[BradyLS]

You'd be surprised. Try referencing The Silmarillion to answer a simple question not quite covered by The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings (say, about the Rings of Power) and see who flies out of the dark to point you down some dark, labrynthine path somewhere in the volumes covering "The History of Middle Earth."

"Oh," they'll intone, "You see, The Silmarillion that Chris Tolkien published isn't what his father had floating aound in his head. I know what John really meant..."

I just don't want to see these Tolkien Virgin threads on FR devolve into one of those ugly "canonical/non-canonical" cat fights that I've seen in other newsgroups is all I'm saying. They're no fun and a real turn-off to trying to learn anything.

[HairOfTheDog]

Well, I will wait until the Iguana responds then. In all the discussion of LoTR I have been a part of on FR... That has NEVER happened.

[The Iguana]

Brady,

The Silmarillion has just as much legitimacy as the History of Middle Earth volumes do.

What made it into TS - as Chris wrote it - was just what was most publishable and most consistent. And as close as Chris knew he could come to what what he knew of his father's intentions for the work.

Ultimately what we're left with is an incomplete and sometimes contradictory picture because that's the state Tolkien left things in when he died.

As Martinez has noted, the only things strictly canonical - if we use that term - is what's in TH, LOTR and the LOTR appendices. Everything else has been posthumous.

We end up treating TS as something approaching canon because it's the best single reference we have for the Elder Days. I don't have a problem with that.

Neither should anyone else.