A Review of Douglas Charles Kane’s Arda Reconstructed
For Tolkien researchers (including fan-writers), the published Silmarillion has long worn a blazing red question mark in terms of authorship. It is no secret that the book was pieced together by Christopher Tolkien using multiple different drafts of JRRT’s writings, and that Guy Kay–a fantasy author–assisted CT with this endeavor. The History of Middle-earth series was published, in part, to answer the question of the origins and sources of The Silmarillion, but it still didn’t reach far enough for many: CT was silent on most of his decisions as to what he used in putting together The Silmarillion and to what degree “editorial intervention”–and invention–was involved in creating a book that, for many Tolkien fans, stands forefront in their mind as the “canon” of the earliest ages of Arda.
Douglas Charles Kane’s Arda Reconstructed is an attempt to take those published sources and answer some of these questions. Kane painstakingly, word for word, traces each line of The Silmarillion and locates from where in JRRT’s early writings it came. When first I’d heard of Arda Reconstructed from a fellow fan, I was over the moon. I had attempted this on my own as part of research projects before, and it is not an easy task. To have a book providing at least a starting point for this sort of research would make my own forays into Tolkien’s legendarium that much easier. However, I also operated under the assumption that the results of such a study would make for rather dry reading and would stand primarily as a reference, to be opened at need and otherwise unread.
I was wrong on the latter as well. Kane’s research reveals several interesting trends as far as the construction of The Silmarillion is concerned. Several of them hit my own buttons as a researcher and fan-writer.
During a discussion of Arda Reconstructed on the SWG mailing list, the most frequently asked question was, “Exactly what is this book?” I feel like the book has two important components. Firstly are the charts–one per chapter with the exception of the chapters where CT has already provided a similar breakdown of sources as part of the HoMe series–that detail the sources of each line of The Silmarillion. At times, CT (and Guy Kay) took whole swaths of JRRT’s original sources and plunked them, nearly verbatim, into the published Silmarillion. At other times, they created a patchwork from numerous sources by cutting and pasting in ways that are dizzying to behold. These charts show this and, for me, these alone are worth the price of the book. I don’t even want to imagine the combined number of hours spent on such sleuthing. I’m just glad that, now, I don’t have to do it.
The second component of the book is the author’s commentary, which is largely based on observations made while, presumably, compiling the charts. Here, the book gets interesting and here, also, the book will prove problematic for some. The saying goes that if you put two Tolkien fans together, you will end up with three opinions, and Kane is not shy about expressing his, which I’m sure will imperil him in the minds of others in the community. But so it goes.
He traces several trends that occurred during the compilation of The Silmarillion that I found particularly interesting because, as noted, they relate directly to research interests and “canon” interpretations of mine. Firstly is the diminishment of female characters during the compilation of the published Silmarillion. I’ve already heard this idea poo-pooed: They were minor characters to start and were cut as part of a general goal of downplaying minor characters. Only this isn’t what Kane’s evidence shows. Nearly all of the women of Aman, for example, had at least one detail removed by CT and Guy Kay, seemingly without reason. Other roles were eviscerated, shoving female characters into the background when, according to Kane’s research, it seemed that JRRT intended them to maintain more prominent roles, often illustrative of some of the philosophical ideas that the “Silmarillion” was meant to include.
Míriel Serindë is one such character. With the total elimination of “The Story of Finwë and Míriel,” not only is Míriel moved to the margins of the story, but the philosophical and cultural concepts that she was meant to illustrate are lost as well. Ungoliant undergoes a diminishment that greatly reduces her complexity: the complexity of character that JRRT achieved in very few words being one of the truly notable aspects of the “Silmarillion.” Nerdanel is reduced from a strong and independent woman to one who, as I illustrated in my essay A Woman in Few Words, receives only four mentions in the text, all of which concern her status as a wife and mother. JRRT’s original material on her character, as my essay also illustrates, shows her importance beyond her relationship to important males.
Still other female characters–like Andreth and Nellas–were eliminated from the published story altogether, despite evidence in the published sources that JRRT meant to include them.
Also taken from the published Silmarillion are all references to the mythological sources of the stories being presented. Again, this is an argument that I have been making for years, largely in the context of fan-writings and the attempt to establish an absolute “canon” regarding events and characterizations. My point has always been that this is complicated–even rendered impossible–by the fact that JRRT framed his stories as tales told not by himself as an omniscient and omnipresent narrator but by sources that either lived through the events being described (as in Pengolodh’s depiction of the fall of Gondolin) or received information from other sources (as in Rúmil’s construction of the Ainulindalë based on what he was taught by the Valar). That this was JRRT’s intent is hard to argue against, even though I am generally averse to assigning “authorial intent” to any of the posthumous published works. From The Book of Lost Tales on through the final written sources, JRRT often directly ascribed a source of the tales he was telling or information he was presenting. Some of his later ideas–such as the attempt to integrate a round, heliocentric world with his existing mythology–directly rely on this framework. Yet this information is completely missing from the published Silmarillion. Where did it go and why?
Kane makes a compelling argument that, in an effort to achieve consistency, CT eliminated these attributions because they themselves presented inconsistencies. JRRT ascribed tales as being passed through two lines: from the Elves on Tol Eressëa to the mortal mariner Ælfwine, or from the Elves via the escaped Númenóreans. Kane suggests the CT thought it should be one or the other but not both–that having both would introduce inconsistency into the story–and so struck them altogether. Kane regrets this choice, and I agree. As a reader, it adds the illusion of historical depth and context that the published Silmarillion lacks. As a fan-writer, I wonder, if these attributions had been made clearer, would we see a greater allowance for imagination and invention in Tolkien-based fanworks? It would be more difficult to argue something from The Silmarillion as inarguable fact with a living, breathing narrator easily perceived just on the other side of it.
Kane makes a third intriguing point: the complexity of characters presented in The Silmarillion. The characters in all their shades of gray are what first seized my imagination about the book over even LotR, which is much more prone to dualism where its characters are concerned. “Silmarillion” characters, though, have always defied such easy classification. Just ask a room full of Tolkien fans whether Fëanor or Maeglin or Manwë are good guys or bad guys and observe the variety of responses that you get.
Yet Kane demonstrates a tendency of CT, during the assembly of the published Silmarillion, to edit the texts in such ways that characters are greatly reduced in complexity. Ungoliant has been mentioned; Melkor receives similar treatment. Fëanor and his sons are deprived moments that show them more sympathetically. Manwë’s tendency to look like an ignorant buffoon is not present in the source texts, but many readers walk away from The Silmarillion with this impression–I certainly did. Kane doesn’t suggest this, but I wonder if these changes were aimed at satisfying the notions of really evil villains and really fabulous heroes that seem present in many of the epics on which The Silmarillion is patterned. Garnering sympathy for the bad guys is a relatively new phenomenon and still not one that is universally liked, especially among fantasy fans. Perhaps CT felt that taking the book in this direction would be keeping truer to the epic form and make it appealing to the same fans who adored LotR.
Without having researched any of Kane’s claims for myself, I come away from Arda Reconstructed with just one major complaint. Arda Reconstructed uses only the published source texts–The History of Middle-earth, Unfinished Tales, and so on–which is advantageous in that it allows any reader to reconstruct Kane’s work (Arda Reconstructed Reconstructed?) but is also limiting as far as drawing conclusions about the correctness of CT’s decisions in putting together The Silmarillion.
Kane acknowledges this up front in the book:
It is possible, even likely, that som eof hte changes, omissions, and additions that I describe reflect textual material not included (for whatever reason) in those works, or some other source only available to Christopher (including, perhaps, personal conversations taht he had with his father). (pg. 25)
However, as the analysis proceeds, the reality of the methodological limits of the book sometimes seems to fall by the wayside in favor of expressing a strong, certain opinion about how The Silmarillion was created. On the one hand, I understand this desire. Few are the Silmarillion fans who don’t maintain a least one negative opinion as far as CT’s choices go. At the same time, one of the quips I hear uttered at times by Silmarillion fans is, “I could have done a better job of putting together The Silmarillion than Christopher Tolkien did,” and this unfailing makes me grit my teeth because, no, chances are that if just about anyone besides CT had attempted to create The Silmarillion, we would have an inferior book. I think that–given the time and effort put into it–the “mistakes” in the published text illustrate the enormity of the task more so than any shortcomings CT possessed.
Kane doesn’t go so far as this, obviously; in fact, he speaks in gratitude for CT’s role in bringing JRRT’s posthumous writings to fans and also points out the special relationship between them that made CT the ideal choice for compiling his father’s writings. But even with all of this, I don’t feel as though his conclusions are qualified enough in terms of their shortcomings. For example, when he discusses the diminishment of women in the published Silmarillion, he is often quick to place the responsibility for this onto CT’s shoulders, identifying these changes as wrong or, at best, puzzling. For example, in discussing the removal of the detail that Nerdanel, as well as Fëanor, learned metalsmithing from Mahtan, Kane remarks, “This is one of the most blatant examples of how Christopher’s changes appear to weaken an important female character” (pg. 80). And, true, the changes are puzzling, but the reason doesn’t necessarily lie in any choice that CT made. That is a spurious conclusion to draw based solely on the fact that the published material does not immediately illuminate the reason behind such changes.
In fact, another secondary work about J.R.R. Tolkien underscores the perils of drawing such conclusions. Shortly after finishing Arda Reconstructed, I found a copy of Paul H. Kocher’s Master of Middle-earth at the library. Master of Middle-earth was published in 1972, five years before The Silmarillion, so nearly everything about the Elder Days was left to piecing together details from LotR and The Hobbit or pure speculation. Even after the publication of The Silmarillion, The History of Middle-earth, and the other supplementary texts, I was often amazed at how on-target Kocher was in his speculations about the Elder Days. Yet, at times, he was also dreadfully off-base. For example, he writes,
If the navigable sea has any such boundaries Middle-earth cannot be a rounded sphere as we now conceive Earth. In the imrama tales this point posed no dificult to the wonder-oriented Celtic mind of the Dark Ages, which popularly accepted the world as bounded and flat anyway, or, when it did not, was quite willing to forget roundness under the spell of a good story. But is such a prescientific cosmology intended by Tolkien for Middle-earth? He never discusses the question explicitly one way or the other. He leaves us to survey the text of the epic and its Appendices for ourselves. Quite possibly he considers the question to be of no real importance to the story, and so is indifferent whether it is raised or not. (pgs. 12-13)
Never explicitly discussed? Of no real importance? Indifferent?? With access to the texts we have now, we know to be as wrong-headed as Kocher’s assertion that Idril must have become a mortal because she married one. The question of how to integrate scientific reality–so important to the underlying philosophy of “subcreation” that JRRT used in his stories–with the primitive but beautiful myths he had constructed actually pre-occupied JRRT quite a bit at the end of his life, and he’d even begun changing some of his writings to reflect a round, heliocentric world. My point isn’t to berate Kocher for not having read texts that weren’t even close to publication when he wrote his otherwise insightful book about JRRT’s mythology. My point is that the sources that build all of JRRT’s works are unbelievably complex, and even after the publication of The Silmarillion and more than a dozen texts to support it, there are still troves of unpublished notes and documents to which most of us don’t have access. And this is to say nothing–as Kane himself admits–of conversations between JRRT and CT to which even the most devoted researcher will never have access.
It may well be that CT is a misogynist intentionally bent on diminishing the roles of prominent women; it may be that he possesses a less nefarious (but no less harmful) bias that caused him to choose certain details over others when editing the book to a reasonable length; it may well be that he simply made some unfortunate changes in the interest of slimming and simplifying the text that gives that impression. Or it may be that there is somewhere a scribbled note indicating that Nerdanel should not have learned her father’s art. Or it may be that JRRT expressed to CT his uncertainty about the direction Ungoliant’s character was heading. It may be that we will never know, or that what seems a “trend” is really no more than an unfortunate coincidence, and the label of “misogynist” is too dire, in my mind, to attach to a person without full proof of malevolence or ignorance underlying his decisions.
And this, I think is the major shortcoming of Arda Reconstructed. If CT’s theoretical intellectual heir publishes another twelve volumes of the History of Middle-earth illustrating why CT made the changes that he did, then Kane’s book will become as much of an anachronism as Kocher’s: useful in some regards but generally unreliable for its opinions that fail to account for texts and information that it knows exists but cannot access and the possibility that such information will fundamentally alter one’s conclusions. It is not that those opinions should not be expressed. To the contrary, I suspect that Kane’s conclusions will make for some wonderful discussion and debate in the fan community. But I think the book should have done more to remind readers of the limitations posed by its methods and should have taken more care in assigning responsibility for choices with which the author did not agree.
So should you buy the book? Its price tag was a little wince-worthy on my starving student’s budget but, yes, it is worth every penny. As a researcher, I cannot be anything but grateful to Kane and relieved at not having to compile the information that he makes available in tidy tabular format in this book. The tables alone are worth the price of the book and, I suspect, will be well-thumbed in the years to come. The discussion is lively and moves surprisingly fast, given the density of the material that Kane covers. Aside from my misgivings about his certitude at points, he brings to light interesting trends that I think are worth considering and discussing, even if we never reach any definite conclusions.
As a fan-writer, too, Kane’s work if anything demonstrates the frailty of what we fans often identify as “canon”: that notion that there exist facts in JRRT’s writings that can unequivocally be determined as “right” or “wrong.” Several of my fellow fan-writers raised the question of how Kane’s work will change how fiction based on JRRT’s writings is perceived. Pie-eyed optimistic heretic that I am, I believe that Arda Reconstructed defends a less stringent notion of canon. It is a firm reminder of the state of flux in which many of JRRT’s writings were at the time of his death. While any single fan can take a work or works and pin it down as “This is truth to me”–as many do with the published Silmarillion–that really cannot be defended beyond personal preference, and Arda Reconstructed illustrates why.
I give Arda Reconstructed 3.5 Keebler E.L. Fudge “Elves Exist” cookies out of four.
lease, come inside my humble cottage and have a seat by the fire. Many are the stories here, and they are not the sorts of stories you'll often hear beyond these walls. Yes, the world is listening--and judging--but do not worry. You are safe here. I am the Heretic Loremaster. I read the same books as everyone else, but I read them a little differently: I don't necessarily take them at their word. I like to look at the stories that build our mythological history from the eyes of those disfavored by that history.
A very insightful review. I share your opinion that, while some of Kane’s criticisms of what was left out of the published Silmarillion are spot-on (such as the choice not to use the actual words of Feanor’s oath, and not having Maedhros be the messenger from Formenos), the way he phrases those criticisms is overly harsh on Christopher Tolkien. Christopher may not have produced the “ideal” Silmarillion, but he accomplished a minor miracle when he managed to organize his father’s mass of (often contradictory) papers into a coherent narrative. And while Christopher’s cuts may have been motivated by a degree of unconscious sexism, surely the worst offender there is his father? 200 male characters versus 40 female characters is a pretty stark pre-existing bias, even before any cuts of “minor” characters’ roles are made! And anyone honset has to admit we have no idea what J. R. R. Tolkien’s ‘final’ version of the Silmarillion would have looked like if he’d lived to write it, because he clearly didn’t know himself. (I wonder whether he would have backed away from some of his attempted revisions, such as the heliocentric-from-the-start Arda, as he explored them further and found they undercut some of the thematically essential elements of his key episodes.)
The book is still worthwhile, though, if only for those incredible charts. (At least if you’re a HoME junkie like me!)
I agree! As a fellow HoMe junkie, I foresee that this book will save me a lot of work when judging, for research purposes, which parts of the Silm are “canon,” i.e., JRRT’s final word versus CT’s, as well as making sense of how the parts of the HoMe all fit with each other.
I wonder whether he would have backed away from some of his attempted revisions, such as the heliocentric-from-the-start Arda, as he explored them further and found they undercut some of the thematically essential elements of his key episodes.
I am very curious about this as well. I wonder what “The Silmarillion” would have looked like if JRRT had lived ten–even five!–more years to work on it. I love the fact that he entertained some of his later ideas more than I like the ideas themselves, if that makes any sense. I don’t view them as harshly as CT seems to (to me, in Myths Transformed, he comes off as rather embarrassed that his father even thought, much less wrote, his ideas of how to make a heliocentric universe work within the early myth), but … yeah, the originals do have that special mythical feel to them that the revisions don’t quite approximate.
(Also, if he had lived five or ten more years, maybe he would have finished the part of The Shibboleth of Feanor that actually concerns the Feanorians!
)
Well, you’ve convinced me to at least take a look at it! (Hopefully I can get it at the library.) Those charts alone are a major reason.
And like Ithilwen and you (and probably every other Silm fan), I wonder what JRRT’s Silmarillion would have looked like. I certainly think it would have been different, though I admit to being in the camp of a heliocentric round world.
Indy, I think the SWG needs a book grant, personally.
Then we could all get a copy of Arda Reconstructed!
The book has only been out for a few months, so I don’t know if the library will have it yet, but I hope you get a chance to take a look at it either way. It’s a surprisingly fun read, and those charts … *drools*
A book grant sounds wonderful! Pity it’s only wishful thinking…
The book has only been out for a few months, so I don’t know if the library will have it yet,
And since they don’t (just checked the online catalog), I’m going to repeat what my newly-minted librarian sister would say, “Ask! We love it when people tell us what they want.”
I had a book grant at my university when I was an undergrad. It was wonderful, every month, to get a box of books in the mail for free!
I think AR would be a wonderful addition to any library collection; it is a valuable piece of scholarship on JRRT’s writings. I have my fingers crossed that they can get it for you!
Thanks for the great review, Dawn! I really appreciate that you have taken such a close look at the book; even your criticisms are well-considered!
And yes, those tables were a LOT of work.
Doug Kane
Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to reply to my review!
(And of course, for putting together the book that will be well-thumbed, I suspect, in no time at all.
)
I have to say, as a HoMe junkie, having those charts on hand would be welcome, and given how much money I gleefully burned in New York last Sunday, I don’t think I should say that cost is an object.
My impression from your review and Jason Fisher’s both is that Mr. Kane provides an almost forensic analysis of how The Silmarillion was constructed but seasoned with less-than-objective commentary. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, because — as I maintain — truly objective analysis of art and literature is impossible. I have to say that I personally bridled at Mr. Fisher’s comment that “lots of men were dropped from the narrative, too,” which has a whiff of apology.
So…the heliocentric Arda. You know that’s a big bugaboo with me I’m afraid that those who opine — including Mr. Kane — that a more astronomically plausible backdrop would have “destroyed the mythology” call to mind others who claim that the theory of evolution automatically undermines articles of faith. ,With regard to heliocentric Arda, Tolkien noted in his draft letter (153) to Peter Hastings:
Frankly, the essays on the Sun and Moon emphasize his concern with science. Immersion into Tolkien’s “elvish drama” in fact relies on the scientific. Given how well he interwove botany, astronomy, paleontology and aspects of technology into his canonical work (I mean, honestly — Naomi Mitchison was right — Tolkien’s work is “super science fiction”), to make it “believable” as an imaginary history of our primary world, I’ll give JRRT credit: I think he could have crafted appealing tales around the scientifically satisfying heliocentric Arda. I’m not sure how this could have destroyed the existing mythology given that Tolkien stated were “Mannish myths” not unlike the myths of ancient peoples who explain how the sun, moon and mankind came to be.
Well, now that I am really off on a tangent, I’ll note that Kevin, Jim and I are in the process of relocating the Refuge to Wordpress, having become fed up with SEED magazine which appears to be in dire financial straits. With more independence, I’m thinking that the Wordpress site might be just the venue for some “science of Middle-earth” (or at least how I see it) essays a la Henry Gee.
To buy a book that expensive just because of the tables -_- I still don’t know after reading this review. Perhaps the paperback ed will be doable. And maybe some elves buy it for me for my birthday. Ah well, what an insightful review.
I think with a fandom that is filled with mostly female writer and a changed reader audience of fantasy these days, people are a tad too eager to label CT as misogynist. From a marketing perspective, I have the impression that literature and fantasy were very muchly geared towards men, so it might as well be that the ratio male vs female characters will reflect that. If there is a male audience, they probably will connect better to a male cast in a work (these days it feels the exact opposite way where mostly female readers wonder what happened to the women). In Tolkien’s defense, he did also write a rather liberal Erendis in a kind of myth form (the amazon’s comes first to mind), so I am not buying the misogynist label to the both of them. When looking and valueing books one also needs to have a look at the timeperiod the author lived back then. I sometimes wonder how people decades later will look back on the massive amoint of chicklit with sparkling vampires.
But I think the book should have done more to remind readers of the limitations posed by its methods and should have taken more care in assigning responsibility for choices with which the author did not agree.
And then there is that, the book to me reads as if it reflects the author’s opinion, but not as much as the complete picture. But ai, only for the tables?
Pandemonium:
I have to say that I personally bridled at Mr. Fisher’s comment that “lots of men were dropped from the narrative, too,” which has a whiff of apology.
Now that I’m not on the SWG and don’t have to behave as well, then I can admit that my first thought, upon reading that, was to think, “Stupid man totally doesn’t get it.” Not only is his argument numerically unsound (because I don’t think it’s possible to argue that, proportionately, men received equal/greater cuts than the women), but where is his head that he doesn’t understand that diminishment of women in a genre that has done our gender few favors is going to be loaded with meaning in a way that cutting male characters will not? Argh.
I think he could have crafted appealing tales around the scientifically satisfying heliocentric Arda.
I agree. As I told Ithilwen, I would have loved to have seen where the story went with ten–even five–more years of JRRT’s life. It has always seemed to me that he was coming to understand how to reconcile the reality (heliocentrism) with the pretty myths (the Lamps, the Trees, “Of the Sun and Moon”), and I think the work really would have been better for it.
Without the book in front of me (not that I’d be replying to comments at work or anything like that!
), I think Kane’s argument is less that JRRT couldn’t/shouldn’t have attempted it (which I have always gotten the impression from MT was CT’s argument) than it is that CT shouldn’t have attempted to put it into place based on what little JRRT had drawn up so far and put into place himself. I tend to agree with the latter; especially with CT’s apparent disdain for JRRT’s heliocentric vision and his seeming belief that the mythological framework of the Silm was of secondary importance* to the story, I don’t think he should have made those extensive of revisions. So I’m stuck wishing that JRRT had lived five or ten more years so that we could have seen his realization of that vision, as one who had respect for both scientific reality and pretty myths. 
* Based on the fact that he cut all mention of the narrators from the Silm and couldn’t seem to reconcile two mythological sources into a single work, a point where I really do agree with Kane.
Good luck with the Wordpress venture! I must confess that I am eagerly awaiting the “Science of Middle-earth” …
Rhapsody:
I have the impression that literature and fantasy were very muchly geared towards men, so it might as well be that the ratio male vs female characters will reflect that.
I’m not as inclined as to give it as innocent an excuse. This is not just the modern fantasy genre; this is literature, almost as far back as it existed, and a centuries-long tendency to marginalize, eliminate, and depict negatively any woman who stepped into its pages. (Of course, yes, literature for a long time was written for men: Because women weren’t taught to read!) If such blatant misogynism is necessary to sell books, then it is because our gender expectations and our expectations of the roles women are “allowed” to play in literature are warped to require it. It is still misogynism either way–intentional or not–and I can’t pardon its continuation into the modern day.
If there is a male audience, they probably will connect better to a male cast in a work
Again, I’d have to say that, if this is true, then it is because of warped gender roles and expectations and does not get an author/industry off the hook anymore than it does to say, “Well, we just keep calling them ‘n*gg*rs’ and showing them as buffoons because our audience is white and they relate better that way.”
When looking and valueing books one also needs to have a look at the timeperiod the author lived back then.
I agree. JRRT was about thirty years old, iIrc, before women in England even earned the right to vote. He was certainly part of an old boys’ academic network throughout his life. I have no doubt that the time in which he lived and the subculture of which he was part influenced his construction of his books.
However, I think that a book can be identified as misogynist without condemning that the author should have done better. Medieval Arthurian legends are almost always misogynist, but in an era when it was considered wrong for women to learn to read, should we blame the authors? Of course not; that is ridiculous. I’m sure that, fifty years from now, the books being written in 2009 will be studied for how they ignore, marginalize, and stereotype non-heterosexual characters. Can we be blamed for that? No entirely, though that doesn’t change the fact that most books being written today are heteronormative in the way that most books being written in the 1950s were misogynist.
Given that, I find the argument that JRRT’s books are not misogynist in places very hard to swallow. Any book with a ratio of 1 woman for every 5 men is probably going to be misogynist unless it has good reason for that disparity. A culture that does not allow women to rule–as the supposed gender-equal Elves do not–is misogynist, even if it mouths support for equality.
But my point in harping constantly on the gender issues in JRRT’s books is not to flagellate JRRT for a cultural awareness that he wasn’t apt to possess. The point is to become aware of how gender is depicted in fiction and how our expectations of how women should appear in fiction continues to influence our depiction of them, even in this supposedly enlightened age.
For example, I think the notion of a questing party common to fantasy literature is automatically one that is male or maybe contains one or two women (to show how enlightened we are, of course!
) This is largely inspired by LotR (and JRRT was influenced, of course, by medieval works like Beowulf and Roland where the adventurers were always men because … well, adventurers were always men! 
), and it continues to this day. To represent a questing party in a story that is half or more than half female would be an anomaly. Such an author would probably be suspected or accused of trying to make a “statement,” where a questing party that is mostly or all male would not be regarded similarly. What does that say about our “enlightened” culture that this is so?
To give an example (and I hate to keep picking on him, but he is convenient, having written a book that is a direct parallel to LotR), Terry Brooks’s Sword of Shannara was published in 1977. He is a U.S. author, and this was the heyday of the women’s lib movement in the U.S. He doesn’t have the excuse that JRRT can use of having been born in a time and place where women simply didn’t act as equals to men. If anything, he would have been more gender-conscious probably than even some young men today, given the political climate in the U.S. at the time.
Yet Shannara actually treats women worse than JRRT at his worst. The single on-screen female character is an incompetent, clinging moron whose mere presence tempts the Aragorn-character from saving his city to rescue her instead. Is Brooks a misogynist? Even though his book is certainly misogynist, I don’t think that we can say the same of the author, with certainty, even though he was writing in a gender-conscious age. Shirl’s character embodies the worst stereotypes and archetypes of a female character, but all of these stereotypes and archetypes have a long literary history. They are, therefore, acceptable to us, being the default for a woman in an action-adventure novel. But, when we really stop to think about them, we often conclude that, “Wow. That’s actually really messed up.” But it takes identifying how these stereotypes and archetypes have evolved throughout literature–including JRRT’s generation–in order to stop seeing them as the only acceptable way to write female characters. So, for that reason, I think it’s important to talk about gender, even in books where we’re more inclined to give the author a pass for his caveman mentality.
And then there is that, the book to me reads as if it reflects the author’s opinion, but not as much as the complete picture. But ai, only for the tables?
Well, the tables are worth it, if you do that sort of research, but I think the commentary is also worth it: incredibly interesting, even if I don’t always agree.
It really comes down to what each potential reader wants to get out of the book, I think, but I don’t want to give the impression that if the tables are useless to a person than the rest of the book (the commentary) will be useless as well.
Its been ages since I read the Shannara books so I really can’t recall so well how women were treated, but don’t forget that even in those days (the seventies), women’s rights and what women were used to were not that far ahead as we are used to now these days. I am sorry, I wrote my comment when I was not fully awake, but what I was thinking about was that in the seventies women still were automatically fired from a job when they were married…. such things are no longer happening in the ages we live in now. Actually you and I come from a generation where women have become an interest for the fantasy publishing market, but I can well believe that in 1977 the market was still aimed at men. Just look at Star Wars that made it to the Movie screen with just one female lead character as opposed to eum 5 other main male characters. Look at the Star Trek series (ok SciFi). If CT was told by the publisher back then to come with a book within a certain format and with editor comments back then, he might as well went with that. After all Tolkien tried to offer the Silmarillion with Lord of the Rings to the publisher, but the publisher was only interested in Lord of the Rings back then.
It would be interesting to see what fantasy books were published in and around 1977 and what the cast of characters were liked. If there was a trend back then that male characters in fantasy sold better than female characters (for me Marion Zimmer Bradley felt like someone who made a break through on that, but I am not sure if Julian May or Andrea Norton went before her), but I find it noticeable that in the nineties there was a rise in fantasy novels featuring female leads.
Well, the tables are worth it, if you do that sort of research, but I think the commentary is also worth it: incredibly interesting, even if I don’t always agree.
It really comes down to what each potential reader wants to get out of the book, I think, but I don’t want to give the impression that if the tables are useless to a person than the rest of the book (the commentary) will be useless as well.
I pooked a bit around at the site where Doug is active and there a member quoted from a letter that Christopher Tolkien send him:
In his correspondence with me, Christopher provided a copy of the report he wrote for the Estate after reviewing Doug’s sample in Nov. 2006, in which he expands on this, in terms even more directly bearing on the interview statement which Doug mistakenly takes as affirmation of his approach:
“:
I think that [Mr Kane] has (not unnaturally perhaps) misunderstood in some degree my meaning when I wrote, in the Foreword to The War of the Jewels (p.x), words that he cites in his Foreword: ‘I would say that ['The Silmarillion'] can only be defined in terms of its own history; and that history is with this book largely completed. … It is indeed the only ‘completion’ possible, because it was always ‘in progress’; the published work is not in any way a completion, but a construction devised out of the existing materials. Those materials are now made available … and with them a criticism of the ‘constructed’ Silmarillion becomes possible.’
The last thing I had in mind when I wrote the last phrase of this passage was a dogged, grinding, line by line, word by word (extending even to hyphens) comparison of the published text with texts that I published in The History of Middle-earth….
What I meant was, to be sure, that The History of Middle-earth opened the possibility of informed criticism of the published Silmarillion in relation to the original writings of my father: but not to a brick by brick comparison, with little or no indication of its significance, rather to a criticism of the treatment of those writings at large and of their conceptions; whether my aim to produce a ‘coherent and internally self-consistent narrative’ had been achieved, in so far as it was achieved, at too heavy a cost, and should not have been attempted.
A further, but quite distinct, consideration in this connection lies in the relation of The History of Middle-earth to the original writings. In my Foreword to The Peoples of Middle-earth, pp.ix-x, I referred to the forerunner of the History as ‘an entirely “private” study, without thought or purpose of publication: an exhaustive investigation and analysis of all the materials concerned with what came to be called the Elder Days, from the earliest beginnings, omitting no detail of name-form or textual variation.’ This work, which I called The History of the Silmarillion, and which I began after the publication of my ‘constructed’ text, runs to more than 2600 very closely typed pages, and it does not even touch on the Second and Third Ages. When the possibility arose of publishing at least part of this work, in some form, it was obvious that it would have to be heavily reduced and curtailed, and the part of The History of Middle-earth dealing with the Elder Days is indeed a new presentation of The History of the Silmarillion, and a severe contraction of it, especially in respect of the sheer quantity of variant manuscript material reproduced in full.
Thus, to take as an example the history of the Ainulindalë, I made it clear (Morgoth’s Ring p.30) that I cited only the differences of version D from version C (which I printed in full) which had ’significance for the conception’. Mr Kane says, however, that ‘unless otherwise indicated, where version C is referenced as the source, there are no differences to that passage cited in version D, and it can be presumed that the passage appeared in the same form in version D’. I have annotated, and send herewith [i.e., to the Estate; these were not copied to me —CFH], several pages of Mr Kane’s documentation of differences in the Ainuindale, as published, from the texts given in Morgoth’s Ring, to show how The History of Middle-earth does not by any means provide, nor was it intended to do so, all the evidence necessary to determine which alterations were made with some manuscript authority and which were not. But a full investigative analysis of the construction of the published Silmarillion would require examination of the whole body of original manuscripts (a vast task), or at the least the close perusal of my History of the Silmarillion.
Reading this, especially the bit in bold is making me go like hmmm. If this is not all, is it possible that perhaps someone else who does get access to the archives and such can make a better work like this? Can Arda be constructed by perusing HoME alone? I really would want to see if it is handy for me, but I will just see if I can get a better bargain.
I hope you don’t mind if I briefly respond to this. I think it is clear that _Arda Reconstructed_ shows that the creation of published _Silmarillion_ CAN to a very great extent be traced using existing published materials, since the vast, vast majority of the book IS traced to its source material. Where it becomes more of a question-mark is the comparatively few places where I discuss the differences between the source material and the published text. The assumption that I worked under is that any major differences that were do texts written by Tolkien himself would have been reported on by Christopher. That assumption may not hold for every occurrence, but I am pretty confident that holds for most, simply because Christopher has shown himself to be so diligent and precise.
It is important to realize that the “report” that Rhapsody quotes from is reporting on a sample of a much earlier and very different version of my manuscript that I sent to Christopher through the Tolkien Estate, as a courtesy. That version literally tracks the differences between the source material and the published text word by word and punctuation mark by punctuation mark. Christopher’s response to me through the Estate was brief; he did not send me this whole report. He did indicate that HoMe could not be relied on to determine what changes were made with manuscript authority. He also indicated that he did not believe that such a line by line comparison would be of sufficient interest to justify publication. He therefore politely refused to offer any assistance in moving forward with the project (which meant I was not going to get access to the actual manuscripts).
After getting this feedback, and other feedback, I radically changed the work, moving all of the tracing of the source material into the tables, and only commenting in the text on the most significant differences and trends in the choices that I felt clearly were shown to have been made. And I made sure to include the disclaimer at the beginning of the book that has already been quoted here about the limitations that I was working under.
It may well be that some day someone else will be able to produce an even more accurate analysis of the creation of the published Silmarillion, if they have access to the full manuscripts (or at least Christopher’s complete unpublished analysis of them). If so, I will celebrate that day. But until then, I think _Arda Reconstructed_ is the best we are going to get.
Thanks for allowing me to clarify these points.
Wow! A lot of great discussion here!
I suppose I’m one of the skeptics who thinks that ultimately a ‘heliocentric from the beginning’ Ardaverse wouldn’t work – but of course there’s no way to be certain of that, given that JRRT didn’t have much time to play around with the whole concept before his death. Like everyone else, I do wish we could have seen how his attempt would have worked out. (I certainly could be wrong!) The sad thing about Tolkien, though, is that “Leaf by Niggle” is clearly autobiographical. No matter how much time he would have been given to work on the Silmarillion, it wouldn’t have been enough, because the thing had captured his heart in a way that “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” never quite managed to do. He was never, ever going to be finished with it. I’m just very grateful for what we do have, and even more grateful that his son Christopher has done so much work to make his father’s kingdom of the heart accessible to us all.
And I agree with Dawn and the others who note that there’s a big difference between unconscious misogyny and deliberate misogyny. It’s no stain on JRRT’s character to note that as a man of his time and place, he doubtless harbored some unconscious misogyny which made its way into his published works. We all do likewise; no one is uninfluenced by their culture, or completely aware of their biases. The real problem comes when people deliberately close their eyes to misogyny and so go on to perpetuate it unnecessarily – or alternatively, condemn an entire work for containing an understandable flaw (as though any human art will ever be flawless).