Do most fantasy novel nowadays have traceable elements of Tolkienism in them?

[Dunadanman]

You are absolutely right, and I apologize for that. Please chalk it up to mis-directed and overblown enthusiasm of a first time writer. It's hard to sit quiet when your piece has hit the streets, but it's no excuse for bending the line of protocol in this fine forum. It will not happen again.

[jallanite]

But can you always spot Tolkien influence?

Many fantasy stories written before The Lord of the Rings or even before The Hobbit might also seem to be influenced by Tolkien if you did not know when they were written.

For example, there is Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland's Daughter or William Morris’ A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark which in different ways may seem Tolkienish, but any influence in these books might have inspired Tolkien, not the reverse.

There is Hope Mirrlees’ magnificent Lud-in-the-Mist, which fantasy writer Neil Gaiman calls one of his top ten books. See http://www.goodreads.com/genres/neil-gaiman-top-ten .

And there are influences on Tolkien of various passages in past fantasy stories which on the whole are not very Tolkienish. For example George MacDonald’s Lilith, at the beginning of chapter 39, describes dreams in a house in which the protagonist and his friend take refuge, dreams which are almost identical to the dreams that the hobbits have in the House of Tom Bombadil:

Their night was a troubled one, and they brought a strange report of it into the day. Whether the fear of their sleep came out into their waking, or their waking fear sank with them into their dreams, awake or asleep they were never at rest from it. All night something seemed going on in the house—something silent, something terrible, something they were not to know. Never a sound awoke; the darkness was one with the silence, and the silence was the terror


Once, a frightful wind filled the house, and shook its inside, they said, so that it quivered and trembled like a horse shaking himself; but it was a silent wind that made not even a moan in their chamber, and passed away like a soundless sob.

They fell asleep. But they woke again with a great start. They thought the house was filling with water such as they had been drinking. It came from below, and swelled up until the garret was full of it to the very roof. But it made no more sound than the wind, and when it sank away, they fell asleep dry and warm.

And George MacDonald’s novel Phantastes has an evil sentient Ash much like Tolkien’s Old Man Willow, who is sleepy in the day time but comes fully awake at night. And there are other speaking trees as well in that book.

There are also hundreds of old fantasy tales which are now mostly unread, and mostly justly so, and the same for relatively new fantasy tales.

I point to Nerwen’s note that Moorcock started writing about Elric before The Silmarillion was published. What may seem Tolkienish may indeed just be coincidence or a case of two writers being influenced by some of the same previous writers.

Tolkien, for example, was very influenced by the writings of Rider Haggard, but his atmosphere and style is very different, though again and again the same motifs occur.

As Galadriel55 indicates, there is much fantasy published that is not very Tolkienesque but it is for the reader to seek it out.

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

I must join the chorus of people who are not genre readers, and therefore cannot say anything about the patterns of development withing fantasy.

It seems clear that Tolkien is the most influential fantasy writer there is, and some argue that he is the father of the modern genre.

One has to remember, that even though Tolkien him self did not invent his concepts, he altered many of them, and any subsequent fantasy seems to be based on his depictions. The way elves are depicted, is probably the best example of how Tolkien significantly altered an existing concept, and how it caught on.

I have read some modern fantasy, that had clear elements of copy-paste when it came to story-line. Still, I am convinced that the popular fantasy authors can mostly be placed within the confines of "inspired by".

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by jallanite

For example, there is Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland's Daughter or William Morris’ A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark which in different ways may seem Tolkienish, but any influence in these books might have inspired Tolkien, not the reverse.

I was going to mention Morris and his prose romances myself; in fact I've been meaning to start a "Morris and Tolkien" thread for some time. Morris' The Roots of the Mountains and The Glittering Plain are also very Tolkienesque, but in fact came first, and in Letter 226 the Professor attests Wolfings and Roots as influences. Given that these were meant to evoke Norse sagas and such Tolkien is very much the mediator between the traditional Romance and the modern fantasy novel. It puts me in two minds about how much Tolkien influence there really is in modern fantasy. The detailed, functioning imaginary worlds with invented histories and cultures, spiritual crises (good people vs a dark lord or diabolus-figure) etc. are the more superficial fantasy elements which have definitely been extracted largely, I would argue, from Tolkien, but in terms of tone and style I think they tend much more towards the storytelling methods which are in a conventional novelistic vein which Tolkien eschews.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Rune Son of Bjarne

I must join the chorus of people who are not genre readers, and therefore cannot say anything about the patterns of development withing fantasy.

It seems clear that Tolkien is the most influential fantasy writer there is, and some argue that he is the father of the modern genre.

First you say you can’t say anything, then you say something. You might better have followed your first instinct and not said anything. Tolkien may be “the most influential fantasy writer there is” but there are many fantasies that don’t have Elves at all, not to speak of Tolkien elves. Have you read all the fantasy mentioned on this thread which readers claim is not particularly Tolkien? Have you read any of it?

I would agree that Tolkien is “the father of the modern genre” in that his writing vastly increased the amount of fantasy published. But that was mainly in creating a market for similar works to his, into which works which were not very similar could also be fitted by book sellers. But there remains much fantasy published that has little of note connecting it to Tolkien’s work. For example the works of Stephen King or Neil Gaiman, arguably the two most popular of obviously non-Tolkien fantasists.

You might show examples of their work which you would claim derive mainly from Tolkien, and not from other writers, or is not mostly original, if you wish to make your point.

One has to remember, that even though Tolkien him self did not invent his concepts, he altered many of them, and any subsequent fantasy seems to be based on his depictions. The way elves are depicted, is probably the best example of how Tolkien significantly altered an existing concept, and how it caught on.

For elves in previous fantasy I suggest Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland's Daughter and Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword which predates The Lord of the Rings. True, Anderson’s Elves are more like Tolkien's Orcs than his Elves, but they are not little people. Or go back to the man-sized Elves in Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene. Tolkien did not alter any concepts. The idea of man-size Elves is common in medieval works.

Still, I am convinced that the popular fantasy authors can mostly be placed within the confines of "inspired by".

Then show how Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Eowyn Ivey, Tanya Huff, and Josh Whedon are primarily inspired by Tolkien. Well Eowyn Ivey’s first name comes from Tolkien, but not her novel The Snow Child.

Perhaps you have only read Tolkien-inspired fantasy. But there is lots more modern fantasy works out there that are not particularly Tolkien-inspired.

Originally Posted by Zigûr

The detailed, functioning imaginary worlds with invented histories and cultures, spiritual crises (good people vs a dark lord or diabolus-figure) etc. are the more superficial fantasy elements which have definitely been extracted largely, I would argue, from Tolkien, but in terms of tone and style I think they tend much more towards the storytelling methods which are in a conventional novelistic vein which Tolkien eschews.

Quite so, more-or-less. Tolkien was not “the father of fantasy” which some claim, but do not argue, because in fact those people have not read much in previous fantasy or they would not make such an absurd claim. Before Tolkien published The Hobbit there were James Branch Cabell, William Hope Hodgson, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Jonathan Swift, Bram Stoker, H. Rider Haggard, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber (barely), Eric Rücker Eddison, Lewis Caroll, Charles E. Caryl, John Ruskin, Kenneth Grahame, James Barrie, Edith Nesbit, Carlo Collodi, Beatrix Potter, Felix Salten, A. A. Milne, Hugh Lofting, Walter R. Brooks, P. L. Travers, and L. Frank Baum to name only those writers I can think of at the moment that I have not already mentioned in my two posts on this thread and whose fantasy writing is still widely read.

If some of these works of fantasy writing are known primarily as children’s books, I do not apologize, because the same is true of The Hobbit. There was a period where, except for dark fantasy, fantasy was mostly only publishable as children’s literature. Among more recent works Ursula K. LeGuin’s original Earthsea trilogy and Richard Adams’ Watership Down were originally published as children’s books.

I admit it quite possible, counting strictly by books published, that most fantasy published contains elements that most would accept as imitative of Tolkien. I don’t think this is true for the most popular fantasy.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by jallanite

I would agree that Tolkien is “the father of the modern genre” in that his writing vastly increased the amount of fantasy published. But that was mainly in creating a market for similar works to his, into which works which were not very similar could also be fitted by book sellers. But there remains much fantasy published that has little of note connecting it to Tolkien’s work. For example the works of Stephen King or Neil Gaiman, arguably the two most popular of obviously non-Tolkien fantasists.

First off, I wouldn't exactly consider King a "fantasy" writer primarily, though he does dabble in it, perhaps.
Second, at least the Dark Tower series owes a serious debt to Tolkien. In King's Introduction to the revised edition of The Gunslinger, he says:

The Dark Tower books, like most long fantasy tales written by men and women of my generation (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, by Stephen Donaldson, and The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks, are just two of many), were born out of Tolkien's.

Originally Posted by jallanite

Before Tolkien published The Hobbit there were James Branch Cabell, William Hope Hodgson, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Jonathan Swift, Bram Stoker, H. Rider Haggard, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber (barely), Eric Rücker Eddison, Lewis Carol, Charles E. Caryl, John Ruskin, Kenneth Grahame, James Barrie, Edith Nesbit, Carlo Collodi, Beatrix Potter, Felix Salten, A. A. Milne, Hugh Lofting, Walter R. Brooks, P. L. Travers, and L. Frank Baum to name only those writers I can think of at the moment that I have not already mentioned in this post and whose fantasy writing is still widely read.

It's a quibbling detail, but are Lovecraft and Poe "fantasy" authors too? I'd always consigned at least Lovecraft to the Horror genre.

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

It's a quibbling detail, but are Lovecraft and Poe "fantasy" authors too? I'd always consigned at least Lovecraft to the Horror genre.

Based on the few of Lovecraft's stories that I've read, I'd actually put him under sci-fi, with a little bit of fantasy and horror sprinkled in. Maybe I just haven't read the right stories, though.

[Zigûr]

If it's Lovecraft we're talking about I think the safest classification might be the one which was used at the time, "Weird fiction", a genre classification which isn't really used these days. It's a sort of blend of horror, fantasy and sci-fi styles from before the genres became as delineated as they are today. If you look at Lovecraft, his earlier Dream Cycle stuff has a very heavy element of what we would today classify as pure Fantasy: a world beyond this world with its own peculiar societies and inhabitants, although they were never extensively detailed. His 'Cthulhu mythos' stuff, by comparison, is more "horror/sci-fi" given that it often involves the horror being of extraterrestrial nature (see The Color Out of Space, The Shadow Out of Time, The Call of Cthulhu, The Whisperer in Darkness, At the Mountains of Madness etc.) while other stories are more pure horror with a more 'magical' explanation for the supernatural elements. His later writings strive to tie the Cthulhu mythos and Dream Cycle stuff together with explanations involving other dimensions and such, returning back, as it were, to the hybridity of 'Weird fiction'.

In my opinion the influence of Professor Tolkien's work is primarily to be found in what is called "High Fantasy", involving imaginary worlds/societies, an epic scale, good versus evil, saving the world, long quests or some combination thereon. I think the overwhelming majority of "High Fantasy" novels contain some element of "Tolkienism" but that Fantasy as a whole is too broad a genre to argue that Fantasy novels in general owe something to Tolkien. I think he codified a very specific sub genre of Fantasy but not all Fantasy. Personally I think High Fantasy is an increasingly exhausted genre; indeed I think it's been the case since Eddings' Belgariad deliberately produced the most generic High Fantasy story imaginable (orphan with mysterious past and group of mismatched friends finds magic device with which he kills evil god) in what was effectively a pastiche of the tropes which had so encapsulated High Fantasy storytelling. It makes things like The Wheel of Time seem utterly irrelevant, in my opinion (outside of the gender issues stuff which didn't need fourteen massive volumes to be explored). As I've said in the other thread I'm no fan of George R.R. Martin but, and correct me if I'm wrong, at least his books (seemingly) shake up some of those very weary tropes a bit.

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Based on the few of Lovecraft's stories that I've read, I'd actually put him under sci-fi, with a little bit of fantasy and horror sprinkled in. Maybe I just haven't read the right stories, though.

Yes, it really depends which of his stories you’re talking about– and genre boundaries weren’t as defined then as they are now anyway.

Thinking about the main question, it seems to me that there’s two traps to be avoided. One is that of assuming that every similarity is due to copying, and the other is that of assuming that none are. (Not that I think anyone here is literally doing either of these, by the way.)

I’d say there are four classes of similarity:
a.) Pure coincidence.
b.) Similarity due to use of the same sources.
c.) Actual influence.
d.) Direct copying.

There are still problems with this– exactly where c.) ends and d.) begins can be a matter of dispute. And you need to be careful about b.), because, for example, there is a difference between Elves or goblins as traditional folklore races and Tolkien’s versions.

Originally Posted by jallanite

For elves in previous fantasy I suggest Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland's Daughter and Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword which predates The Lord of the Rings. True, Anderson’s Elves are more like Tolkien's Orcs than his Elves, but they are not little people. Or go back to the man-sized Elves in Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene. Tolkien did not alter any concepts. The idea of man-size Elves is common in medieval works.

True– but it is none the less quite common for post-Tolkien fantasy writers to feature Elves who are obvious direct copies of Tolkien’s (often filtered through D&D). As I said, there’s a difference.

[jallanite]

In my opinion horror authors are more properly called horror fantasy authors. After all, they are usually writing about things which most people think can’t actually happen. Trying to define fantasy fiction as different from realistic fiction puts most horror fiction on the fantasy side, not on the realistic side.

Science-fiction is vague by that definition, though supposedly a science-fiction story should also seem to be scientifically possible, even if it involves time travel or faster than light travel. So is Jules Verne’s From Earth to the Moon hard science-fiction rather than fantasy when Verne knew that his method of space travel really couldn’t work, or only when we do? Or does it remain science-fiction with an unfortunate error in the science.

I see Lovecraft as mostly writing fantasy with a science-fictional cover over it. Same with Stephen King. But his Dark Tower series is very fantasy in my opinion, unless all alternate word stories are to be classed as realistic fiction which seem just wrong to me. His The Shining seems to me to be very much fantasy. So does Carrie. Is Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows really science-fiction set in a parallel world in which animals can talk?

Quibble away if you wish. And remove most of Lovecraft, and Poe, and King from my lists if you wish to fit your definitions which don’t agree with my definitions. It doesn’t matter very much to me.

You will not be able to find any definitions of fantasy and horror that are universally accepted. I was at a conference here in Toronto last weekend at which academic Robert Runte discussed writer Margaret Atwood who has very much denied being a science-fiction writer and has been blamed for making up a definition of science-fiction of her own which no-one else uses. Runte showed that the definition Atwood was using was the same one Robert Heinlein used, but that since the date when he put it forth science-fiction criticism has moved on.

So drop all the horror-fiction and Hugh Lofting from my list if you wish. But I hope you now understand why I disagree.

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Based on the few of Lovecraft's stories that I've read, I'd actually put him under sci-fi, with a little bit of fantasy and horror sprinkled in. Maybe I just haven't read the right stories, though.

That seems to me to be an adequate way to look at much, perhaps most, of Lovecraft’s work.

But there are exceptions in his writing.

Consider Lovecraft’s story “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”. That seems to me to be very much a fantasy tale by any definition, despite the horror elements. The definitive version, with corrected text is published by Arkham House in At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels and by Penguin Classics in The Dreams in the Witch-House and Other Weird Stories.

See a discussion of this story by John D. Rateliff ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rateliff ) at http://web.archive.org/web/200307040...sicsdreamquest .