Talk:Men in Middle-earth

message: Men of the Darkness are
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It is my impression that Edain, though literally =Men, is usually restricted to the three tribes that migrated into Beleriand and had strong interactions with Elves.  See for example Gilraen's lament, in which the word Edain (in Sindarin) appears in the English translation as Dúnedain if memory serves.  But: what suggests that they were created separately? —Tamfang (talk) 05:43, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree about the Edain. The "Unclear...created" note accurately paraphrases a parenthesis by Straubhaar in [1]. She is the author of "Myth, Late Roman History and Multiculturalism in Tolkien's Middle-earth", in Jane Chance's Tolkien and the Invention of Myth, A Reader, 2004, so her thoughts on the subject carry weight. The fact that she just says that the origins of these men are problematic means she doesn't know either. The statement is thus reliably-cited. I've edited it to say simply "Their origins are unclear", which should be, ah, clearer. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:50, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: The origins of the humans that Dunedain classified as 'Wild Men' seem entirely clear in Tolkien's texts... their ancestors Awoke at Hildorien when the Sun first rose, just like all other humans. They are split from the other two groups on the basis that their ancestors neither settled Numenor nor were closely related to those that did. This origin is cited in the article... and then seemingly contradicted w/o explanation except that one commentator was apparently unaware of it. The information on their origins doesn't cease to exist. --CBD 02:05, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text:  Ah, 3 sides to every argument, indeed. There are several things to say about this. Firstly, unlike the Straubhaar paragraph above the table, the "Faramir's taxonomy of Men..." table is basically just primary, it is not explicitly attributed to her, and indeed it just serves as a resumé of what Tolkien says in Faramir's voice. Her comment about the Wild Men's origins is a negative, and contradictable by a single primary statement, i.e. if a scholar says "Tolkien did not say X anywhere", then it only takes one piece of primary evidence, "Tolkien says X here...", to disprove it. So, scholars are on specially thin ice with negatives; and we can certainly remove the claim, I've done that now. That brings us to the other bit of specially thin ice: use of primary sources. The most extreme cases on Wikipedia occur, I guess, with the citing of religious texts, i.e. editor E1 writes "Scripture A says X". This has the obvious and immediate danger that editor E2 writes "No, scripture B says Y", and they're off into WP:OR-land and edit-war. Wikipedia rightly forbids such use of primary sources. "Tolkien writes..." is fine for plot, where he's impossible to contradict; it's no good for analysis, not least because he contradicted himself so often in his statements about what he intended, and between the many drafts of his many tales. To return to the table: apart from the very brief (and wrong) Straubhaar statement, it's purely a factual summary, and best so. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:17, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Men vs Edain