[Lush]

Keeper, your definition of fantasy is narrower than Paris Hilton's waist (for all of you living under a rock, that's pretty durn narrow).

Oh, and as much as I believe in the whole "nothing new under the sun" notion, there is still a lot of fantasy out there that a) Wasn't one of the sources Tolkien drew on for his stuff and/or b) Wasn't revolutionized by the advent of Tolkien.

Try Russian folklore, an area that was virtually inaccessible to Western scholars even as the world began to grow small in the past century (thank you, Uncle Stalin). Check out, for example, the myth of the wise grey wolf and compare it to Tolkien's vicious wargs.

See, the basic building blocks are usually the same, but stories are interpreted and re-interpreted over time. And that's interesting.