The Tolkien “Canon?”: J.R.R. Tolkien the Sub-Creator

The more I learn about the early Christian church, and the world of the ancients, the better I understand and appreciate J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, and his full legendarium.  One interesting aspect of Tolkien’s world, similar to that of Holy Scripture, is the question of “canon” and what it includes.  For Tolkien’s massive collection about Middle Earth has an interesting historical feature in common with the word of God and our Bibles, something that truly highlights the “sub-creation” aspect of Tolkien’s work and his role as a “sub-creator.”

As we know, the Bible is a collection of many books that were written at many different times and places, and for which exist numerous manuscript versions with some manuscript differences.  Similarly, Tolkien’s world actually consists of multiple writings, from numerous times during Tolkien’s life — starting around the time of World War I, up until shortly before his death; he continued revisions, creating different versions of stories.  In our real world, in ancient times Christians worked with many different books within the full collection of what would later be bound together as “The Bible,” forming an official “canon” after several hundred years; and in modern times, scholars have studied the variations in Bible manuscripts within this canon collection.  Again, within the Tolkien fandom world, many people have tried to come up with an official, definitive canon of Tolkien’s legendarium, examining the differences in the different manuscript versions of Tolkien’s stories.  After all, J.R.R. Tolkien’s massive writing collection — of which he never discarded old versions — became a lifetime work for his son Christopher, to sift through all of the writings and publish the various works such as Unfinished Tales, Lost Tales, and numerous volumes of the History of Middle Earth.  Note these web pages that talk about the Tolkien canon: Tolkien Gateway Canon and an Ask Middle Earth post.  Note this observation from the second link:

This is a question that every reader has to – or gets to, depending on your point of view – answer for themselves. Some readers believe that whichever version was published in one of the “main” works (The Hobbit, LotR, and The Silmarillion) is canon. Others believe that whichever version Tolkien wrote last is canon. Others go on a case-by-case basis, essentially choosing their favorite versions of each story to be canon. And of course there’s the Global Theory, which argues that they’re all canon. It’s entirely up to you, and (no matter what anybody might tell you) there really isn’t a wrong answer.

As mentioned on one of the older Amon Sul podcasts, when we look at Tolkien’s own words within the story, we see that even Tolkien himself did not have a final, definitive version of all the tales, in his own imagination — as though the world existed on its own, outside of Tolkien’s imagination.  Tolkien himself seemed to be content with some level of “mystery” and lack of conclusion regarding these legends within Middle Earth.  Here I recall also, from reading The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, places where Tolkien described certain characters coming onto the scene, and his own reaction to these new characters — such as Faramir, in letter 66:

A new character has come on the scene (I am sure I did not invent him, I did not even want him, though I like him, but there he came walking into the woods of Ithilien): Faramir, the brother of Boromir – and he is holding up the ‘catastrophe’ by a lot of stuff about the history of Gondor and Rohan (with some very sound reflections no doubt on martial glory and true glory): but if he goes on much more a lot of him will have to be removed to the appendices

Regarding the uncertainty, though, we note for instance in The Silmarillion, places where the writing simply says “Some say that…”  or “others say…” such as these excerpts:

Some say that it was Mandos himself, and no lesser herald of Manwë.

Aforetime it was held among the Elves in Middle-earth that dying the Dwarves returned to the earth and the stone of which they were made; yet that is not their own belief. For they say that Aulë the Maker, whom they call Mahal, cares for them, and gathers them to Mandos in halls set apart;

What may befall their spirits after death the Elves know not. Some say that they too go to the halls of Mandos; but their place of waiting there is not that of the Elves, and Mandos under Ilúvatar alone save Manwë knows whither they go after the time of recollection in those silent halls beside the Outer Sea.

Thus, we can know with certainty the vast majority of the story of Middle Earth, allowing for some variations and different versions on minor points.  But the idea of a “canon” (something that has great precision,100% defined and conclusive) may not be the best approach to Tolkien’s world.  As mentioned in my last post , there is instead a type of ritual participation within the community of Tolkien fandom, a ritual that we can return to with repeated readings of Lord of the Rings through the years, for instance.

In a similar way, the early Christian church had a number of various scrolls that were considered part of the sacred writings, which were circulated, yet would not be bound together into one volume until many centuries later.  This collection of writings — which included many books that are now considered Deuterocanonical, or as “apocrypha” (by Protestants)  — served along with apostolic tradition for the early Christians, as what they shared in their ritual participation, their Christian communal experience.

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