Wednesday, July 23, 2014

An Exploration in Fantasy -- Part One: The List (an IWM post)

Prior to Tolkien, fantasy writing was sparse. At least, what we think of now as fantasy was sparse. Because of that, Tolkien is widely considered the "Father of Modern Fantasy" or, specifically, the "Father of High Fantasy." Along with the title has come the assumption that it was Tolkien who established our model of how fantasy ought to be written, that it was Tolkien who originated the tropes. People, often people who have not read The Lord of the Rings, look at what Tolkien did and ascribe the origins of all that fantasy has become to him.

Now, I love The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit, as you'll know if you've checked out my "Of Significance..." page on my own StrangePegs blog, is one of the three books that I think everyone should read. And I don't undervalue Tolkien's importance. There would be no fantasy genre as we know it today without him. However, I don't think that we can "blame" Tolkien for today's fantasy tropes. In fact, many of the things we think he did, he did not, in fact, do. No, for the origins of fantasy, we have to look elsewhere.

* * *

And that elsewhere is Indie Writers Monthly. Sort of. I mean it will be where to look. Today, we're just talking about the elements of fantasy. And there's a list! Everyone loves lists, right? So hop right over and check it out!

9 comments:

  1. Ah... Tolkien. Great ideas, but what a dry writing style!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Crystal: I have to disagree with you about the writing. And I have to wonder about your definition of "dry."

    ReplyDelete
  3. The link didn't work for me, but I googled the site and read your article. You did a great job with the list of tropes. I've never read Tolkien and spent a good part of my youth playing D&D and thinking they were responsible for making up all that stuff. (Sad, I know.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lexa: The link should be fine now.
    Ironically, a lot of D&D was originally based on Tolkien. Gygax was sued over it, if I'm remembering correctly. I do know that he originally called halflings hobbits and had to change it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm afraid that I have to agree with Crystal on this point. The books are very hard to read, but the movies are amazing.

    www.modernworld4.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  6. Gina: Hard-to-read does not equal dry. I'd say dense, which is accurate.

    ReplyDelete
  7. TAS: Yeah... or, maybe, we don't know what "dry" means?

    ReplyDelete