The Hobbit Movies: Reshaping the Canon (with a canonical criticism primer)

What is Canon and Canon Criticism

The "method" of this post starts really in my having been in doctoral level biblical studies. Or I guess you could say  my motivation. As soon as I heard that Peter Jackson was going to be doing The Hobbit in three movies, my first thought was “interesting, that kind of changes the canon.”

So, that requires some explanation if I hope for a larger audience to be able to answer the question, “what are you on about?”

A canon is a normative set of material that defines a literary body. A “canon” was originally, in the  ancient culture from which the name comes, a measuring rod, and so the central idea is normativity or authority … what sets the rule. In fact, you can see sort of the same connection between our two meanings of the English word “ruler” … a person in authority and a measuring device. In literature, this usually means what works are included to consititute the canon … hence scholars discussing whether certain works by certain authors should be considered as part of the “canon of Western Literature” (meaning the great works that have an impact on Western culture).

So, for instance, if I want to ask whether dementors “mean” (symbolize etc) capital punishment in Harry Potter, I might start by clarifying that I am taking only the actual texts of the seven books and maybe the “school books” productions (Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) as the canon, and therefore authoritative, the only thing that “counts” for the question—not statements given by the author in interviews, not statements by the director of the films, etc (whereas, for the new Fantastic Beasts films, I might consider statements by the director because he is one of those actually constructing the original “text,” or I might not; I might say that what actually happens on screen, the “text,” is the only authoritative canon).

“Canonical criticism” is a method of studying that arose in the field of biblical studies. In order to understand the importance of this, one has to know that the two “fathers” of “canon criticism,” Brevard Childs  and James Sanders, were both focused in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible (although, Childs officially rejected the term itself for what he was doing, preferring “canonical approach,” after Sanders actually coined the term “canon criticism”).

The Hebrew Bible presents a special case for considering issues of canon because there are two different canons: the Palestinian canon in Hebrew and the Alexandrian canon in Greek. But the main difference is not the language, the difference is the canon itself. The Hebrew canon is now, in Judaism, called the TaNaKh, which comes from the three letters TNK, which are the first letters of the three sections of the canon, the Torah, the Nevi’im, and the Ketuvim—the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. In this canon, Ruth, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah do not appear in the same place as they do in the Christian canon, which is the order of the Septuagint (commonly shorthanded as LXX), which is the Alexandrian canon in Greek (the translation done circa 300 BC/BCE). In the TaNaKh canon, these books appear after the prophets (rather than interspersed among them according to a historical logic) in the third section, the Ketuvim, the Writings.

The difference that all this makes, the difference in the “shape” of thinking, is that the TaNaKh canon (this is my own formulation that I used to present in Intro to OT classes) has a center (Torah) that radiates out through national-political-ethnic identity (the prophets) into a worldwide dimension (the Ketuvim have much more interaction with, for instance, other surrounding “wisdom” traditions).

(Sidenote: I base this formulation in part on the model of the concept I see in the Torah of a system of concentric circles with the Ark at the center of the Holy of Holies, which is at the center of the Holy Place, which is at the center of the Tabernacle, which is in the middle of the Levites, who are in the middle of the whole camp of Israel, the nation that is central among all nations as God's chosen people and through whom, in the Hebrew Bible/Jewish conception of things, God draws all the other nations to himself, concentric circles of separation/holiness but also of mission and connection, holiness radiating out and bringing eventually the Gentiles [literally the “nations”] into the “camp” of all of creation in relation to God [there has been a bit of work done, especially by Gordan Wenham, who did the Gen 1-15 volume for the Word Biblical Commentary, on the ways in which the Genesis 2 creation story frames creation as a proto-sanctuary])

The LXX/Christian canon, on the other hand, is based in an idea of linear progression. Once the LXX is so chosen by Christianity (to the extent that, when Palestinian Judaism wished to distinguish themselves more strongly from Jewish Christians, they did so by declaring at the council of Javneh in 90 AD/CE that the Palestinian Hebrew canon was authoritative over the LXX—they had previously been sort of on equal status in Palestine, but then the Christians began using the LXX so prominently), the progression is seen as leading to Christ, but even before Christianity, the idea in the LXX canon was distinctly one of historical linearity (Ruth is described as a “Judge” so her book goes up right after the book of Judges).

Setting aside the issue of the seven “deuteron-canonical” books (Tobit, Sirach, etc), even when we have the exact same books and no more or less, the way the canon is organized can shift the shape of the thinking and interpretation (this will come in for the Hobbit below).

Just as another example of historical development of canons to help a reader get the situation, I would offer the “book of the twelve.” This is a name applied to those books that are sometimes called the “minor prophets.” These twelve books probably circulated in the land and religion as a sort of canon themselves before this small canon of “the 12” was inserted into the larger canon of the TaNakh. One of the evidences of this is found in the ending of Joel and the beginning of Amos, which are next to each other in all canons. Originally this canon of “the 12” would have been all on one scroll, and the division between Joel and Amos would have looked more like simply the breaks I have in posts using new headings—not entirely, though; people knew they were different prophetic books and so on, but the connection was physically closer and this mirrored an idea of closeness on the level of meaning.

This closeness that was conceived can be seen in the fact that there is a wordplay done between the end of Joel and the beginning of Amos. We know them now as different books, but once upon a time they were on the same scroll in the same canon (the “book of the 12”) and this seemed to make them mean something together, a canonical meaning, to the extent that those who transmitted them thought that editing one or the other so that a wordplay was evident between the two books was NOT violating the text, but rather bringing out something that was already there.  

The question is whether there are differences in conception of what each book says based on their inclusion in a new canon beyond and bigger than the “book of the 12.” If the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts, does inclusion in a new larger whole impact the content of the parts, their meanings … does context (in a small canon vs in a bigger canon) impact meaning?

Important Note:

Some would have a beef with the description I have given and say that "canonical criticism" should be reserved for the approach to Scripture as the word of God (although still with scientific attention to the “shape” of thought in the canon) and the idea that all Scripture can be used to interpret all other parts because of the unity of the divine author. Indeed, frustration with forms of historical criticism losing the motivation of hearing the word of God was a main motivation for Brevard Childs (and the reason his resisted calling his approach a “criticism” like others). But, while I would put the “word of God” above and say that examinations of the human points of the development of the canon etc should be in the service of examining the message of the divine author, I would use “canonical reading” for the “word of God” approach and reserve “canonical criticism” for the scientific examination of the historical development of canon and the impact of that development on the shape of the human thought in the canonical “shape” of the text. And I would also be sure to clarify that I think “canonical criticism” is a worthwhile project from the standpoint of “canonical reading” and faith. I would argue that canonical criticism should always serve a faith-based canonical reading, but also (and really for that reason itself) that there is a value to studying canonical criticism, meaning on its own grounds (not automatically eisogeting a later doctrinal formulation).

The Hobbit Movies:

Anyway, to return to the part of this that will be of more direct interest to a larger audience: where all that goes regarding the Hobbit movies is that Jackson’s movies took the same material and reshaped the canon of it. Here I will state that I am taking the “canon” to be the combined Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit taken together as a whole, whether in the original texts or the movies (which are really two canons of the same material, analogous to the two canons of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament … although obviously not of the same type of material, no matter how amazing we feel Tolkien’s genius was, and I feel it was pretty incredible).

 

[Caveat: But let me say here that this is a "benefit of the doubt" exposition. I know there are terrible things about the trilogy of Hobbit movies (in fact, I probably know more than any who consider themselves the strictest purists on the text, simply because I can analyze the text more deeply. Witness: It's not simply that putting in the Battle of the Five Armies actually on the screen is inaccurate, and not even that it changes a key classics quality of the book, which is that Bilbo being knocked out makes a key traumatic event like the mortal wounding of Thorin happen offstage as Greek tragedies always did . . . it's that making the battle the climax takes it away from being Bilbo's story the way it is in the book; the structure of the Hobbit very much mirrors a work of English literature that Tolkien had perhaps more devotion to than any other, even Chaucer [and please don't tell me you don't recognize the Canterbury Tales as a model for the Dancing Pony in Bree], which is Beowulf; that Old English hero fights two battles, the one against Grendel early in life, which he wins, and the dragon at the end, which he loses; Bilbo likewise has two battles, in the first of which he must go underground like Beowulf seeking Grendel; the second is more complicated, for while it does involve a dragon, Smaug is not the real dragon he fights for the second battle . . . and in a difference that shows that Tolkien is only using the model and not recasting the whole plot in a cheap way, Bilbo wins the second battle. First, in each literary work, the two battles are of the same kind; Beowulf fights both Grendel and the dragon physically, while Bilbo confronts both of his opponents in battles of wits, and here we see the solid literary use to which Tolkien puts a folk tradition like the riddle game; but who is his second foe, who is his dragon? It's not Smaug, because really he loses that one: maybe his tipping to much of his hand gets Smaug out to where he can be killed, but at the cost of lives and, more importantly, not as a goal at which Bilbo aimed with his wits. No, his dragon is Thorin's dragon-sickness and lust for the Arkenstone, and Bilbo outwits him and uses it as a bargaining tool to get Gandalf and the others in a little better position, or a least as much as can be done . . . he wins that second, larger battle of wits, and so not having him see the battle of give armies kind of subtly conveys that that battle is not really the climax of the story because it is Bilbo's story, the hobbit in a work called The Hobbit, and the climax of that story is his outwitting Thorin to do what he can to assist peace through bargaining [a nice little bookend to all the legal-contract discussion at the start], and to put the battle in the film seriously takes away from that) . . . SO, yes, I know all about the serious shortcomings in the films, and as I say, I probably understand them about as well as the most learned in Tolkien, so cease and desist with all the hand-wringing and "Wailey, Wailey, Wailey" (to quote Pratchett's nac mac feegle) . . . There are still interesting tenets to be noticed as far as what also goes on on the level of canon shape in relation to Tolkien's own shape of his canon.]

I think this “reshaping” happens in two ways or two material actions, and I think the second is the more important and striking, but the first is worth noting too. This first is that Jackson pulls material from the appendices (particularly the Azog story), which obviously grows the canonical story, but the difference is subtler. The size/quantity of the canonically authoritative material stays the same, as the appendices had always been authoritative, but the meaning of the story, the narrative movement, in the canonical version can shift: if you bring in more material on Azog, you put some new emphasis on the sufferings undergone in losing the kingdom under the mountain (I liked the “wanderings” and desire to return to a home issue … “Wanderings” was the title Chaim Potok gave to his one volume history of Judaism).

In the second way that the canon changes, the key material thing is what is moved from the two chapters in Fellowship of the Ring (“The Council of Elrond” and “The Ring Goes South”) to The Hobbit. This isn’t just bringing in stuff from the appendix into the story itself to beef up the The Hobbit part of the whole canonical story; this is moving stuff from one part of the actual whole canonical story to another, changing where it is unveiled, in conjunction with what plot action etc. Especially in “The Council of Elrond,” the original text makes the chronological correlations, but this is not the same thing as putting the dwarves story on the page with necromancer plot. In the original, they stay on the same page, which is the page in the context of the council of Elrond (which actual presents a struggle, at least for adult readers … at least a couple people I know who have come to reading Lord of the Rings as adults have said they nearly stalled in the council scene just because there was so much backstory being unloaded at once from such a variety of characters); the dwarf story from The Hobbit, when present at all in the council scene, is merely a time marker for reference. Being on the same page in the Hobbit story opens the threads to connections thematically.

The significance of The Hobbit becomes more than just “where the ring was found,” and Smaug (in my opinion, as an example of one meaning unique to the movie version) gets fit into a loose affiliation of evil characters who do not trust each other but are willing to use each other for a distraction or for protection, an affiliation of which Sauron’s relationship with Shelob is representative.

The motive for all this is that, because of the immense popularity and grand scope of the first trilogy, the new trilology needed to be really the "prequels" to the LotR franchise. The original Hobbit was that to the original LotR in some ways, but in other ways, not so much. It was only the occasion of the finding of the ring, and even that had to develop. There was a first edition/version of The Hobbit in which the “present for winning the game” explanation that Bilbo gives was actually what happened. Then Tolkien realized what he wanted to do with the ring in The Lord of the Rings and knew it would be inconsistent for Gollum to let the ring go that easily if it was really the one ring and had that kind of power over those who bore it (wouldn’t make much sense to give it away as a carney’s prize and then chase it through hell and back and fall into mount doom over it), so he put out a revised edition in which the original version became Bilbo’s fib.

So, interestingly, Tolkien himself had already edited The Hobbit in gravity toward The Lord of the Rings long before Jackson came along.

The first major impact of the reshaping is simply the “size” of the canon in the form of how many parts it has: the new canon has six parts, two sections of three parts each, the symmetry of which leads the reader to expect (and really create for themselves in their own reading) a more equal weighting as opposed to the original canon of 4 parts.

The more major way that the new canon shifts in meaning is that, in the new canon of The Hobbit, which I think succeeds in making the Hobbit trilogy more clearly the prequels, the themes of Hobbit can hook up a little more directly with those in The Lord of the Rings by way of the characters being in closer conjunction. For instance, there might be Smaug’s inclusion in the league of bad guys with a love-hate relationship with each other mentioned above, or maybe a connection between the wanderings of the dwarves and the homelessness Sauron wishes to visit upon Gondor or with “lost their way but are willing to return quality of some of the ruffian men in the western lands, or maybe a comparison between the Arkenstone and the ring (for, both have a precursor in the Silimarils, at the very least as far a being objects of desire). If I haven’t already, I’ll be doing another post on the correlations between Jackson’s whole-cloth invented character, Tauriel, and Arwen, but for this post, I want to stick to the issue of material from the original works.

I think that there is also, again analogous to (but radically different in type from) the Old Testament canon issues, a way in which the resulting Jackson canon is more linear: material goes where it fits in a more strictly chronological, linear progression.