The Hall of Fire

Since "Vison" appeals to Tolkien's Catholicism vis a vis his views on sex, let me succinctly relate what the Catholic Church teaches about sex: 1) It is a gift from God (and thus by definition good). 2) It is ordered towards two intimately bound and inseparable ends: procreation and spousa...

I am not fond of being patronized and insulted. "Patronize: verb. 1 treat with an apparent kindness that betrays a feeling of superiority." It is Tolkien's own view/thoughts/wishes/opinions/convictions about sex that made me sad for Tolkien. I think it might be sufficient to say that he w...

vison wrote:it is Tolkien's own view/thoughts/wishes/opinions/convictions about sex that made me sad for Tolkien.

What, pray tell, were "Tolkien's own view/thoughts/wishes/opinions/convictions about sex", and what about them makes you sad for him?

And I maintain that until and unless you can identify and assess all the authorial changes present in The Silmarillion that Christopher didn't record in HoMe — which changes, as Christopher specifically informed you, do exist and cannot be surely identified as either authorial or editorial except by...

Doug writes: In the first five chapters, those developments are mostly minor Does Christopher say this? Otherwise, how can you know this, if you haven't seen all the developments? And in any event, how do you know that Christopher would not consider this change minor (even though you don't)? I conti...

"solicitr" writes:

I still think AR is a very valuable guidebook to locating '77 passages in the published HME texts- where they match. But where they don't match- well, I would have preferred less confident assertion of the speculative.

My sentiments exactly.

Doug, I referred to precisely this quote, and specifically to the part you emphasize, when I wrote that: "As Christopher explains on p.143, the text he prints is that of the LQ1 typescript with indications of (at least some of) the emendations made to it (including, in this specific section, a ...

Doug writes: It is unambiguously clear that LQ 42 is the source for this paragraph. That is not a question; I think even you would accept that. If by "LQ 42" you mean the specific snapshot of the textual development that Christopher gives in edited, printed form on p.177 of HoMe , then no,...

OK, how about this example from your book (p.74; emphasis mine): However there is a change that [Christopher] made to this paragraph that is less explicable. In the source text (LQ §42), Finarfin's daugher Galadriel is described as "the most valiant" of the house of Finwë, as well as the m...

Your first paragraph makes a distinction without a difference to my point, and presses my own prefatory ellipsis into a quotational service it was not intended for; so I'll pass over that. As for the rest: I certainly did not and do not expect you to change your opinion on the matter. But since we'r...

But Christopher did not say that "love not too well the work of thy hands and the devices of thy heart" was "almost word for word" with "love it not too well." He said ( WotJ 199) that the Silmarillion text at this point "follows almost word for word the replacemen...

And Doug then goes on to say, "I can hardly believe that Christopher would have stated that at that point the “Of Turgon and the Building of Gondolin” material followed the Grey Annals text here “almost word for word” (see WotJ, 199) if there had been such a significant difference." While ...

I think Christopher provides a very clear answer to your question, Doug, in what I've already quoted, when he writes (emphasis mine): When the possibility arose of publishing at least part of this work [i.e., The History of the Silmarillion ], in some form, it was obvious that it would have to be he...

I noticed Doug's disclaimer, Jase; but it does not change the fact that in the text itself Doug makes little or no allowance that the changes he decries may have been authorial rather than editorial. Doug's stance throughout the text is that all the changes he notes were due to Christopher, not to T...

And I stand by only some of what I wrote, which as I said then was based on only a perusal of your book, and which in any event specifically excluded your evaluative remarks on the differences you chose to comment upon. I now know -- we now know, and you in fact already knew -- that your remarks are...

Two days ago, in another thread , Doug quoted a statement by Christopher Tolkien ( recently published in The Guardian ) concerning The Silmarillion : After its publication in 1977 I began on what at first was a purely private study, a History of The Silmarillion, an exhaustive investigation and anal...

Oh, Doug Doug Doug.... Yes, you said in your first post that you understood and accepted etc.; but the rest of that first post showed me that you really didn't. What's more, if you actually had understood and accepted my precise reasons and basis for objecting, you would not have then gone on to wri...

soli (and Carl). There are two places where I use the word "systematically" and in both cases it is modified by the words "appears" or "seemingly" ("This small but significant change is the first of a number of occasions in which it appears that the roles of femal...

[This was written and posted before I saw that Doug had made another post, which I've only skimmed, so please don't interpret this post as a response to Doug's most recent post preceding this one. Carl] Doug, I do accept your claim that you did not mean to imply deliberateness. But I nonetheless mai...

While doing so will obviously be open to charges of "belaboring the point" or being "belligerent", I'll answer "yovargas" question (since s/he asked). After which, I'll ignore all posts that are ad hominem or otherwise irrelevant to the points at issue. Or, if asked by ...