[Kalimac]

Tolkien not only combined a lot of older themes/stories/ideas in his stories, he seems hardly to have left any of them OUT! Can you imagine trying to write a fantasy story with NO Tolkienesque components at all? No orphaned/solitary heroes, no wizards (good or evil), no riddled-with-evil Dark Lord, no wicked agents, no comic companions, no princesses who love adventurers (or someone that their father doesn't approve of) no faithful steed, no friggin' QUEST. It wouldn't be worth reading at the end. NOT that I'm saying that people should just be allowed to lift from Tolkien wholesale (yes, "Sword of Shannara" I'm looking in your direction) but that there are going to be parallels if you look hard enough.

For Harry Potter, the only parallel that really took me aback was the Dementors; I can't think of a mythological figure to parallel them, and they are very like the Nazgul. I don't know about the Mirror of Erised, though - magic mirrors of whatever kind have been a fairy-tale staple since Snow White, and Erised is very different from Galadriel's mirror - much less ambiguous; you see what you wish you were or had. With Galadriel you can see past, present, future, and possible future - the trick is telling which is which. And for Dobby - well, Dobby seems to fall more on the comic-companion side of the slate.

Wormtail and Wormtongue are probably related, but it's a small enough element that you can call it an Homage and not a Plagiarism [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]. Besides, Tolkien hardly has a hammerlock on nasty, snivelly little characters with "Worm" in their names. How about C.S. Lewis's tempter Wormwood, nephew of Screwtape?

Orual - I see what you mean about Prydain? But who gets to be Prince Rhun? [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]. (Even Pippin has more intellectual firepower than that young man does).

[ November 04, 2002: Message edited by: Kalimac ]