Talk:Middle-earth canon

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[edit] Extensive rewrite

I've been carrying out an extensive rewrite during the AfD (now relisted). I stripped out most of the theorizing, unsourced opinions and rank speculation. Hopefully what is left is more a collection of statements that can be referenced and bound together with some prose. Please help tidy the article up further if you can. Carcharoth 01:00, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I tidied the article up a bit more, getting rid of the speculative musings about canonicity. I followed the concept of literary canon used in articles, restricting it to the actually published works of Tolkien and his son. The original article tried to define the ME canon as some internally self-consistent narrative that you can extract from the published and unpublished works. No such canon in that sense exists, and an attempt to define one would be OR. Djcastel 20:48, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Rewrite clarifies what canon is and separates 'consistency' as another issue, quite lean. Now 'canonical consistency' seems to needs work, however. Tttom1 02:33, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
  • question regarding the list of canon works. Should it include all publications of JRRT's works that concerns Middle-earth? e.g. The Road goes Ever On, and/or those works by Tolkien published with permission of the estate by others? Tttom1 16:49, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
  • How about Quenya Lexicon and Gnomish Lexicon published in full in Parma Eldalamberon nos. 11-15 with the blessing and permission of the estate? There's also stuff in Vinyar Tengwar. Tttom1 05:34, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Archive notice

Initial archive carried out (see Talk:Middle-earth canon/archive1) and relevant discussion at Template talk:Mecanon has been archived to Talk:Middle-earth canon/archive2. Carcharoth 01:36, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] letters?

Should Tolkien's published letters be mentioned in the discussion of canonical sources? Certainly they are at least as important as the various unpublished linguistic writings, no? john k 06:06, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gil-galad's parentage

This passage could perhaps be recast- the only idea which Tolkien maintained over repeated documents was Finrod, an idea he definitively rejected: the Orodreth-version, we need to keep in mind, was one scrawled note on a late scrap, and really of no more canonical weight than the Fiingon-version (which was at least an annotation to one of the principal source-texts).

In fact It's misleading IMO to say that CRT generally 'defended' his decisions, in HME: often as not he expresses regret for liberties his younger self took.Solicitr 16:11, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

As shown by the article, 'what is canon' is not decided by being the latest version. What you are describing is- consistency, or inconsistency, within the canon.Tttom1 18:38, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

The only sources given for the statments in this article are primary sources. Can anyone help and source some of this stuff properly, using reliable, third party sources? --Davémon 13:01, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Your edit summary said "there isn't a single secondary source". Now you are talking of third party sources. Anyway, one thing that might be causing confusion is whether or not Christopher Tolkien writing in The History of Middle-earth about his father's works is a secondary source. He is clearly not a primary source (he is not his father). Anyway, regardless of that, I can find secondary sources for you, but they will simply point you back to the primary sources. Would you prefer to have a quote from a reliable source, or an independent party reporting what was said? Maybe both would be better? The one to show that others find it notable, and the other to avoid the distortions introduced by secondary sources. Carcharoth 16:21, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
The first reference in the article is to dictionaries to establish a definition of 'canon'- which are tertiary sources.Tttom1 17:43, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Secondary or tertiary sources would help (and ones that relate to the subject of article, not only defining commonly used words like "canon"). I would suggest that if the History of Middle Earth is itself canon, as the article claims, then it must be seen as a primary source - unless cannon only refers to the story-bits, and not the CTs commentary. A clearer (cited) defintion would help. For wikipedia purposes CT's independence and reliablility are questionable, so other sources would always be preferable. Has CT been listed at Wikipedia:Verifiability/Noticeboard ? is there already consensus? I fully understand secondary sources will be refering to the primary, but it's part of the whole WP:V/WP:OR that we need to use secondary / tertiary sources. --Davémon 18:59, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
From Wiki: "Definition of secondary sources: ... a secondary source is a study written by a scholar about a topic, and using primary sources and other secondary sources." That about covers your arguments about CT. He's a scholar, he wrote about the topic, he uses primary and other secondary sources (he frequently refers to Carpenter, Fonstad and others works on M-e and his father). I've added some 2nd and 3rd refs. Carc there may find more. The statement about JRRT feeling bound by what was in print is somewhere a couple times in HoMe or Letters and will turn up. The article has and had references so the tag at the top of 'no references' is inappropriate and should be removed. The Me fact notes are sufficient. Thanks.Tttom1 20:50, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Tttom. Davemon, I'm going to take a break from this until the weekend. I'll dig out my sources then. I hope that's OK with you. For now, I would suggest that you read around the subject and find out more yourself about whether Christopher Tolkien is reliable and independent. Try the secondary literature about Tolkien's works. You could list him at Wikipedia:Verifiability/Noticeboard if you like, but how reliable are the answers that are given at that noticeboard? Carcharoth 22:16, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Added more refs and removed unref tag.Tttom1 20:22, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Original Research

There are no sources for this article that actually discuss "Middle-earth canon". With this article editors have actively attempted to define something that hasn't been defined by reliable sources elsewhere. The whole subject of the article is WP:OR. None of the citations given actually mention the idea of a "Middle-earth canon", they all discuss minor points of detail, such as the Tolkiens' occasional claims of attempts at consistency within the works, but not the central proposition that there is, could be, or should be a body of work recognised as a "Middle-earth cannon". These sources must be added - I've searched and found none (reliable sources at least), and have begun to suspect they don't exist. --Davémon (talk) 08:00, 9 May 2008 (UTC)