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I am a little concerned about this notion that fantasy was invented by Tolkien. There are many examples of stories which are clearly fantastic, which predate Tolkiens work. The Narnia chronicles are an obvious example. Beowulf from which Tolkien borrowed much of his stylism is another example which predates Tolkien by around a millenium. It is true that Tolkien is the source of many of the cliches of the current fantasy scene. The obligatory map, and worse still the glossary can I think be fairly attributed to Tolkien. First I would say that yes, fantasy does predate Tolkien; however we are saying that it "came into its own" (became a separate genre) after Tolkien. Second, that Beowulf was part of the mythic tradition and not a fantasy. Third, that Narnia antedates, not predates The Hobbit. I still think you are placing too much primacy on Tolkein. I am not sure how you are distinguishing "mythic tradition" and "fantasy". You are right about Narnia. Let me suggest the search for the Holy Grail instead, which definately predates Tolkein! The 19th century was a hotbed of fantastic literature. Ignoring such patently popular and fantastical works as Bram Stoker's Dracula, there was a body of research conducted by people such as [Andrew Lang]?, [Hans Christian Anderson]?, [The Brothers Grimm]? etc. All of the foregoing were tremendously popular in their own right, and their work documents fantastic literatures which predate Tolkien by hundreds of years. I would therefore argue that to say that fantasy literature came into its own only on the publication of Tolkien's work is to ignore the reality surrounding fantasy literature. I agree that it is not honest to attribute the invention of fantasy as a whole to Tolkien, but AFAIK he was the first to set his fantasy in a complete, independent fictitious world. And that's what makes his books different from "Dracula" or works of "mythic tradition", which play in our very world, though sometimes a few centuries in the past (I know that Tolkien conceived of Middle Earth to represent our earth in a distant past, but this is not comparable to, e.g., Beowulf, since this connection to our world is not immanent to Tolkien's tales but rather a piece of extra information given by him). Even Narnia is not comparable to Middle Earth (or rather Arda), since it is a "parallel universe" or a "dream world", and as such rather ancillary to "the real world". In Tolkien's works, there is no separate "real world", since Arda is "the real world". And I think this independence is what sets Tolkien off from the above-mentioned books. Tolkien may not have invented fantasy, but he liberated it. PS: Could we perhaps agree on the spelling "Tolkien"? The i precedes the e, not the other way around! Of course, the real founder of the fantasy genre was Homer. Ha! Homer was writing history, not fantasy. I'm thinking this page should be on fantasy fiction. "Fantasy" is also a topic in psychology, of course. --LMS |
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