Hey, how about that Treason of Saruman, eh? Quite a book, and there’s more where that came from!

Today, I’ll review a little of the research I did on the critical reception that Treason has received. One of the Encyclopedia’s purposes is to sum up the current state of scholarship on the various topics, so this was to be the second half of my article.

First I’ll show some of what scholars say about the book as a book. Later I’ll give some examples of the use scholars have made of the book in their studies of Tolkien.

Much of the discussion of Treason (or any of HoME as books) addresses the sheer oddness of it all: the difficulty of reading it, the role of Christopher Tolkien as editor, and the fact that the drafts are only excerpted, and universally regarded as inferior to the final text.

There was a lot more material commenting on the History of Middle-earth as a whole, than there was on the ‘sub-series’ History of The Lord of the Rings, so I’ll give some of that too.

Should it have been published?          

Brian Rosebury, my personal hero among the Tolkien critics, offers this heretical thought about The History of Middle-earth, of which Treason is a part:

The vast commercial value of the Tolkien account to the various publishers who have acquired it is well known, and the prominence in the bookshops of HarperCollins’s seemingly inexhaustible output of reprints and spin-offs (audiotapes, calendars, diaries, art books, postcards and the like) would tempt many people to lob a rhetorical grenade or two in its direction.  . . .  The period 1983-96 saw the posthumous publication, under the devoted and persuasive editorship of Christopher Tolkien, of volume after volume of unfinished writings, including not only incomplete fragments but also justifiably discarded or revised drafts. These volumes are of value to scholars interested in Tolkien’s creative development, to whom they represent, in effect, uniquely well-transcribed and well-presented manuscript sources; and they include works, or passages, of considerable interest and beauty. But in view of the high proportion of rudimentary, immature and mishandled material they also contain, it is difficult to feel sure that their commercial publication at such exhaustive length has been wise (I accept that there would have been practical and evaluative difficulties attached to selective publication), and I take leave to doubt the thoroughness with which they are usually read. No author’s reputation could escape a certain risk from the publication of such materials on such a scale – certainly not that of Tolkien, who was, as I shall argue later, a slow developer who took many years to free himself from compositional misconceptions and unhelpful influences. -- Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon, by Brian Rosebury, 2003, pp 3-4

A. Do you agree that HarperCollins only published the HoME because they realized that anything with J. R. R. Tolkien’s name on it would sell?

B. What use is it for Rosebury to say the HoME publication was not “wise”, or that few people really read these books, except to establish himself as a bit of a grump? Does knowing a critic’s opinion of a book affect how you read it?

C. What does he mean about the “certain risk” that Tolkien’s reputation might be unable to escape after the publication of all of his unpublished material?

Some [scholars] have even implied, though rarely stating it directly, that Tolkien lacked the discrimination to properly evaluate his own work. Others have applied, or misapplied, Tolkien’s own dictum (borrowed from Dasent) that “We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled”. They believe that The History of Middle-earth is a bony ox that should never have been published. (“The Literary Value of The History of Middle-earth”, by David Bratman, in Tolkien’s Legendarium, ed. Flieger and Hostetter, 2000, p. 71)

D. Is Bratman exaggerating? Do some scholars really believe the HoME series should “never have been published”?

E. Do you agree? Do you find the view that Treason gives you of J. R. R. Tolkien (here’s mine: hesitating, uncertain, often confused, occasionally inspired) puts you off your feed, so to speak, when re-reading the LotR?

What good is it?   
     

Even Tolkien scholars  who appreciate the research value and creative interest of his posthumous work are not immune to undervaluing it. A number of years ago, I was discussing the then-halfway-completed series with a certain Tolkien scholar. I mentioned finding that The Shaping of Middle-earth, one of the more prosy books in the series, improved greatly on second reading, and he said, “You read it twice?” He was quite happy to go through it once to mine it for scholarly data, but it was not a book he could imagine rereading for pleasure. -- “The Literary Value of The History of Middle-earth”, by David Bratman, in Tolkien’s Legendarium, ed. Flieger and Hostetter, 2000, p. 71

F. Bratman’s funny story is about The Shaping of Middle-earth (HoME Vol. 4), which really is pretty monstrously “prosy” and obscure. Do you think he would make the same point about Treason, and its fellow volumes about LotR?

There's a real question if the History of Middle-earth is good in itself or only useful as source material. To some degree this is what people said about the Silmarillion, but it's now part of the Tolkien canon, so perhaps the same thing will happen with History of Middle-earth. I think this is unlikely, though, because the way Christopher Tolkien edited the material makes it very useful for scholars but very difficult for readers to just read and enjoy.  -- Michael D. C. Drout , Colloquy Live: Frodo Lives! And So Does Tolkien Scholarship, live online forum, June 2004.

The good news about these three fat volumes (plus one third of another) is that the style in these volumes is that of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. But these volumes are not always easy reading, especially when one is trying to follow closely Christopher Tolkien’s argument of the sequence of composition. On the other hand, many sections in these books are enormously readable simply in their own right, as out-takes or variations on what we have come to know as The Lord of the Rings  . . . . These volumes are by no means the final statement on the subject of the writing of The Lord of the Rings, but they are a towering monument of scholarship. -- “The Years’ Work in Tolkien Studies: Reviews: The History of The Lord of the Rings”, by Douglas A. Anderson in Arda 1988-91: Annual of Arda-Research, pp. 128-135.

G. Is the “readability” of these books really an issue? Are they marketed as a good read? Must every book be easy to read?

Who really wrote it?   

Because the subseries [The History of the Lord of the Rings, including Treason] refers entirely to an approved exterior text as nothing else in The History of Middle-earth does, Christopher Tolkien arranges the manuscripts in as close to pure chronological order of composition as the evidence permits. Although the entire series is roughly chronological, in most volumes related texts are put together regardless of exact chronology; but in the subseries the reader follows the author through all the byways and backtracking of the creative process, rather than directly through the course of the story told. Every time Tolkien set pen to paper, new thoughts would occur to him. His incorporation of those thoughts brought a wealth of new detail to a previously sketched story. The result of this emphasis on the evolving work is that the plot of the subseries is not so much Frodo’s quest as the tale of the author writing about it. -- “The Literary Value of The History of Middle-earth”, by David Bratman, in Tolkien’s Legendarium, ed. Flieger and Hostetter, 2000, pp. 83-84

[H]ow much of it is JRRT and how much Christopher? Since the manuscripts aren't available, we just don't know, and there are some critics (not me, though), who think it should all be ignored or considered the work of someone else.   -- Michael D. C. Drout , Colloquy Live: Frodo Lives! And So Does Tolkien Scholarship, live online forum, June 2004.

At one point I produced an actual fact for my article. I wanted to know the answer to Drout’s question: how much of it is JRRT and how much Christopher? So I did original research, and went through the book page by page tracking who wrote what, and came up with the figure: 50%. That’s right – within a moderate range of error, it’s just about exactly 50%.

CT’s commentary is continuous, and forms a clear (if “closely argued”) narrative throughout. JRRT’s drafts form, essentially, extensive illustrations to CT’s arguments and demonstrations about how the book was written. One cannot help but notice, for instance, when looking up the history of some favorite passage in LotR, that its draft version just may not have survived CT’s cuts, which tend to emphasize the “best of” or “this is really interesting” rule. The History of the LotR, one soon realizes, is by no means a full “edition” of the drafts of LotR.

G. Who do you think the “author” of Treason is? Who is listed as the “author” on the book jackets and listings?

Nothing less than several highly specialized volumes containing the full texts of all the drafts of The Lord of the Rings could supersede the achievements of these books. Yet there remains room to supplement Christopher Tolkien’s account, as the manuscripts themselves are further studied and explored by others. -- “The Years’ Work in Tolkien Studies: Reviews: The History of The Lord of the Rings”, by Douglas A. Anderson in Arda 1988-91: Annual of Arda-Research, pp. 128-135.

H. Do you think there will ever be an edition such as Anderson proposes: transcriptions of every manuscript that went into the composition of LotR? What would such a project provide us that the HoME does not?

The Critics Speak:
The most striking revision of all, one also noted by Christopher Tolkien, appears in a draft of the preceding chapter, “Farewell to Lórien,” in which two canceled sentences and Tolkien’s note on their cancellation reinforce speculations about whether time does or does not pass and supply the rationale for the debate in all its versions. As the Company prepares to leave Lórien, their Elf-guide Haldir announces, “I have just returned from the Northern Fences . . . and I am sent now to be your guide again. [struck out: There are strange things happening away back there. We do not know the meaning of them. But].” Above the canceled words is penciled the provocative comment “This won’t do—if Lórien is timeless, for then nothing will have happened since they entered” (Treason of Isengard, 286). Tolkien’s mind here is plain. It “won’t do” to have an Elf in a timeless land report things happening in time. (Verlyn Flieger, A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Road to Faërie, pp. 103-04)

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