Home » Reading & Literature » J.R.R. Tolkien » Is your Canon on the loose?

Is your Canon on the loose?

© Michael Martinez

Until now I have given only light support to a fannish effort intended to establish a canon for Tolkien discussions. Not the canon, mind you, or the ultimate canon, or the final canon, or even the best canon. Merely a canon. My light support has consisted of granting permission to people to mention the project on The Tolkien and Inklings Forum (formerly The White Council). The real canonical discussion was started over at The Barrowdowns Web site, but it seems (as of this writing) to have stalled. And I think I can understand why it stalled. Part of the problem is that something like this project will take a lot of time, and it's very daunting. But let me start at the beginning, as much as I can go back that far. The issue of "canon" has often come up in many Tolkien discussion forums. Two or more people will disagree over something in the books and start providing citations to prove their points. Hopefully the citations are full and relevant, but all too often someone objects to another person's source of information. The citation may be complete, but it may not seem relevant to all parties. For example, is it relevant to cite The Book of Lost Tales when discussing The Silmarillion? The two works are separated by more than 50 years. Many people feel The Book of Lost Tales is just an early "Silmarillion" (it's not). Many people point out that Christopher Tolkien used The Book of Lost Tales to write portions of The Silmarillion (he did). So, is The Book of Lost Tales a relevant source of information? Oh, the headaches that question has led to. No one can provide a definitive answer. The best answer I have ever contrived is, "It depends." Some people have (wrongly) alleged that means "it depends on whether [Michael Martinez] wants to use it". What it depends on is whether you're talking about the works of J.R.R. Tolkien or the world portrayed by The Silmarillion. The Book of Lost Tales is set in England. Firmly, squarely, undeniably. Tolkien even worked the geography of England into the stories. England was supposed to be that portion of Tol Eressea which was restored to the mortal world. The Book of Lost Tales was a mythology Tolkien had written for England. Somewhere in the 1920s Tolkien gave up on writing the mythology for England, but he didn't give up on writing a mythology. i.e., it was no longer intended for England. It became the mythology for J.R.R. Tolkien. I think he always wanted to publish it, but he realized somehow that it wasn't the sort of thing one could expect publishers to pursue. After all, false mythologies weren't exactly flooding the bookstores in those days.

The copyright of the article Is your Canon on the loose? in J.R.R. Tolkien is owned by Michael Martinez. Permission to republish Is your Canon on the loose? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.