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Old 03-26-2014, 09:10 AM   #49
Zigūr
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
 
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We could define "feel" a number of ways I suppose but if you want "Fantasy" with similarly-styled language I can recommend the prose romances of William Morris, especially The House of the Wolfings which was an inspiration for Professor Tolkien (by his own admission: see Letter 226) in addition to its sequel The Roots of the Mountains and various others. Morris' The Glittering Plain is about the unsuitability of changeless immortality for mortal people. Unlike the spiritual or moral conflict of Professor Tolkien's narratives, Morris' work often uses a quasi-early-Germanic setting to to explore socialistic themes about ideal communities and social systems.

The adventure novels of H. Rider Haggard, which also incorporate a fair bit of the fantastic, are comparable in some respects in terms of their style. Certainly She has a level of comparability and supposedly was also something Professor Tolkien read in his youth.

While I don't think any other book could give me quite the same "feel" as Professor Tolkien's work, I do think that those seeking out comparable material would be better served looking at this sort of proto-Fantasy of the 19th century as opposed to the 20th and 21st century Fantasy "novel." I think the modern Fantasy novel is actually quite a different beast to, say, The Lord of the Rings, which definitely gave rise to the modern genre but perhaps as a consequence of that is actually, in my opinion, more a part of the tradition that came before.
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