How Canonical Are J.R.R. Tolkien’s Published Works?

Q: How Canonical Are J.R.R. Tolkien’s Published Works?

ANSWER: This is one of those questions that refuses to die, and in reality it should die such a horrible death that no one ever argues about the canons of Middle-earth again. There is no canon. There are no canons. Nothing is canonical. Or there are many Middle-earth canons. You know, even a typical dictionary cannot decide what canon should mean. So how do you expect fans of J.R.R. Tolkien, Peter Jackson, Ralph Bakshi, or whomever to agree on a meaning?

I received the following message last week:

I got dragged into an annoying argument on social media recently when I commented supporting a post that it was unlikely that Legolas’s hair would have been blonde, when he was a Sindarin elf and blonde hair was more associated with the Vanyar. Several people reminded me that his father was described as having ‘golden hair’ in The Hobbit. However, this was written before Tolkien had developed his story of the origins of the elves, as far I understand it. Is it possible to regard any published work as truly ‘Canon’ when Tolkien himself never stopped revising his mythology up to the point of his death?

As for “blonde hair” (technically, Tolkien said “golden hair” – but I digress) being “more associated with the Vanyar” – that’s a fannish myth, so far as I can determine.

I scanned about a half dozen Tolkien books and could not find any text using “Vanyar”, “gold hair”, or “golden hair” that suggested or implied that golden hair was in any way more associated with the Vanyar than other elves. I could have missed something in the later books, but I deliberately did not scan any of the early volumes of The History of Middle-earth.

Tolkien mentions several golden-haired elves in The Lord of the Rings, including Glorfindel, Galadriel, and an unnamed elf of Lorien.

Who is allowed to have golden hair in Middle-earth is an unwinnable argument. Tolkien wrote in the LoTR appendix that the Noldor had dark hair “save in the golden house of Finrod” – and he contradicted himself in The Lord of the Rings (if we assume that the reader was meant to understand that Glorfindel was one of the Noldor).

You’re just never going to explain all these things away with some kind of canonical rules.

Q: What Is Truly Canon in Middle-earth?

ANSWER: There are 2 official published editions of The Lord of the Rings. Unofficially, there are other “editions” in the sense that many typos and other errors were corrected in specially edited editions (such as the white edition). But Tolkien bibliographers are quick to point out that every edition introduces its own typos and errors.

So the editions don’t agree on anything, and yet Tolkien himself reviewed and published 2 editions within his lifetime. If the author’s published choices (and choices intended for publication) are to be given any weight, then I would say the most textually accurate version of the official “Second Edition” would be the best candidate for a Lord of the Rings canon.

But that wouldn’t establish a “Middle-earth canon” for we have The Hobbit, The Road Goes Ever On, and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil to consider. Tolkien published all these books within his lifetime. And yet, he only personally reviewed and approved of the First and Third editions of The Hobbit. George Allen and Unwin took it upon themselves to publish the Second Edition, for which Tolkien reluctantly wrote a brief introduction. His letters indicate he was surprised and somewhat disappointed with the Second Edition.

And then in 1960 he began writing a revision of The Hobbit that would be more like The Lord of the Rings in tone and depth – but he never finished that project. Does that abandoned text represent his true intention or did he change his mind and decide to leave it all as it was (until forced to make edits for the 1965 “Third Edition”)?

The Silmarillion Is Not A Canonical Work

Christopher Tolkien cautioned readers not to seek consistency between The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings in his foreword to the former book. That’s a warning oft ignored by people who want to use The Silmarillion to overrule something J.R.R. Tolkien wrote elsewhere.

And Christopher devoted at least 13 books to explaining how and why The Silmarillion was not his father’s own true work. Christopher’s self-repudiation is usually ignored by people who want to use The Silmarillion to overrule anything published by J.R.R. Tolkien in his own lifetime.

So whose canon matters more: J.R.R. Tolkien’s or Christopher Tolkien’s? They’re not the same things, and never will be.

Arguing about Canon Is Rather Pointless

Take the whole ridiculous debate about whether Tolkien’s elves had pointy ears. J.R.R. Tolkien decided they did not have pointy ears, but many people in Tolkien fandom dredge up irrelevant (Letter No. 27) or abandoned (The Etymologies) texts never intended for general publication to overrule the absolute lack of pointy-eared elves in the author-published stories.

No one should ever have any doubt about whether Tolkien elves have pointy ears: they don’t. But fan arguments and Tolkien Society FAQs keep the nonsensical pseudo-canon alive. If J.R.R. Tolkien wanted his readers to imagine his elves with pointy ears, why did he go out of his way to NOT describe them with pointy ears in any text he intended for his readers to see?

There’s no point in pointing to the “canonical” texts about the non-existing elvish pointy ears because people who want the elves to have pointy ears will canonicalize any text that appears to bestow such pointedness upon the elves. Tolkien be damned, this is too important a point for the author’s opinion to matter!

And I only go on about the pointy ears because that endless argument succinctly illustrates the neverending disagreements about what is “canonical” in Tolkien’s literature.

Every unfinished text, no matter how illegibly scribbled upon some forgotten piece of paper, is considered canon by someone – more canonical than whatever the author himself elevated to the status of “published for general consumption”. And that’s because self-appointed canonicalization always wins any argument – in the perspective of the appointing canonicalizer.

To Address the Key Question Directly: Yes

You asked: “Is it possible to regard any published work as truly ‘Canon’ when Tolkien himself never stopped revising his mythology up to the point of his death?”

Yes. Absolutely.

As far as J.R.R. Tolkien was concerned, he had a published canon – which may have been somewhat inconsistent. He did want to revise it, and revised portions of it more than once. But beyond that he had a mental image of his “legendarium” that was unpublished. He never believed it would be fully published. But he wanted to publish portions of it beyond The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. The thing is, that legendarium kept growing and evolving beyond anything he had originally imagined in 1916 or 1925 or 1937 or 1954.

There is no canon for “the Legendarium” and never will be. There never can be. He never wrote it all down. We can only speculate about what he was thinking, how his thoughts changed, and what he hoped to eventually publish. Even Christopher Tolkien was in doubt on many points about his father’s legendarium.

What people call Tolkien’s Legendarium today is a very artificial, posthumous construction. It’s not canonical at all – in the sense of being an authoritative collection of literary texts about Middle-earth.

But from the scholarly perspective we have a large body of texts about the legendarium that are the authoritative sources: these are the texts that were published by Tolkien, his son, or editors chosen by the Tolkien Estate to publish in some formal text. The Children of Hurin is part of that scholarly legendarium, which is not Tolkien’s legendarium but rather a thing that best approximates it.

So, yes, people can and do regard published works to be canonical. They just insist on using their own definitions and arbitrations. If your question is truly asking about whether there is a universal, finally authoritative canonical body of texts – no, there isn’t. Maybe one day there will be. That is, maybe one day all the scholars and fan groups of the world will come together and say, “This is the canon for Middle-earth.”

I just hope they have sense enough not to ignore what the author himself decided the reader should see, but I’m not going to hold my breath on that point. Tolkien’s legendarium passed with him. We’re left with everyone else’s legendaria of Middle-earth, and some of them are predicated on very obscure texts that J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t intend for publication or distribution.

See also …

Will Amazon Create A New Canonical History for Middle-earth?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Canon

Is Your Canon On the Loose?

Why Is Dain Mentioned on Thror’s Map?

Were There Two Thrains in the Original Hobbit or Just One Thrain?

Explaining the Two Thrains In The Hobbit

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