Saruman’s knowledge of Gandalf’s Elven Ring

Jollster

New Member
Hi All, I know it was a ret-con by Tolkien, but I’m just wondering why it was never mentioned in class about Sarumans jealousy that Cirdan gave Narya to Gandalf. Therefore he would have known Gandalf had it during the Orthanc confrontation. I know, during the writing of that scene, Gandalf’s possession of Narya was not thought of yet (I think), but it wasn’t even commented on. Was this a deliberate omission in the class?
Jollster
 
How certain are we that Saruman even knows about this? I don't remember and don't have access right now to the later stories.
 
Is it possible that JRRT over-retconned Saruman? If you stack up all the warnings and dubious character points about Saruman which JRRT included in various ret-cons, some of them going back a long way in time, and give credence to them all, then it is hard to see why Gandalf zooms off so readily and trustingly, to get Saruman's help after Radagast's message.

It would make Gandalf seem rather un-perceptive, or naive. More so than the rest of Gandalf's story arch would lead us expect from his character.

However, we must remember that JRRT never published any of this ret-connned "Saruman was going bad from very early on". This was all just speculation and trial balloons by JRRT. If he ever had produced a version which he was happy to publish, would it have had so much foreshadowing of the fall of Saruman?

Well, we will never know.

But, this is why it is dubious to use unpublished JRRT stuff to try to explain what is going on in TLOTR.
 
I agree with all of the above. Just wondering why it was never mentioned in class, as it completely changes Sarumans thought process’s in imprisoning Gandalf.
 
But, this is why it is dubious to use unpublished JRRT stuff to try to explain what is going on in TLOTR.

If i recall correctly Corey have pointed out this several times during the ELOTR sessions when people have brought up things from works post LOTR.
 
I believe we are "officially" (?) covering LotR with all of our prior knowledge of both how this book ends and all the background material, but making an effort to *also* try to observe the work as a first-time reader with none of those at our disposal. Because we all know the material so well it is often a struggle to enter the first-time reader frame, but it is a rewarding struggle. It would, however, be a disservice to the project to restrict ourselves to *only* the first time reader perspective, or *only* the loremaster perspective. It's not likely we could afford the time to do this twice, so we have to try to do both in this one pass through the book.

There are also some questions that can definitively be answered by the background texts, and others that can only be suggested. For instance, last week when we were wondering if it was necessary for Sauron to have dominated Saruman (via palantir) in order for him to have fallen, we can see that in previous revisions Saruman was already falling even before the palantiri were invented in the author's mind. So it is possible for him to have fallen on his own. That's the sort of thing that the background material is excellent at sniffing out. The endless ret-conning of how early people suspected Saruman is the other side of that; because it contradicts what is in the published book, it can't really be taken as a finished product to add to our "fact" supply.
 
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