I have found that frequent
> doses of straight LotR are helpful ...)
Here, I believe, you express the very fear Jim has and the reason
for his original posting to this thread. As you say, ``it is possible
to be overwhelmed by lore to the exclusion of the story which the lore
exists to support [very well put, indeed -- CFF].'' From my reading
of Jim's posts, it seems to me that he believes that many or most the
threads on r.a.b.t. fall victim to this pitfall, and occasionally it
is necessary to ``keep that in mind''. To this end, he has written
several posts discussing the ``hermeneutical validity'' of the type
of discussions that generally take place on this newsgroup.
> >One can, [treat the work as a bundle of ``information''] of course,
> >do so-- but in doing so one misses what is really
> >significant about it.
>
> This may be a matter of opinion -- I think many of us feel that the sub-
> creational aspect is indeed part of what is "really" significant about it
> (though I'm not sure any of us should claim complete knowledge on this
score).
Are you actually arguing that it is a ``matter of opinion'' that
treating Tolkien's work as a ``bundle of `information''' will cause
something to be missed? I, too, believe in the sub-creational aspect
of Tolkien's writings, but I find it ridiculous to believe that anyone
would not allow that treating, say the Lord of the Rings, as a source
of ``raw data'' would necessarilly be missing something in the work.
> > On the contrary, the first-- the invention of stories/information
> >that aren't actually present in Tolkien's own narratives-- is the primary
> >focus of discussions in this newsgroup.
>
> Now here I'm baffled -- not by the distinction, which of course I and anyone
> would agree with, but with the phrase "new stories/information that aren't
> actually present in Tolkien's own narratives" -- who are you talking about?
> I already pointed out that there haven't been any new stories, and where does
> this notion of "new information" come from? The invariable practice, as far
> as I know, is to find some explicit comment by Tolkien himself on a given
> matter, and if he didn't make one then the question can't be answered.
Though I haven't seen any ``new stories'' posted here, there was at least
one posted to a.f.t. before this group superceded it. Furthermore, the
charter for r.a.b.t. allows for such stories to be posted if any author
chose to do so (I believe -- I remember this being discussed at voting
time, and it was to be included though it's been awhile since I read the
charter).
On the question of ``new information,'' I checked a recent thread and
found the following, which I believe, would fit into Jim's understanding
[Note: I mean no disrespect towards any of the quoted posters. I
was tired of hearing the cry for ``evidence'' and chose the first
article I thought fit my purposes -- CFF]:
Article: 3592 of rec.arts.books.tolkien
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien
From: v-i...@microsoft.com (Ian Wellock)
Subject: Re: Aragorn is a dope
Message-ID: <1993Aug05....@microsoft.com>
Date: 05 Aug 93 22:37:04 GMT
References: <1993Jul23.0...@oz.plymouth.edu>
<1993Jul21.0...@bhprtc.scpd.oz.au>
<1993Jul21.1...@spectrum.xerox.com>
<1993Jul23....@bhprtc.scpd.oz.au>
Distribution: usa
[The article has been edited somewhat -- CFF]
j_he...@oz.plymouth.edu wrote:
> David Faulkner writes:
> >I have little doubt that Aragorn, wielding Anduril, could have killed
> >the Witch King if he got the better of a fight between the two of them.
> >As I said before, Elendil 'killed' Sauron with it, and Sauron is another
> >level of 'nastiness' up from a Nazgul.
> >
> I don't think so. The man makes the sword powerful, in my
> opinion. Not the other way around...
Anduril is magical; it therefore lends some kind of strength to
Aragorn, however, apart from it being utterly irrelevant, Elendil
was also one step up from an 'ordinary' Dunedain, so the
comparison just doesn't work.
Ian.
Here we have the ``information'' that since ``Anduril is magical'',
``it therefore lends some kind of strength to Aragorn.'' This
information does not appear in the text of the Lord of the Ring,
and quite possibly, nowhere else. It is, therefore, invented or
``new''. Hence, we have ``new information.''
[This is only in the last response -- finding the ``fan-fiction''
in the the other two is left as an execise for the reader :-).]
> (That phrase again). Well, in my experience it's always been understood by
> the context whether someone is viewing the writings from the primary or from
> the secondary reality. It's always been presumed that people can tell the
> difference (between the two viewpoints and also between the two realities!).
> In fact, it's always seemed sort of obvious.
I don't believe ``it's ... sort of obvious'' to tell that the above
is actually fan-fiction; it certainly is not presented as such. It's
presented as a statement of fact as if it were an item of trivia ``dredged
up'' from the text. I would say that it would be difficult for some-
one not very familiar with all the Tolkienian texts to tell whether
the above is or is not conjecture. It may be obvious to you, but not
to everyone.
> The postings you object to are
> the latter, which treat the writings as though they were history; this
> is the tone of much of the writings themselves, and is precisely the
> tone of many of Tolkien's letters.
The postings to which I object are the ones that purport what is not
necessarilly true. For example, in the previous sentence you write,
``The posting you object to are the latter....'' I have yet to read
Jim ever post that he _objects_ to postings of a fan-fictional nature.
> Well, why on earth not? Tolkien did so all the time and so do we. Of
> course they're only "facts", not facts; of course it's only a game. It
> just seems odd that it should bother you so much.
And it seems odd that calling this ``game'' ``fan-fiction'' should
``bother you so much.'' In fact, it seems to me, that you seem much
more ``bothered'' by calling this ``game'' ``fan-fiction'' than Jim
does with your playing of the ``game'' on a public forum.
> Still, it
> seems like you've picked an odd forum for this particular line of
> argument, since this is precisely that place where people come to
> do this kind of thing.
It ``seems like ... an odd forum'' for discussing the normal way in
which people discuss Tolkien? As I recall, this group was created to
talk about Tolkien in any way, shape, or form. There were several
(many from Jim, in fact) very vehement articles asserting that the
_only_ right USENET forum for the discussion of anything Tolkienian,
be it movies, posters, books, philological works, would be rec.arts.
books.tolkien when the issue was brought before the news.groups
populace. So, it seems to me, that if this is an ``odd forum for
this particular line of argument'' there aren't any even ones (okay,
it's a bad pun, but this thread has been a little too heavy lately
:-)).
> Here I'm baffled again. Re: HoMe, that OK -- it is indeed a mixed bag; most
> of it is rough drafts, and some parts of it (like the Lays) could stand
> alone, but what's this stuff about UT? The screaming complaint of the
> non-Tolkien types was precisely that none of it *could* stand on its own;
> that only people who knew about all the rest of what had been published
> could appreciate it. I think you'd be hard pressed to name even one portion
> of it which could stand on it's own, and, as someone pointed out, much of
> it was explicitly intended to expand on aspects of the earlier writings.
As Keith Goodknight pointed out in another thread (see ``Re: Various
References''), the _Narn i Hin Hurin_ in _the Unfinished Tales_ was
meant as a ``stand-alone'' piece.
> This may be an insoluble disagreement, since it depends on how much faith
> one has in the fertility of Tolkien's imagination. However, many people
> have sincerely concluded that Tolkien really did perceive a unity, and
> this is not a pretense, not part of a game. I really think you may be
> underestimating Tolkien -- he wasn't faking it.
Up to this time, you have been contending that the sub-creation aspects
of Tolkien's work have been part of a ``game''. Now, you say they are
not. Which is it?
> This is what I object to most strongly: "embellishments", "supplementary",
> and "adding things". I now call on you to produce your examples of anything
> that wasn't explicitly verified by Tolkien somewhere.
(Though this was not addressed to me, I hope you will consider the
above article as an example of an ``embellishment'' or ``supplement''.)
> Let's end with something from Tolkien himself (it's from Monsters and the
> Critics, p. 120, but I copied it from the Preface of The Annotated Hobbit);
> I think it can be applied to all five of the other approaches to a story
> mentioned above:
>
> ... In Dasent's words I would say: 'We must be satisfied with the soup
that
> is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it
> has been boiled' ... By 'the soup' I mean the story as it is served up by
> its author or teller, and by 'the bones' its sources or material -- even
> when (by rare luck) those can be with certainty discovered. But I do not,
> of course, forbid criticism of the soup as soup.
I do not see how this quote helps your point. After all, wouldn't ``the
soup'' be the Lord of the Rings and _the Hobbit_ and ``the bones'' be
all the material that has been presented since Tolkien's death? If this
is the case, we should, by Tolkien's words, be satisfied with the Lord
of the Rings and _the Hobbit_ and not worry about _the Silmarillion_,
_Unfinished Tales_, and the History of Middle-Earth.
--
Charles F. Fitzgerald | Men were deceivers ever,
Iowa State University | One foot in sea, the other on shore;
cffi...@iastate.edu | To one thing constant never.
Charles F. Fitzgerald
> Yes, the things that Tolkien himself wrote are canonical, and secondary
> sources aren't -- surely it's no more than a convenient way of sorting
> sources into categories -- why the pother?
But this is _not_ the way ``canonical'' is defined by many (most ?)
the posters to this newsgroup who use the term. These posters
contend that _the Hobbit_, the Lord of the Rings, and _the Sil-
marillion_ are the ``canonical authorities'' and everything else
(esp. for my purposes, the HOME series) is ``apocrypha'' (though
most would not use this term). Now, assuming we set aside his
essays (in particular ``On Fairy Stories'' and ``Beowulf: Monsters
and the Critics'') and ``allegorical works'' (including ``Leaf by
Niggle'', ``Farmer Giles of Ham'', and ``Smith of Wooten Major'')
by consent and only consider those works ``that Tolkien himself wrote''
about Middle-Earth, we still aren't out of the canonical woods. ``The
Adventures of Tom Bombadil'' and the various versions of the
Silmarillion tales found in the HOME series all meet the criterion
that they are ``things that Tolkien himself wrote'' and so by your
definition ``are canonical''. I do not think this view is widely
spread throughout the general readership of this newsgroup, however.
On the second thought (_ie._ that ``it's no more than a convenient
way of sorting sources into categories''), I do not believe this
is so. Most of the time when people discuss the canonicity of a
work, it is done to ``prove'' their point. Thus, in a recent thread,
the question of whether Maiar or Valar could bear children was being
discussed. Which books are taken to be canonical has a very great
bearing on this question because if the HOME series is said to be, then
the answer is a positive yes. There are many examples of this in _the
Book of Lost Tales_. If, on the other hand, _the Silmarillion_ alone
is taken to be canonical, the answer is probably no. Thus the ques-
tion of cononicity is not merely a ``sorting'' of the works into
appropriate ``categories'', it is, instead, a method of telling others
the ``rules of the game.''
Stephen Linhart
Ok, so If I ask, "Is Aragorn blond, brunette or red haired?", and
someone answers, "Aragorn has dark hair.", that would be 'fan-
fiction' because there is no person Aragorn with any kind of hair.
'Aragorn' exists only as words on paper, so any description of
Aragorn is fictional. And Tolkien never wrote, "Aragorn has dark
hair." He wrote a much more evocative description.
Is that still a more-or-less fair characterization of your
position?
- Stephen
Garth G. Groff
be applied only to works which J.R.R. Tolkien published
during his lifetime, and then only the later revised
editions. It should be obvious that he constantly
reworked his stories, even LOTR and the HOBBIT after
their initial publications. Since we cannot ever be
sure that such works as the SILMARILLION, and especially
the more recent publications of his son, are in the form
that Tolkien intended, they cannot really be considered
"canonical". Such works must, therefore, fall into the
category of "apocrapha". They are certainly worth reading
and study, but without the seal of Tolkien's authority
for publication, they lack ultimate authority.
My not-so-humble opinion.
~S
--
Garth (Haridas) Groff
"Not yet famous author"
gg...@poe.acc.virginia.EDU Chant "Govinda Bohlo Hare"
Keith Goodnight
[Enough tht I could spend hours variously agreeing and disagreeing with
various bits of it, but I'll make a concerted effort to confine myself to
a few points that I feel strongly about.]
>
>In my opinion, the strong dislike for the ``fan-fiction'' term comes
>because people view ``fan-fiction'' to be ``wrong'' or against the
>wishes of the author. Those who create such writings are ``violating''
My dislike of the term arises not because of any pejorative connotation
(although I believe that Jim Chokey intends one) but because I think it is
simply innacurate about what we do in the discussions Jim dislikes.
Jim has been fairly clear that he defines'fan fiction' as the adding of
embellishments or entirely new information to Tolkien's creation. I have no
problem with that definition; if that was what we were doing, the word would
be accurate. But what I maintain is that our discussions always require the
opposite: that before any conclusion is generally accepted it must be
supported by Tolkien's writings. It is true that often hypotheses are advanced
without support (as the example you cite below); but the short answer to this
is that such hypotheses are wrong, and the newsgroup in general usually
says so, either explicitly or by ignoring the claim and letting it fall
unnoticed into oblivion.
I do grow annoyed with Jim's repeated use of the term, however, for
though his definition of it is one I do not dispute, I think he uses it
to cloud the issue rather than to discuss it. When I say something like,
'What we are doing is not fan-fiction, but instead analysis that has some
scholarly value', Jim tends to respond by saying 'I disagree that fan-fiction
has scholarly value.'
But of course that's not what I said, and it grows hard for me to believe
that Jim's misunderstanding of my point is not wilful.
>
>I have yet to read a post in which Jim seems ``to be condemning the game
>itself.'' He has said that the ``game'' should be called ``fan-fiction.''
>Okay. I don't see any real argument against this. It must be called
>something. He said that most posters to r.a.b.t. are ``playing'' this
>``game.'' You don't seem to deny this. He has not said that it was
>not a good ``game'' to play or that those who play it are idiots, insane,
>or otherwise mentally challenged, though he has admitted to not enjoying
>the game much. I don't see how his statement that he does not enjoy the
>game can be construed as being a ``condemnation''.
>
>The only other statement he has made that I have read that may be alluded
>to in this paragraph is Jim's comment that this ``game'' is not
>``analysis''. Again, I fail to see how the comment could be regarded
>as a ``condemnation'' of an activity.
I myself am not very happy by William Loos' usage of the word 'game.' He
based it on a single remark of Tolkien's and one which was on a different
topic than the description of modes of analysis. While it is true that the
purpose of this newsgroup is recreational, and thus all of us here are
playing 'games' in that sense, I have argued that the particular activity
under discussion here is conceptually the same as (and may contribute to)
more serious academic study.
But I hesitate to turn the word into another drawn-out point of debate.
[Charles here cites an earlier posting as an example of embellishment on the
text, or what Jim Chokey terms 'fan fiction']
>
>Anduril is magical; it therefore lends some kind of strength to
> Aragorn, however, apart from it being utterly irrelevant, Elendil
> was also one step up from an 'ordinary' Dunedain, so the
> comparison just doesn't work.
>
>Ian.
>
>Here we have the ``information'' that since ``Anduril is magical'',
>``it therefore lends some kind of strength to Aragorn.'' This
>information does not appear in the text of the Lord of the Ring,
>and quite possibly, nowhere else. It is, therefore, invented or
>``new''. Hence, we have ``new information.''
As I noted above, I do not believe that the advancing of hypotheses, even
wrong ones, reduces the whole discussion (let alone the entire mode
of discussion) to mere 'creative speculation' or 'fan fiction.' At issue is
whether such speculations are permitted to stand or accepted as true.
Absorbed as I have been by the present discussion, I have not been
participating much in other threads lately, but I did read this article when
it appeared, and my reaction to it was 'That's wrong.' Had I been inclined
to do so (or had more time after writing the latest installment in the
'fan-fiction debate'), I would probably have replied to this posting with
something like the following:
I do not believe that Anduril is anywhere described as magical. It
is a famous sword, certainly; and an ancient one, and therefore very
valuable. And in the culture and world or Middle-earth such heirlooms
have great cultural significance as sources of inspiration or signs
of rank. But this is not the same as 'magical.'
I think Aragorn's abilities (whether great or small) were his own.
>
>I don't believe ``it's ... sort of obvious'' to tell that the above
>is actually fan-fiction; it certainly is not presented as such. It's
>presented as a statement of fact as if it were an item of trivia ``dredged
>up'' from the text. I would say that it would be difficult for some-
True, but as none of us are omniscient, even with respect to Tolkien's
writings (I've just been reading LoTR for the Nth time and last night I
cam across a paragraph in 'Of Herbs amd Stewed Rabbits' that I would swear
I never saw before) we may at any time propose a false hypothesis based
on something we falsely remember being in the text, or an interpretation
we once reached and have never examined. That is why it is the discussion
as a whole, the response to an incorrect suggestion as well as the incorrect
suggestion itself, that must be examined before we conclude that the entire
mode of discussion is simply the invention of 'fan fiction.'
>
>Up to this time, you have been contending that the sub-creation aspects
>of Tolkien's work have been part of a ``game''. Now, you say they are
>not. Which is it?
Again, here I think that William Loos has tripped himself up by over-reliance
on the term 'game'.
--Keith F. Goodnight
James Alexander Chokey
So many posts, so little time. . . .
In article <10AUG199...@amber.mgh.harvard.edu> lo...@amber.mgh.harvard.edu (William D.B. Loos) writes:
> [also a great deal]
>
>Will you please, please, *please* stop using the term "fan fiction". It must
>be obvious by now that I'm not the only one who finds this at best irritating
>(let's leave out the "at worst"). You say it isn't your intention to be
>baiting anyone, and as a point of courtesy I'll take your word for it, but
>surely you must have noticed how many nerves you've been hitting. Your
>response may be that we deserve to have our nerves hit, but I can't believe
>that's really your intent. I must say that your insistence on using the
>phrase over and over and over and over and over isn't really helping anything.
>It's distracting, and lessens the chance that people will respond to you on
>the merits (yes, I know, in a perfect world that wouldn't be the case). It
>has definite conotations which I can't quite put my finger on, but whatever
>they are I don't like them.
I find it very interesting that you and others seem so distraught
by the term "fan-fiction. In the very first hermeneutical discussion on
a.f.tolkien nine months ago, similar issues were brought up and my "opponents"
in that discussion agreed that the sort of in-frame speculation that so
often takes place was indeed a form of fan-fiction. In a way, you seem
to acknowledge that it is as well-- but you just don't want to _call_ it
that. Instead, you call it a "game" or "in-frame speculation." As I said
in a previous article, if you prefer to reserve the term "fan-fiction" only
those in-frame speculations which are self-consciously presented _as_
fan-fictional stories, that's fine. That does not change the fact, however,
that in-frame speculation that takes the form of discussion still rests on
the same hermeneutical grounds-- it only obscures it. I use (and will
continue to use) the term "fan fiction" for describing these discussions
because they are _not_ fundamentally different from the stories for which
you and others would prefer to reserve the term.
>
>Moreover, speaking denotatively, the phrase seems ill-chosen. I'm of the
>school that takes the more conventional view that "fiction" refers to actual
>stories, which in this case would be stories set in Middle-earth. There have
>really been very few of those.
There have been very few of them that have been presented _as_
"stories." There are many of them that have been (and continue to be)
presented as "speculative discussion." The form is different, but the
hermeneutical status is the same.
[. . . .]
>
>The point of all this is that he plainly saw nothing wrong with the "game"
>aspect. It most certainly wasn't the whole picture, but he had taken great
>pains to make the world of Middle-earth appear realistic, and taking it on
>its own terms seemed perfectly natural. When *we* take this attitude on this
>list we're doing precisely what Tolkien did. Literally. I mean that the
>tone adopted by the posts you seem to find objectionable is exactly the tone
>of Tolkien's own letters. Which is why I'm puzzled at the intensity of your
>reaction. Are you saying that appreciation of Tolkien shouldn't be limited
>to examination of its imaginary 'history' from within the secondary reality?
>I don't think anyone would disagree with that. Are you saying that you don't
>want to play? Fine. Don't. But you seem to be condemning the game itself
>(or maybe you've simply inadvertantly fallen into the appearence of this in
>the twists this long thread has taken?). All of which makes me wonder if
>you've read the Letters at all. If not, then I must wonder if you have any
>business saying the things you've been saying -- well, I guess you do, but
>if you read the Letters at the very least you'll have to admit that Tolkien
>himself must be among the targets of your displeasure.
Fear naught, Bill, I've read the published Letters _many_ times.
It's true that many posts here on r.a.b.t. have adopt the same tone vis-a-vis
the "reality" of the world(s) described in Tolkien's writings that Tolkien
expressed in certain of his letters. That's part of my point. People
here are talking about Tolkien's works as if they were the authors of them.
And, to a certain degree, they are-- since they _are_ authoring their own
resolutions, embellishments, and additions to the stories that Tolkien
wrote. However, I think it's important to distinguish between what Tolkien
wrote and what we, as fans, add-- and, by presenting these fan-fictions
as "discussion" and refusing to acknowledge them for what they are, I think
that we do obscure this vital distinction.
As for Tolkien being a target for my "displeasure," let me say that
I am not particularly displeased at anyone. The only people who seem to
be really displeased are the ones who don't like hearing that in-frame
speculation is not significantly different from fan-fiction. I do think,
however, that Tolkien's theories of "subcreation" and "primary and
secondary worlds" can be criticized just as much as any other approach
to the study of literature. The idea of "subcreation," first of all,
was not an approach that Tolkien adopted in discussing literary works
other than his own. His professional writings are, of course, primarily
philological and do not at all make use of such concepts. Nor does his
extremely influential (and surprisingly un-philological) essay "Beowulf:
The Monsters and the Critics." His lecture "On Fairy-Stories" is the
exception to the rule, but Tolkien freely admits at the beginning of that
lecture that he was not speaking as a professional scholar, but was
"hardly more than a wandering explorer." That lecture was also given
at the time he was beginning work on LOTR (which was then only supposed
to be a _Hobbit_ sequel), and its ideas have far more to do with those
advanced in "Leaf by Niggle," Tolkien's allegory of authorship (also
written at this time), than they do with anything in his more scholarly
works. Tolkien's ideas about subcreation and primary and secondary worlds
are _authorial_, rather than critical, models of literature. They are
models of what an author should strive to achieve in his/her own work; not
as models of how one should discuss/interpret/analyze literary texts. This
is why Tolkien used these models, almost exclusively, to talk about his
own fiction and _not_ about that of others. He didn't do any "in-frame
speculation" in his article on Beowulf or in his and Gordon's commentary
on "Sir Gawayne"; he did when writing and writing about his _own_ fiction.
When we start talking about Tolkien's work in the same way, adding elements to
his "subcreation" that he did not put in, we take the mantle of authorship
from Tolkien and place it upon our own shoulders.
I hope to respond to some of your responses to points I've made
later, but, alas, more pressing things call me away at the moment. . .
-- Jim C. <jch...@leland.stanford.edu>
Someone or other...
canon, then you have difficulties not yet mentioned, such
as the fact that, when LOTR was written, the third son
of Finwe was Finrod, and that name is used in LOTR (I
believe Gildor is referred to as being of the House of
Finrod). This, despite the fact that JRRT evidently
changed this later to Finarfin (Tolkien's writings,
reproduced in HOME series make clear that he is referring
to the third son of Finwe as Finrod, and is not making a
reference to Felagund--furthermore, it seems traditional
that the Noldor, when referring to their houses, don't
break it down beyond the kindreds of the Sons of Finwe
(Celebrimbor is not, after all, thought of (at least by
me, as being of the House of Curufin, but of the House
of Feanor). It seems to me that, because of the way
Tolkien was continually changing Middle-earth, right up
until his death (check the story of Galadriel in UT),
even those works he published in life are not immune from
becoming outdated w.r.t. the evolving world of Middle-earth.
After all this rambling, I guess my contribution is that
there does not seem to be a clear barrier between 'canon'
and 'apocrypha', since even that which Tolkien did actually
publish was not necessarily immune from change (witness the
entire remaking of the Gollum/Ring story from the Hobbit--
try to picture an author getting away with that now :)
-Colin-
Keith Goodnight
>
>After all this rambling, I guess my contribution is that
>there does not seem to be a clear barrier between 'canon'
>and 'apocrypha', since even that which Tolkien did actually
>publish was not necessarily immune from change (witness the
>entire remaking of the Gollum/Ring story from the Hobbit--
>try to picture an author getting away with that now :)
>
works, rather than a sort of on-off toggle switch of 'canon' and 'not-canon'.
I tend to rank later writings over earlier (since to do otherwise would be
to deny Tolkien's right to change his creation as he saw fit), composed
writings over outlines and notes, etc.
Instead of saying 'This quote proves it's so,' I would prefer to say
instead 'The preponderance of the evidence supports it.' Less satisfying,
true, and sometimes not possible as only a single quote even tells on an
issue, but still a desirable ideal.
--Keith F. Goodnight
William D.B. Loos
In article <1993Aug1...@IASTATE.EDU>, cffi...@IASTATE.EDU (Charles F. Fitzgerald) writes...
>William D.B. Loos writes:
>> Yes, the things that Tolkien himself wrote are canonical, and secondary
>> sources aren't -- surely it's no more than a convenient way of sorting
>> sources into categories -- why the pother?
>
>But this is _not_ the way ``canonical'' is defined by many (most ?)
>the posters to this newsgroup who use the term.
Yesyesyesyesyesyes, I admit it, that definition was hopelessly slipshod
and lax (oversimplified, actually) -- frankly, it's simply that I was just
burning out by that point and couldn't face the need for another complex
explanation. I don't in reality use that definition myself, either --
you may have noted that I wrote a much longer explanation for the FAQ
(I now feel that even that is insufficiently detailed), more-or-less
along the lines of the rest of your post. Before getting to that, though,
I would like to note that your objection is not quite the same as the point
I was responding to. You're saying that my quick-and-dirty definition of
what's canonical and what isn't was so oversimplified as to be inaccurate,
which I agree with. But JC seemed to be objecting to the term being used in
this context at all, and all I was saying was that while there may be
disagreements on how "canonicity" should be apportioned there seems no reason
to forbid its use altogether. (Since you take me to task for using it wrong
you also seem to accept that it's alright to use it in *some* fashion.)
>These posters
>contend that _the Hobbit_, the Lord of the Rings, and _the Sil-
>marillion_ are the ``canonical authorities'' and everything else
>(esp. for my purposes, the HOME series) is ``apocrypha'' (though
>most would not use this term). Now, assuming we set aside his
>essays (in particular ``On Fairy Stories'' and ``Beowulf: Monsters
>and the Critics'') and ``allegorical works'' (including ``Leaf by
>Niggle'', ``Farmer Giles of Ham'', and ``Smith of Wooten Major'')
>by consent and only consider those works ``that Tolkien himself wrote''
>about Middle-Earth, we still aren't out of the canonical woods. ``The
>Adventures of Tom Bombadil'' and the various versions of the
>Silmarillion tales found in the HOME series all meet the criterion
>that they are ``things that Tolkien himself wrote'' and so by your
>definition ``are canonical''. I do not think this view is widely
>spread throughout the general readership of this newsgroup, however.
Well, I've already agreed that "what Tolkien wrote" was far too simplistic.
As you correctly note, the usual usage in the world at large would be to
include his published corpus, which would also include his shorter fiction,
his essays, and his academic work, but, as you say, that's not what we
usually mean here. What we mean here is which writings can be used as
sources for "factual" conclusions about the 'imaginary history' of the
secondary reality.
As for which works these are, it's still a matter of debate. Usually the
works published during Tolkien's lifetime are flatly accepted as being
canonical: Hobbit, LotR, Notes to Road Goes Ever On, and the Preface to
ATB (re: this last, it's true that the poems are just poems and not
historical treatises, and so should be regarded as "fictional" (i.e. even
within the secondary reality) treatments of common M-e themes, such as dragon
sickness, but the Preface does give us a few bits of actual lore, such as that
Sam's granddaughter was named Firiel).
I would argue that the Guide to Names in LotR and Letters should also be
accepted without (much) question. If they were riddled with inconsistencies
that caused enormous wrangles that would be different but that isn't the
case. In fact, there are only a few small difficulties. Since Tolkien had
lots of time to consider what was written in these places, since in almost all
cases he was filling in gaps which aren't addressed anywhere else, and since
he did so without stepping on anything else he had written, there should be no
objection. (Besides, it would be a shame to throw out the wealth of
information in the Letters).
I've never advocated defining HoMe as canonical (though you're right that
I did seem to be doing so -- it was inadvertant). My feeling is that
when dealing with rough drafts we've really reached the limits of the
"sub-creational" game. That is, the attidude we adopt is that LotR is
an historical narrative about a real place, and that other sources of
information are available. What then could the rough drafts of the
actual story be? If we're clever enough and tried hard enough, I suppose
we could fit them into the secondary reality somehow, but looks to be an
unrewarding exercise. As far as I'm concerned they should have no status at
all (this is only with respect to the study of the secondary reality as
"history", remember, not with respect to the more general study of Tolkien).
Thus, I don't much like the use of the term "apocrypha", not because it isn't
the correct term (it is) but because it implies that they are part of the
secondary reality, which they aren't.
UT and the Silmarillion are the tough cases. In UT, I'd say that each
part should be judged on its own merits. In those cases where the writing
was essentially complete and doesn't contradict anything else (such as the
Annals of the Kings of Numenor), I see no reason not to accept it. And I
feel that the Silm should be treated the same way: the different versions
should be examined, with serious differences left as unresolvable. This is
why I tend not to accept the published _Silmarillion_ as canonical, because
it's an interweaving of different versions, and there's no way to tell (yet)
what comes from where. But that should be settled soon.
>On the second thought (_ie._ that ``it's no more than a convenient
>way of sorting sources into categories''), I do not believe this
>is so. Most of the time when people discuss the canonicity of a
>work, it is done to ``prove'' their point.
Exactly, so canonicity sorts the writings into those which may legitimately
be used as sources of the imaginary history and those which cannot.
>Thus, in a recent thread,
>the question of whether Maiar or Valar could bear children was being
>discussed. Which books are taken to be canonical has a very great
>bearing on this question because if the HOME series is said to be, then
>the answer is a positive yes. There are many examples of this in _the
>Book of Lost Tales_. If, on the other hand, _the Silmarillion_ alone
>is taken to be canonical, the answer is probably no. Thus the ques-
>tion of cononicity is not merely a ``sorting'' of the works into
>appropriate ``categories'', it is, instead, a method of telling others
>the ``rules of the game.''
Hm, that last may be a distinction without a difference, but I'm not prepared
to insist on it. I'd say that the example may take the discussion outside
the secondary reality without admitting it's doing so. BoLT may not be a
good example because that seems the one set of writing that could *never* be
part of the canon. How would it fit it? The Silmarillion is Bilbo's
"Translations from the Elvish" -- what then is the Book Of Lost Tales? I've
never heard an even faintly plausible suggestion on this. No, I don't think
that the mere fact that Ainur have children in it can be taken as evidence
of anything. On the other hand, someone suggested that because Tolkien
apparently deliberately removed all such references we can infer something
about his intentions. Very possibly, but this is no longer within the
secondary reality.
Anyway, this is all by the by. The original comment of mine that you started
with was intended to be a defense of the notion of canonicity, of the
appropriateness of its use be people who are having such discussions as
we have. Judging from you last paragraph, I think we agree on that.
William D.B. Loos
A brief summary of my last post might have been (and why didn't I keep
it short from the start? :-) ):
1) did JC understand what we are doing when we discuss aspect of
the secondary reality as though it were a real place?
2) if the answer to (1) is yes, was he saying a) that it's a tendency
that must be kept under control lest it interfere with the literary
examination of the writing (I agree) or b) was he condemning it for
it's own sake (I don't agree).
3) even if the answer to (2) is (a), literary analysis is not the only
approach either. I argued that the principal approach should be
(at least if we're following Tolkien) as a Story, and the other
five possibilities shouldn't be allowed to overpower that.
That having been said:
In article <1993Aug1...@IASTATE.EDU>, cffi...@IASTATE.EDU (Charles F. Fitzgerald) writes...
>William D.B. Loos writes:
>> Jim Chokey writes...
>> >
>> > [a great deal]
>> >
>> [rant on term "fan fiction" deleted]
>
>Why do you dislike the term so much? Could it be that Jim uses it so
>often to bring this question out? I do not like the term used in this
>sense, either, but I don't strongly object to its use. It is, after all,
>used correctly, though I may not like that fact. I just don't use it
>personnally.
>
>In my opinion, the strong dislike for the ``fan-fiction'' term comes
>because people view ``fan-fiction'' to be ``wrong'' or against the
>wishes of the author. Those who create such writings are ``violating''
>the writer's creations and are, therefore, miscreants. In the case
>of Tolkien, however, as William Loos cited, we have not only the
>author's permission, but even his commendation upon our doing so. So
>what's the big deal if we call a spade a spade?
Because that's not what's being done. One distinction I tried to make was
between on the one hand discussing carefully what was (and wasn't) said by the
author and on the other adding to it. We have Tolkien's permission for the
former, not the latter. And my claim was that the latter may be "fan fiction"
but not the former. My contention was that most people have no intention of
adding anything to the secondary reality Tolkien provided, so therefore "fan
fiction" is simply incorrect. (However, judging by your example below your
definition, and JC's, may be broader than mine.) What's more, there did seem
to be a condescending tone to its use, as though it rated lower as a way to
approach a story than, say, standard literary analysis.
>I have yet to read a post in which Jim seems ``to be condemning the game
>itself.'' He has said that the ``game'' should be called ``fan-fiction.''
>Okay. I don't see any real argument against this. It must be called
>something. He said that most posters to r.a.b.t. are ``playing'' this
>``game.'' You don't seem to deny this. He has not said that it was
>not a good ``game'' to play or that those who play it are idiots, insane,
>or otherwise mentally challenged, though he has admitted to not enjoying
>the game much. I don't see how his statement that he does not enjoy the
>game can be construed as being a ``condemnation''.
Well, as I said at the top, the question of whether he actually was
condemning subcreational scholarship [do we agree that that's better than
the "g" word Keith?] as an activity or merely saying that it had to be
kept under control was exactly what I was asking. There was definitely
reason to wonder; quotes like the following:
>>> The phrasing and word choice of your question reveals a profound
>>>misconception of the nature of literary works. As I pointed out at some
>>>length in my previous post, a work of art is not a body of "raw data" about
>>>which one is to make "deductions" or produce "hypotheses." It is not a
>>>bundle of "information."
>>>
>>>If one talks about Tolkien's writings as if they were simply a medium
>>>through which pseudo-factual "information" is conveyed, their true signficance
>>>is also missed.
seem to leave no allowance for examination of secondary reality under any
circumstances. I don't remember any explicit statement that it was OK,
but maybe I missed it. And besides that there's still the "fan fiction"
definitional wrangle, since I still think that ff is something different
from merely examining the author's sub-creation as he actually presented it.
>
>The only other statement he has made that I have read that may be alluded
>to in this paragraph is Jim's comment that this ``game'' is not
>``analysis''. Again, I fail to see how the comment could be regarded
>as a ``condemnation'' of an activity.
Well, no, but this was evidence for question (1) at the top, not (2). This
was the sort of thing that made me wonder if he "got it" at all. Careful
consideration of aspects of the sub-creation, as involved in deciding what
was and wasn't made explicit, is certainly analysis -- it's just not literary
analysis.
>In point of fact, in the very first few posts Jim made on this thread,
>he said that the ``game'' was ``enjoyable''. Calling an activity
>``enjoyable'' seems as far from a ``condemnation'' as is possible in
>the English language, so I would conclude that ``you've simply inadver-
>tantly fallen into ... the twists this long thread has taken''.
The question was whether he construed the activity in the same way as the
people who were doing it did. It seemed not. He seemed to be saying
that there was a large component of embellishment whereas I claimed there
was not. (But I'm beginning to think both of us overstated our cases).
>
>> 2) Obsession with the minutiae of the secondary world. This, I gather, is
>> what bothers you. Tolkien himself loved doing this, as he noted in the
>> letter quoted above; moreover, he couldn't very well have created Middle-
>> earth at all if he didn't like the technical aspects of sub-creation. The
>> danger which he brought up is a real one: it is possible to be overwhelmed
>> by lore to the exclusion of the story which the lore exists to support.
>> Well, all we can do is keep that in mind (but I have found that frequent
>> doses of straight LotR are helpful ...)
>
>Here, I believe, you express the very fear Jim has and the reason
>for his original posting to this thread. As you say, ``it is possible
>to be overwhelmed by lore to the exclusion of the story which the lore
>exists to support [very well put, indeed -- CFF].'' From my reading
>of Jim's posts, it seems to me that he believes that many or most the
>threads on r.a.b.t. fall victim to this pitfall, and occasionally it
>is necessary to ``keep that in mind''. To this end, he has written
>several posts discussing the ``hermeneutical validity'' of the type
>of discussions that generally take place on this newsgroup.
Well, yes, I understood what the danger was, but remember that I presented
this as the anti-story trap of the subcreation approach to story and
suggested that the other four approachs contained implicit traps as well.
JC seemed to concentrating on this danger and ignoring the others and I
was suggesting that in principle it's no worse than the others. (In
practice, it may of course be the most common one on this newsgroup).
>> >One can, [treat the work as a bundle of ``information''] of course,
>> >do so-- but in doing so one misses what is really
>> >significant about it.
>>
>> This may be a matter of opinion -- I think many of us feel that the sub-
>> creational aspect is indeed part of what is "really" significant about it
>> (though I'm not sure any of us should claim complete knowledge on this
>score).
>
>Are you actually arguing that it is a ``matter of opinion'' that
>treating Tolkien's work as a ``bundle of `information''' will cause
>something to be missed? I, too, believe in the sub-creational aspect
>of Tolkien's writings, but I find it ridiculous to believe that anyone
>would not allow that treating, say the Lord of the Rings, as a source
>of ``raw data'' would necessarilly be missing something in the work.
(sigh) Please, if you check back you'll see that over and over I made a
distinction between treating the writings *exclusively* as a bundle of
information (to the exclusion of other perspectives) and treating it that
way as one of several approachs. Of course it shouldn't be treated *only*
as raw data of an imaginary history, but my point was that it could perfectly
easily be viewed in several ways at once.
>> > On the contrary, the first-- the invention of stories/information
>> >that aren't actually present in Tolkien's own narratives-- is the primary
>> >focus of discussions in this newsgroup.
>>
>> Now here I'm baffled -- not by the distinction, which of course I and anyone
>> would agree with, but with the phrase "new stories/information that aren't
>> actually present in Tolkien's own narratives" -- who are you talking about?
>> I already pointed out that there haven't been any new stories, and where does
>> this notion of "new information" come from? The invariable practice, as far
>> as I know, is to find some explicit comment by Tolkien himself on a given
>> matter, and if he didn't make one then the question can't be answered.
>
>On the question of ``new information,'' I checked a recent thread and
>found the following, which I believe, would fit into Jim's understanding
>[Note: I mean no disrespect towards any of the quoted posters. I
>was tired of hearing the cry for ``evidence'' and chose the first
>article I thought fit my purposes -- CFF]:
>
>vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
> Anduril is magical; it therefore lends some kind of strength to
> Aragorn, however, apart from it being utterly irrelevant, Elendil
> was also one step up from an 'ordinary' Dunedain, so the
> comparison just doesn't work.
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>Here we have the ``information'' that since ``Anduril is magical'',
>``it therefore lends some kind of strength to Aragorn.'' This
>information does not appear in the text of the Lord of the Ring,
>and quite possibly, nowhere else. It is, therefore, invented or
>``new''. Hence, we have ``new information.''
Well, it's a step forward. If this is what you've been meaning by "fan
fiction" then it is around. To me, however, the term, and words like
"embellishment", etc., plainly implied an element of intention. That is,
the accusation seemed to be that people were deliberately adding extra
elements to what they knew Tolkien had supplied. This particular case,
however, looks inadvertant to me. Sloppy scholarship, in other words.
(This particular question couldn't be answered definitively, since while
it seems not likely there's nothing explicitly preventing it; but I can't
propound that now.)
There's still something I wonder, though -- is it the fact that this
statement about Anduril is probably wrong, and goes beyond the evidence
that we possess, that you're objecting to, or do you mean it literally
that "This information does not appear in the text of the Lord of the Ring"
is your objection? Keith already raised this question, but I'll ask again:
are you actually objecting to straightforward and plainly correct deductions
which are not said explicitly? Such as, it was never said explicitly, I
think, that Pippin had hairy feet, but "Hobbits had hairy feet" and "Pippin
was a hobbit" make it a one-step deduction. Surely you wouldn't call the
conclusion that he had hairy feet "fan fiction", would you? If so, then
I still think it's wildly overstated as a complaint.
>> (That phrase again). Well, in my experience it's always been understood by
>> the context whether someone is viewing the writings from the primary or from
>> the secondary reality. It's always been presumed that people can tell the
>> difference (between the two viewpoints and also between the two realities!).
>> In fact, it's always seemed sort of obvious.
>
>I don't believe ``it's ... sort of obvious'' to tell that the above
>is actually fan-fiction;
Perhaps not, but that's not what I was talking about. I was talking about
the distinction between statements from within the primary reality,
e.g. statements of literary analysis vs. statements from within the
secondary reality, e.g. statements about the imaginary history. The topic
was question (1) from above. But, then, given your broader definition of
ff perhaps I didn't understand Jim's original point -- if it was a question
of the quality of the subcreational scholarship then, yes, sloppy statements
do muddle things.
>it certainly is not presented as such.
Probably because the poster didn't realize he was overshooting.
>It's presented as a statement of fact as if it were an item of trivia
>``dredged up'' from the text. I would say that it would be difficult for
>some one not very familiar with all the Tolkienian texts to tell whether
>the above is or is not conjecture. It may be obvious to you, but not
>to everyone.
Well, I agree fully that people should be careful with such statements,
both in terms of what we know (what Tolkien told us) and what they know
(how familiar they are with what Tolkien told us). BTW, phrases like
"dredged up" do have connotations, and this is the sort of thing that
contributes to the perception of a negative tone.
>> The postings you object to are
>> the latter, which treat the writings as though they were history; this
>> is the tone of much of the writings themselves, and is precisely the
>> tone of many of Tolkien's letters.
>
>The postings to which I object are the ones that purport what is not
>necessarilly true. For example, in the previous sentence you write,
>``The posting you object to are the latter....'' I have yet to read
>Jim ever post that he _objects_ to postings of a fan-fictional nature.
The entire thread seemed to me to be an objection to postings of a
ff nature. I also dislike postings that are sloppy in their scholarship,
but I still wouldn't necessarily call them ff.
>> Still, it
>> seems like you've picked an odd forum for this particular line of
>> argument, since this is precisely that place where people come to
>> do this kind of thing.
>
>It ``seems like ... an odd forum'' for discussing the normal way in
>which people discuss Tolkien? As I recall, this group was created to
>talk about Tolkien in any way, shape, or form. There were several
>(many from Jim, in fact) very vehement articles asserting that the
>_only_ right USENET forum for the discussion of anything Tolkienian,
>be it movies, posters, books, philological works, would be rec.arts.
>books.tolkien when the issue was brought before the news.groups
>populace. So, it seems to me, that if this is an ``odd forum for
>this particular line of argument'' there aren't any even ones (okay,
>it's a bad pun, but this thread has been a little too heavy lately
>:-)).
So it has (been too heavy -- too verbose too, like this one...). I confess
that you got me on this one -- another example of burnout. The bit about
the forum was horribly phrased. Yes, of course all aspects are allowed.
What I may have been getting at, I think (even I'm not sure now), was memories
of other times on the Net when people have taken positions, at least apparently
deliberately, which they knew would infuriate everyone else in the group, and
then proceeded to ram them down everyone's throat. I'm now satisfied that Jim
wasn't doing this, and as the specifics get further sorted out I'll probably
be more certain yet.
>As Keith Goodknight pointed out in another thread (see ``Re: Various
>References''), the _Narn i Hin Hurin_ in _the Unfinished Tales_ was
>meant as a ``stand-alone'' piece.
Really? It's news to me. But then, I'm no authority on the First Age.
>> This may be an insoluble disagreement, since it depends on how much faith
>> one has in the fertility of Tolkien's imagination. However, many people
>> have sincerely concluded that Tolkien really did perceive a unity, and
>> this is not a pretense, not part of a game. I really think you may be
>> underestimating Tolkien -- he wasn't faking it.
>
>Up to this time, you have been contending that the sub-creation aspects
>of Tolkien's work have been part of a ``game''. Now, you say they are
>not. Which is it?
Now here you're making something more complicated than it is. Different
question, different context -- just because I used the same word shouldn't
throw you. The earlier use of the word "game" (which I now regret -- I
got it from Tolkien) was as applied to the activity of subcreational
scholarship, the examination of the secondary reality. This is a different
topic altogether. Jim had made a number of statements about how "unity"
in the picture of Middle-earth didn't exist, that there were only independant
works of art, that the connections were artificial, either retcons by Tolkien
or imagined by ourselves (as though he were talking about Larry Niven's
Known Space, about which the statement is true: seams showing, framework
visible through holes in the plaster, sharp corners sticking out like sore
thumbs all over).
I was claiming that this is not the case: I said that observers have concluded
that Tolkien did see all the works as connected, not because he forced it on
them afterwards but because he had always seen them that way, even while he
was writing them. First, the question itself has nothing to do with secondary
reality. When I said it "was not part of a game" I wasn't saying that it
wasn't part of *that* game -- it couldn't be under any circumstances, since
it's a primary reality question; I was saying that it wasn't part of *any*
game, that people weren't adopting this view of Tolkien as a fiction; rather,
he really seemed to view M-e as a unity. Now, I admit that I overstated my
case -- he did make some of it up as he went along, such as while he answered
certain letters. Still, I'd say that I overstated it only a little, while
Jim overstated it from the other side a lot.
>> This is what I object to most strongly: "embellishments", "supplementary",
>> and "adding things". I now call on you to produce your examples of anything
>> that wasn't explicitly verified by Tolkien somewhere.
>
>(Though this was not addressed to me, I hope you will consider the
>above article as an example of an ``embellishment'' or ``supplement''.)
Well, only a small example.
>> Let's end with something from Tolkien himself (it's from Monsters and the
>> Critics, p. 120, but I copied it from the Preface of The Annotated Hobbit);
>> I think it can be applied to all five of the other approaches to a story
>> mentioned above:
>>
>> ... In Dasent's words I would say: 'We must be satisfied with the soup
>that
>> is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it
>> has been boiled' ... By 'the soup' I mean the story as it is served up by
>> its author or teller, and by 'the bones' its sources or material -- even
>> when (by rare luck) those can be with certainty discovered. But I do not,
>> of course, forbid criticism of the soup as soup.
>
>I do not see how this quote helps your point. After all, wouldn't ``the
>soup'' be the Lord of the Rings and _the Hobbit_ and ``the bones'' be
>all the material that has been presented since Tolkien's death? If this
>is the case, we should, by Tolkien's words, be satisfied with the Lord
>of the Rings and _the Hobbit_ and not worry about _the Silmarillion_,
>_Unfinished Tales_, and the History of Middle-Earth.
The smaller motivation for this was to help question (3) at the top -- to
say again that the Story should be the principal approach. And I don't
know that Silm and UT are really bones -- rather, they're different courses
of soup. Parts of HoMe are part of the bones, though I think what Tolkien
had in mind was the influences and experiences of the author himself.
But the larger reason was that I just wanted to end with something written
by Tolkien. I've always liked his way of expressing things, and as you
say this thread is fairly dense. It was meant to be a short respite.
Ron Mayer
<CBI5A...@rice.edu> kei...@is.rice.edu (Keith Goodnight):
>In article <MAYER.93A...@orthanc.sono.uucp> ma...@sono.uucp (Ron Mayer) writes:
>><CB7LD...@rice.edu> kei...@is.rice.edu (Keith Goodnight):
>>> The contrary type of attack seems hardly possible, except by a deluded or
>>>at least very naive person:
>>
>> rebuttal was actually a valid response to the first poster.]
>
> I have the queer sort of sideways feeling of suddenly meeting someone
>coming in at right angles to the debate that Jim Chokey and I have been
>engaged in.
Yeah, actually, I was trying to take it one step further. The point I
had inferred was that you criticized "mixing modes" of analysis as you
put it, or simultaniously analyzing both Tolkien's writing process and
the "reality" of the events in middle earth. I was trying to create
an example in which an understanding of certain "realities" of Middle
Earth, specifically Galadriel's personality is a very relevant factor
in how Tolkien wrote.
Yes I know she's not a Real Historical figure; but I would claim that
the best way to understand how Tolkien created this "effective sense
of temporal depth" is to accept these "realities" as if they were
Realities.
> What I intended you to see in the (supposedly deluded) statement:
>"No, it's not! Tolkien couldn't have made that up for effect because she
>really had lived there that long."
> is not "made up the reference to Nargothrond and Gondolin", but rather
>"Made up Galadriel as a character with a long history."
Ok, I misunderstood that passage; but I think I could still make a
similar argument that Galadriel was placed in the books because she
fit perfectly into the world which Tolkien envisioned.
A similar argument can be made in Real history. For example Columbus
discovered the New World largely because the technology to sail there
existed. If Columbus himself did not exist, a few decades later
History would have almost necessarily created someone else who would
have fulfilled a similar role. In a similar manner, it Tolkien had
not "made up Galadriel" I suspect the "world" he created would have
almost necessarily produced a similar persona to fill the same role.
In this way it is fair to say that the "objective 'reality' of Middle
Earth" "made up Galadriel", not Tolkien.
IMHO, to say that Tolkien made up the character of Galadriel "for
effect" is no more fair than to say he made up the references to
Nagrothrond. IMHO Tolkien made a "world", and the characters and
events were not made up "for effect", but because of the way they fit
in his "reality".
> In other words, I was presenting as a charicature someone who would argue
>that there is no artistic purpose in Tolkien's creation because there is
>actually a 'real' Middle-earth out there and Tolkien was constrained only
>to write what 'really' happened in it.
Well, on this net, I probably come closest to the person you were
making a characture of; in that, to quote you, I think of Tolkien
creation as "there is actually a '[hypothetical]' Middle-earth out
there and Tolkien was constrained only to write what 'really' [would
have] happened in it [if such a place existed]."
Far from there being no artistic purpose in it, I think this this
constraint is the most significant factor in the beauty of his
artistic creation.
> I think what you're claiming in contrary is exactly what I have been
>claiming all along: That it is an important part of Tolkien's artistic
>motives (and his artistic success) that such references are not arbitrary but
>are tied to a wider (though invented) history.
*Absolutelly* I agree with this totally, and perhaps even more strongly.
Ron Mayer
ma...@acuson.com
Charles F. Fitzgerald
>
> I wrote:
> >William D.B. Loos writes:
> >> Yes, the things that Tolkien himself wrote are canonical, and secondary
> >> sources aren't -- surely it's no more than a convenient way of sorting
> >> sources into categories -- why the pother?
> >
> >But this is _not_ the way ``canonical'' is defined by many (most ?)
> >the posters to this newsgroup who use the term.
>
> Yesyesyesyesyesyes, I admit it, that definition was hopelessly slipshod
> and lax (oversimplified, actually) -- frankly, it's simply that I was just
> burning out by that point and couldn't face the need for another complex
> explanation. I don't in reality use that definition myself, either --
> you may have noted that I wrote a much longer explanation for the FAQ
> (I now feel that even that is insufficiently detailed), more-or-less
> along the lines of the rest of your post. Before getting to that, though,
> I would like to note that your objection is not quite the same as the point
> I was responding to. You're saying that my quick-and-dirty definition of
> what's canonical and what isn't was so oversimplified as to be inaccurate,
> which I agree with. But JC seemed to be objecting to the term being used in
> this context at all, and all I was saying was that while there may be
> disagreements on how "canonicity" should be apportioned there seems no reason
> to forbid its use altogether. (Since you take me to task for using it wrong
> you also seem to accept that it's alright to use it in *some* fashion.)
I will agree that I am not responding to the same question that you
were debating with Jim (hence the Subject: header change), but my reasons
for bringing you to bear on this issue were complex. Mostly, I wanted
to discuss why certain books by Tolkien are considered ``canon'' and
some are not. In the course, however, I have come to question the
whole notion of ``canonicity'', though probably not to the extent of
Jim Chokey. I am not totally against the concept of having a canon,
however, at least not right now, though I am not sure entirely what
the term ``canon'' should mean. In short, I am currently at sea on
this issue, and was curious what others had to write on the subject.
> Well, I've already agreed that "what Tolkien wrote" was far too simplistic.
> As you correctly note, the usual usage in the world at large would be to
> include his published corpus, which would also include his shorter fiction,
> his essays, and his academic work, but, as you say, that's not what we
> usually mean here. What we mean here is which writings can be used as
> sources for "factual" conclusions about the 'imaginary history' of the
> secondary reality.
>
> As for which works these are, it's still a matter of debate. Usually the
> works published during Tolkien's lifetime are flatly accepted as being
> canonical: Hobbit, LotR, Notes to Road Goes Ever On, and the Preface to
> ATB (re: this last, it's true that the poems are just poems and not
> historical treatises, and so should be regarded as "fictional" (i.e. even
> within the secondary reality) treatments of common M-e themes, such as dragon
> sickness, but the Preface does give us a few bits of actual lore, such as that
> Sam's granddaughter was named Firiel).
>
> I would argue that the Guide to Names in LotR and Letters should also be
> accepted without (much) question. If they were riddled with inconsistencies
> that caused enormous wrangles that would be different but that isn't the
> case. In fact, there are only a few small difficulties. Since Tolkien had
> lots of time to consider what was written in these places, since in almost all
> cases he was filling in gaps which aren't addressed anywhere else, and since
> he did so without stepping on anything else he had written, there should be no
> objection. (Besides, it would be a shame to throw out the wealth of
> information in the Letters).
Okay, first question: what criteria do we use to determine what is
canon? In this paragraph, you contend that the Letters and the Guide
to Names in the Lord of the Rings should be counted within the canon
because ``there are oonly a few small difficulties.'' So, by this
assertion, one might surmise that the amount of ``difficulties'' a
text creates with other published texts determines the fittingness
towards canon. Is this the criterion on which the ``canon'' is to
be determined?
> I've never advocated defining HoMe as canonical (though you're right that
> I did seem to be doing so -- it was inadvertant). My feeling is that
> when dealing with rough drafts we've really reached the limits of the
> "sub-creational" game. That is, the attidude we adopt is that LotR is
> an historical narrative about a real place, and that other sources of
> information are available. What then could the rough drafts of the
> actual story be? If we're clever enough and tried hard enough, I suppose
> we could fit them into the secondary reality somehow, but looks to be an
> unrewarding exercise. As far as I'm concerned they should have no status at
> all (this is only with respect to the study of the secondary reality as
> "history", remember, not with respect to the more general study of Tolkien).
> Thus, I don't much like the use of the term "apocrypha", not because it isn't
> the correct term (it is) but because it implies that they are part of the
> secondary reality, which they aren't.
I guess this is where you and I really part company. First, during a
previous thread (Re: Various References), Keith Goodknight admonished
me to read the first six (I believe it was six) books of the HOME series
because everything in _the Silmarillion_ is shown to be the work of
JRR Tolkien in those books. From this I collect that whatever is in
_the Silmarillion_ must also be somewhere within the HOME series, else
why the admonishment to read them? True, the ``data'' might not be as
readily accessible in that work then the others, but that does not mean
that it is not there.
Secondly, I disagree with the implied statement (if I am misconstruing
the intent of your previous paragraph, please let me know) that the
``other sources'' are more difficult to work into the ```sub-creational'
game'' than _the Silmarillion_ or _Unfinished Tales_ and that doing so
is not worth the effort. I would argue that these ``other sources''
could be just as important in that they add a realism that is not gained
by the ``cleanness'' of _the Sil_/LOTR fit. The extra ambiguity that
is added by the inclusion of _the Book of Lost Tales_, in my opinion,
is a Good Thing (tm).
Finally, I would argue that fit between _the Book of Lost Tales_ and
_the Hobbit_ is much better than the fit between _the Silmarillion_
and _the Hobbit_. So, as far as one part of the ``established''
canon goes, leaving out the HOME series means using the work that
does not fit into the sub-creational reality as well.
> UT and the Silmarillion are the tough cases. In UT, I'd say that each
> part should be judged on its own merits. In those cases where the writing
> was essentially complete and doesn't contradict anything else (such as the
> Annals of the Kings of Numenor), I see no reason not to accept it. And I
> feel that the Silm should be treated the same way: the different versions
> should be examined, with serious differences left as unresolvable. This is
> why I tend not to accept the published _Silmarillion_ as canonical, because
> it's an interweaving of different versions, and there's no way to tell (yet)
> what comes from where. But that should be settled soon.
According to Keith Goodknight, this is not the case. He says that
the pieces of _the Silmarillion_ can be found in the HOME series
(see above).
> >On the second thought (_ie._ that ``it's no more than a convenient
> >way of sorting sources into categories''), I do not believe this
> >is so. Most of the time when people discuss the canonicity of a
> >work, it is done to ``prove'' their point.
>
> Exactly, so canonicity sorts the writings into those which may legitimately
> be used as sources of the imaginary history and those which cannot.
But who are we to determine this? I mean, if someone thinks that
a work ``fits'' into an already accepted as imaginary history, who
am I or anyone else to say it doesn't?
> >Thus, in a recent thread,
> >the question of whether Maiar or Valar could bear children was being
> >discussed. Which books are taken to be canonical has a very great
> >bearing on this question because if the HOME series is said to be, then
> >the answer is a positive yes. There are many examples of this in _the
> >Book of Lost Tales_. If, on the other hand, _the Silmarillion_ alone
> >is taken to be canonical, the answer is probably no. Thus the ques-
> >tion of cononicity is not merely a ``sorting'' of the works into
> >appropriate ``categories'', it is, instead, a method of telling others
> >the ``rules of the game.''
>
> Hm, that last may be a distinction without a difference, but I'm not prepared
> to insist on it. I'd say that the example may take the discussion outside
> the secondary reality without admitting it's doing so. BoLT may not be a
> good example because that seems the one set of writing that could *never* be
> part of the canon. How would it fit it? The Silmarillion is Bilbo's
> "Translations from the Elvish" -- what then is the Book Of Lost Tales? I've
> never heard an even faintly plausible suggestion on this. No, I don't think
> that the mere fact that Ainur have children in it can be taken as evidence
> of anything. On the other hand, someone suggested that because Tolkien
> apparently deliberately removed all such references we can infer something
> about his intentions. Very possibly, but this is no longer within the
> secondary reality.
Okay, since you brought it on, let's create some fan-fiction. How could
_the Book of Lost Tales_ fit into the secondary reality?
First, you note that _the Silmarillion_ is Bilbo's ``Translations from
the Elvish''. Is this a necessary supposition? I do not believe so.
Supposing Bilbo to be the author of _the Hobbit_ and Frodo to be the
author of the Lord of the Ring, could we not suppose that _the Book
of Lost Tales_ is Bilbo's ``Translations from the Elvish'' with _the
Silmarillion_ being a ``cleaned-up'' version created by Frodo after
Bilbo's original? Since both _the Hobbit_ and _the Book of Lost
Tales_ come significantly before the Lord of the Rings whereas _the
Silmarillion_ is largely a work contempory to LOTR, the idea that
the previous two were works of one author and the later two works
the work of another seems plausible to me. So here we have one
``faintly plausible suggestion'' for an ``in-frame'' speculation of
how these two works (_ie._ _the Silmarillion_ and _the Book of Lost
Tales_) could both exist within the secondary reality.
end {fan-fiction}
>
> Anyway, this is all by the by. The original comment of mine that you started
> with was intended to be a defense of the notion of canonicity, of the
> appropriateness of its use be people who are having such discussions as
> we have. Judging from you last paragraph, I think we agree on that.
>
For right now at least....
Charles F. Fitzgerald
> I wrote:
> >> Jim Chokey writes:
> My contention was that most people have no intention of
> adding anything to the secondary reality Tolkien provided, so therefore "fan
> fiction" is simply incorrect. (However, judging by your example below your
> definition, and JC's, may be broader than mine.) What's more, there did seem
> to be a condescending tone to its use, as though it rated lower as a way to
> approach a story than, say, standard literary analysis.
I don't think it particularly interesting or profitable to try to
prove or disprove your contention, and I admit sometimes Jim's posts
tend to be a bit, shall we say, provocative. I do not believe,
however, that he means insult, slight, or enmity by them.
> Well, as I said at the top, the question of whether he actually was
> condemning subcreational scholarship [do we agree that that's better than
> the "g" word Keith?] as an activity or merely saying that it had to be
> kept under control was exactly what I was asking. There was definitely
> reason to wonder; quotes like the following:
>
> >>> The phrasing and word choice of your question reveals a profound
> >>>misconception of the nature of literary works. As I pointed out at
> >>>some length in my previous post, a work of art is not a body of
> >>>"raw data" about which one is to make "deductions" or produce
> >>>"hypotheses." It is not a bundle of "information."
> >>>
> >>>If one talks about Tolkien's writings as if they were simply a medium
> >>>through which pseudo-factual "information" is conveyed, their true
> >>>signficance is also missed.
>
> seem to leave no allowance for examination of secondary reality under any
> circumstances. I don't remember any explicit statement that it was OK,
> but maybe I missed it. And besides that there's still the "fan fiction"
> definitional wrangle, since I still think that ff is something different
> from merely examining the author's sub-creation as he actually presented it.
First of all, I thought ``game'' to be a perfectly acceptable term
for use to which you put it. I prefer it substantially to the, in
my opinion, misconstrued phrase ``subcreational scholarship'', though
I am warming to the ``fan-fiction'' term often employed by Jim Chokey.
Now, to your main point. I disagree that the above quote by Jim
implies that ``no allowance for examination of secondary reality
under any circumstances'' will be allowed. My reading of this
passage would be that taking a work as primarily as a source of
information about the secondary reality in which the work is set
is flawed. It is not perfect. It causes one to miss things. I
allow (probably to a much greater extent than Jim does) that the
sub-creational aspects of Middle-Earth are important, yet I can
find nothing within the above quote that in any way deters me
from my feelings on that subject or any portion of the quote that
I can disagree with.
[stuffs deleted]
> The question was whether he construed the activity in the same way as the
> people who were doing it did. It seemed not. He seemed to be saying
> that there was a large component of embellishment whereas I claimed there
> was not. (But I'm beginning to think both of us overstated our cases).
I would not hesitate to affirm that it is likely that Jim does not
``construe'' the sub-creational activity in the same way as the people
who do it do, but since when is this a crime? Is holding a differing
opinion from the general populace to be held in contempt on this
newsgroup? If this is a new guideline to be added to the charter,
I will have to quit reading and posting because I most certainly
do not hold all the views of my fellows (:-)).
As for the second statement, I would tend to favour the side that
says there is a large component of embellishment unless some
proof to the contrary were provided. In providing the example
of embellishment for my previous post, I had to search at most
a whopping two articles (and it may very well have been only
one) before I found a suitable example. True, I avoided certain
articles because they seemed quite clearly to be not what I
was looking for, but it was anything but difficult to find an
example post.
[more stuffs deleted]
> (sigh) Please, if you check back you'll see that over and over I made a
> distinction between treating the writings *exclusively* as a bundle of
> information (to the exclusion of other perspectives) and treating it that
> way as one of several approachs. Of course it shouldn't be treated *only*
> as raw data of an imaginary history, but my point was that it could perfectly
> easily be viewed in several ways at once.
I admit that I took this statement a little out of context and proportion
for which I apologise.
[still more stuffs gone]
> Well, it's a step forward. If this is what you've been meaning by "fan
> fiction" then it is around. To me, however, the term, and words like
> "embellishment", etc., plainly implied an element of intention. That is,
> the accusation seemed to be that people were deliberately adding extra
> elements to what they knew Tolkien had supplied. This particular case,
> however, looks inadvertant to me. Sloppy scholarship, in other words.
> (This particular question couldn't be answered definitively, since while
> it seems not likely there's nothing explicitly preventing it; but I can't
> propound that now.)
I could not find the text of the original article to which you
were responding, so I do not know what words were used in that post.
The post to which I responded, however, used the word ``invention''
rather than ``embellishment''. The word invent implies the
creation of something new, particularly according to _the Random
House College Dictionary_, defn. 2,
to produce or create with the imagination.
Thus, anyone reading a story could also be said to be ``inventing''
a secondary reality within her mind because the characters ``come
alive'' within a person's imagination.
> There's still something I wonder, though -- is it the fact that this
> statement about Anduril is probably wrong, and goes beyond the evidence
> that we possess, that you're objecting to, or do you mean it literally
> that "This information does not appear in the text of the Lord of the Ring"
> is your objection? Keith already raised this question, but I'll ask again:
> are you actually objecting to straightforward and plainly correct deductions
> which are not said explicitly? Such as, it was never said explicitly, I
> think, that Pippin had hairy feet, but "Hobbits had hairy feet" and "Pippin
> was a hobbit" make it a one-step deduction. Surely you wouldn't call the
> conclusion that he had hairy feet "fan fiction", would you? If so, then
> I still think it's wildly overstated as a complaint.
I would also say that this is not fan-fiction, though I do not know
where Jim stands on this. He has not really, forcefully stated he
believes it is, but he has not denied it either.
[still _more_ stuffs gone]
> >It's presented as a statement of fact as if it were an item of trivia
> >``dredged up'' from the text. I would say that it would be difficult for
> >some one not very familiar with all the Tolkienian texts to tell whether
> >the above is or is not conjecture. It may be obvious to you, but not
> >to everyone.
>
> Well, I agree fully that people should be careful with such statements,
> both in terms of what we know (what Tolkien told us) and what they know
> (how familiar they are with what Tolkien told us). BTW, phrases like
> "dredged up" do have connotations, and this is the sort of thing that
> contributes to the perception of a negative tone.
Ah, but it was I who started using that term, not Jim :-).
[not much stuffs left at this rate :-)]
> >> This may be an insoluble disagreement, since it depends on how much faith
> >> one has in the fertility of Tolkien's imagination. However, many people
> >> have sincerely concluded that Tolkien really did perceive a unity, and
> >> this is not a pretense, not part of a game. I really think you may be
> >> underestimating Tolkien -- he wasn't faking it.
> >
> >Up to this time, you have been contending that the sub-creation aspects
> >of Tolkien's work have been part of a ``game''. Now, you say they are
> >not. Which is it?
>
> Now here you're making something more complicated than it is. Different
> question, different context -- just because I used the same word shouldn't
> throw you. The earlier use of the word "game" (which I now regret -- I
> got it from Tolkien) was as applied to the activity of subcreational
> scholarship, the examination of the secondary reality. This is a different
> topic altogether. Jim had made a number of statements about how "unity"
> in the picture of Middle-earth didn't exist, that there were only independant
> works of art, that the connections were artificial, either retcons by Tolkien
> or imagined by ourselves (as though he were talking about Larry Niven's
> Known Space, about which the statement is true: seams showing, framework
> visible through holes in the plaster, sharp corners sticking out like sore
> thumbs all over).
I admit to, once again, misconstuing the intent of your original
statement, for which I apologise. It was just to good an opportunity
to pass up, though >;-].
> But the larger reason was that I just wanted to end with something written
> by Tolkien. I've always liked his way of expressing things, and as you
> say this thread is fairly dense. It was meant to be a short respite.
How about this one:
There once was a little man called Niggle, who had a long journey to
make. He did not want to go, indeed the whole idea was distasteful to
him; but he could not get out of it. He knew he would have to start
some time, but he did not hurry with his preparations.
From "Leaf By Niggle", by JRR Tolkien.
I don't suppose it fits the thread at all, but it was handy :-).
Keith Goodnight
I regret that I have not yet been knighted, although the appearance of
this 'k' in my last name is a frequent mistake. Perhaps people are
misled by my inherent nobility of character. :)
--Keith F. Goodnight
Bill Sherman -WGraham
> There is a _reason_, or to be more precise, a set of reasons,
>why Tolkien described the number of Rings in the way he did-- using the
>3+7+9+1 method in verse, rather than simply writing in bland prose, "There
>were 20 rings."
...
>By treating these numbers as mere conveyors of information instead of poetic
>tools and building blocks, you are ignoring the fact that Tolkien had a
>purpose for writing the Ring-poem in the way that he did, and are indeed
>ignoring the fact that he wrote it in verse because he wanted the reader to
>read it _as a poem_, not as a set of "raw data" or "information" to be
>compiled and processed.
I think that the last sentence in the above quote sets up
a false dichotomy. Tolkien wrote a poem, and I would agree it should
be read "as a poem," but I think that the information was an important
part of the poem, and that part of the reading should consider that
information. Now, as it happens, the first time I read the poem I was
a child, and I misunderstood the poem - I thought there were 23 rings:
9 for men
7 for dwarves
3 for elves
1 for the dark lord
1 to rule them
1 to find them
1 to bring them and bind them
I was very confused, because I wasn't sure which ring Frodo had, and I
didn't appreciate the poem nearly as much as I would have had I
understood that the second verse was only about one ring. Now as it
happens, I eventually figured out my misconception just by reading
(and that may be a telling point...), but suppose a friend had heard
of my confusion and explained that the poem was only about 20 rings.
I do not think that that person would have been engaging in fan
fiction. Nor do I think it fair to say that he was "ignoring the fact
that Tolkien wrote it in verse." He was explaining the poem to me "as
a poem" by explaining the informational content without which it was
an ominous sounding source of confusion.
Bill Sherman
she...@sol1.lrsm.upenn.edu
Bill Sherman -WGraham
>what other published authors have written on Tolkien. There's one book
>I read-- can't remember the name, though-- that was trying to "prove
>definitively" that Bombadil was Aule the Vala, and was thus fan-fictional
>both in terms of approach and intent.
This is just the sort of statement that is insulting to people
whom you accuse of writing fan-fiction: "Kocher isn't nearly as bad as
this guy who wrote fan-fiction. That guy was so awful he was
fan-fictional on two levels! He is beneath contempt." No wonder
people get upset when you accuse them of writing fan-fiction!
Much of what you write is subtlely phrased in such a way as to
express contempt for people who write fan-fiction. Clearly many
people have sensed this contempt. Usually that contempt is hidden.
In the quote above, it is right on the surface.
I suppose you might argue that what you really meant was that
the guy who wrote that book was pathetic because he was making an
absurd argument. No matter what you meant, however, if you were
trying to write something that would not be insulting to many people
you accuse/d of writing fan-fiction, you failed.
Bill Sherman
she...@sol1.lrsm.upenn.edu
Ian Wellock
> On the question of ``new information,'' I checked a recent thread and
> found the following, which I believe, would fit into Jim's understanding
> [Note: I mean no disrespect towards any of the quoted posters. I
> was tired of hearing the cry for ``evidence'' and chose the first
> article I thought fit my purposes -- CFF]:
No disrespect taken; or given, in this post...
>
> From: v-i...@microsoft.com (Ian Wellock)
> Subject: Re: Aragorn is a dope
>
> [The article has been edited somewhat -- CFF]
> j_he...@oz.plymouth.edu wrote:
> > David Faulkner writes:
> > >I have little doubt that Aragorn, wielding Anduril, could have killed
> > >the Witch King if he got the better of a fight between the two of them.
> > >As I said before, Elendil 'killed' Sauron with it, and Sauron is another
> > >level of 'nastiness' up from a Nazgul.
> > >
> > I don't think so. The man makes the sword powerful, in my
> > opinion. Not the other way around...
>
> Anduril is magical; it therefore lends some kind of strength to
> Aragorn, however, apart from it being utterly irrelevant, Elendil
> was also one step up from an 'ordinary' Dunedain, so the
> comparison just doesn't work.
>
> Ian.
>
> Here we have the ``information'' that since ``Anduril is magical'',
> ``it therefore lends some kind of strength to Aragorn.'' This
> information does not appear in the text of the Lord of the Ring,
> and quite possibly, nowhere else. It is, therefore, invented or
> ``new''. Hence, we have ``new information.''
> [This is only in the last response -- finding the ``fan-fiction''
> in the the other two is left as an execise for the reader :-).]
My apologies. There are two reasons that this post was written the way it was;
First, I have not got my copy of LoTR with me here, but I am convinced that it
mentions something about Nazgul or some other creature not being able to be
harmed by non-magical weapons, and that, using Anduril, Aragorn did indeed
harm them.
Using that as a basis, I felt that it could be validly stated that Anduril 'lends
some kind of strength', even if that be in the form of an enhanced ability...
Second, I neglected to state that this "information" (I use the term loosely) comes
from the Lords of Middle Earth, Vol. 2, book (part of the Rolemaster system), and, as
I mentioned in another post about Tom Bombadil, you *may* be interested to know that
this book mentions this, and if you want to accept this *opinion*, feel free.
In no way did I mean to impart that this was stated in LoTR, or any other Tolkien
book, explicitly.
Ian.
Ian Wellock
> [Charles here cites an earlier posting as an example of embellishment on the
> text, or what Jim Chokey terms 'fan fiction']
> >
> > Aragorn, however, apart from it being utterly irrelevant, Elendil
> > was also one step up from an 'ordinary' Dunedain, so the
> > comparison just doesn't work.
> >
> >Ian.
> Absorbed as I have been by the present discussion, I have not been
> participating much in other threads lately, but I did read this article when
> it appeared, and my reaction to it was 'That's wrong.' Had I been inclined
> to do so (or had more time after writing the latest installment in the
> 'fan-fiction debate'), I would probably have replied to this posting with
> something like the following:
>
> I do not believe that Anduril is anywhere described as magical. It
> is a famous sword, certainly; and an ancient one, and therefore very
> valuable. And in the culture and world or Middle-earth such heirlooms
> have great cultural significance as sources of inspiration or signs
> of rank. But this is not the same as 'magical.'
> I think Aragorn's abilities (whether great or small) were his own.
Oh dear. I seem to have become ammunition in this battle. :-)
It's completely unintentional, I assure you.
You probably haven't seen my response to Charles yet, so I'll repeat a little
of it; I don't have my copy of LoTR with me, but I am convinced that Anduril
had some ability to slay magical creatures which could not be killed by ordinary
weapons, and that is what I meant by 'Anduril is magical'.
If I did have my copy, I would not post until I had looked it up, but my second
mistake was to phrase it as an absolute answer 'Anduril IS magical', instead of
as my own opinion, etc. --
Apologies again; I'll go and shoot myself now...
:-(
Ian.
Charles B Flynn
I know that I am coming into this thread late, and that I have surely
missed some of it, so forgive me if what I say has already been said.
There is a whole school of criticism that has become increasingly popular since
the death of J.R.R. Tolkien, based in looking at the reader's response to a work
as the most important aspect of the work. The idea is that A piece of writing
(or indeed any form of communication) has no meaning until someone reads it and
ascribes meaning to it. Of course, the meanings described need not have
anything to do with what the author of the work intended, and, in fact, they
really have nothing to do with the actual paper and ink read.
If this is true, then isn't it the case that any and all meanings,
interpretations, and reiterations of a work are the creations--or (fan-)
fictions--or the reader. And if this is true, isn't any discussion or criticism
of a work in fact based upon fan-fiction? Yes, there is TEXTUAL criticism,
which discusses the actual physical characteristics of a
book or text, but none of that has been discussed here at all (which is probably
just as well, as it gets boring quickly to most people).
So, the choice is, do we discuss criticism based on fan-fiction, or not at all--
OR do we redefine "nan-fiction" to refer only to those fictions which are
inspired by an author's (Tolkien's) works but do not claim to be actual
interpretations of what Tolkien meant. A new story about what Tom Bombadil did
last Thursday would be fan-fiction. "Anduril is magic" would be a (potentially
false) interpretation.
We cannot have a discussion without allowing for interpretations.
Matthew H. Flynn
Department of English
University of Southwestern Louisiana