Hi, all,

 

Has anyone else picked up a copy of Arda Reconstructed by Douglas Charles Kane yet?

 

I got mine a few weeks ago but was in the middle of a long novel and so couldn't start it right away. I started it this past weekend and am already a third of the way through.

 

For those who have missed (or weren't in the group) for past conversations on this book, Arda Reconstructed is the attempt by an amateur Tolkien scholar to trace the source of every last word in the published Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien drew from dozens of sources scattered throughout the HoMe and other books, as well as sources that are less accessible (Parma Eldalambion, for example) or even completely inaccessible (such as conversations with his father). As Silm fans know well, the choices that CT made weren't always "correct" in the sense that they did not always reflect what the HoMe (and other books) revealed to be JRRT's final word on a subject.

 

Arda Reconstructed attempts to show the sources that CT used down to the detail of single words, as well as to highlight sections of The Silmarillion that do not reflect JRRT's last writings on a subject or which CT (and Guy Kay, who assisted in writing the published Silmarillion) added independently of any of JRRT's writings. I've done this on occasion for research projects--such as tracing the evolution of a character throughout the whole of JRRT's writings--and know it to be a complicated and frustrating task. Kane's efforts in this book are truly herculean (and I am grateful that he has done it so that I do not have to! :) It has been difficult to put the book down. Occasionally masquerading as a responsible and functioning adult is the only reason that I have not finished it already. ;)

 

A few themes are emerging already that I suspect will be of interest to many in this group. Firstly, the book is a testament to the complexity of the concept of "canon" where JRRT's posthumous works are concerned. There are paragraphs in the Silm that draw from five separate sources; there are sentences where the source changes in mid-sentence. One can certainly see that the Silmarillion that so many of us take as a form of "canon" is certainly problematic--at the best, extraordinarily complex--in places. In many cases, we have no way to know why CT chose to include the source that he did, or why he chose to strike otherwise "correct" (meaning that it is not disputed by anything JRRT wrote afterward, to the best of our knowledge) sections from the text.

 

One particular theme that Kane traces is JRRT's treatment of women and how CT's editorial changes often diminish the roles of otherwise strong female characters. I've written a research essay on Nerdanel and knew that past version of the "Silmarillion" that JRRT had written included much more detail about her, but I never knew why these details were not included in the published version of The Silmarillion. Kane appears as stumped as I on this question, and he traces numerous other examples where CT seems to have removed details about female characters that JRRT gave no indication of wanting removed and which are not contradicted (or removed) in any later source documents. CT has never explained the reason for these changes; it is my hope that this book will perhaps compell him to explain his choices a bit more. For all I know, there is a perfectly good reason for CT's making this choice time and time again, but according to Kane's research (and my own, which is not nearly as in-depth), there is nothing in the HoMe to explain it.

 

So ... I am reserving final judgment until I have the chance to finish the book and replicate some of Kane's findings with my own research but, so far, it seems like we might have a really good resource here. At least, I'm hoping so ... I really don't want to have to do this sort of thing for myself! :)

 

Anyone else who has read or is reading this book, I'd be most interested to know what you think of it. :)

 

All the best,

 

Dawn