I realize that Formandacil, and as I do not know much about their sources, you're probably right. However, I think it is common knowledge that a lot of modern day medieval fantasy tales are inspired by Tolkien.Formendacil wrote:I'd really advise, Prince Imdol, against making blanket statements about subjects other people are incredibly nerdy about, since it only tends to rile us up. Tolkien was writing fantasy before he ever met Lewis (1916, he was writing the Book of Lost Tales, it wasn't until the 20s that they met). Lewis definitely took inspiration from his Christian faith, but he was enamoured of the Norse mythologies and the fantasy stories of George Macdonald before he converted, so Christianity was a late-comer to his inspirational sources.Prince Imdol wrote:Tolkien and Lewis are the fathers of modern day medieval fantasy. Tolkien was inspired by Lewis, and Lewis was probably inspired by Christianity or something similar to that.
Quite frankly, I'm getting tired of everyone pointing out the obvious here... that Tolkien was a major landmark in the history of fantasy fiction, and therefore, obviously, everything must be connected to him in some way.Prince Imdol wrote:It's hard to write a fantasy medieval story without having it be similar in some way to Tolkien.
This irks me because authors have borrowed concepts and ideas from each other as long there have been writers that knew each other. It's fine to say that everything goes back to Tolkien, except then you're ignoring all of Tolkien's sources. Why not just say everything goes back to Homer? It does, you know...
Tolkien was inspired by Lewis, and I think its pretty obvious in many parts of his books. For instance, his Ents. In the Chronicles of Narnia, Prince Caspian, I believe that there are walking trees. (Not referring to the movie).
Ultimately, you could say everything goes back to the Bible, as that is one of the first, (if not the first) book to be written. While I am not totally sure of that, I think we can all agree the it's old enough.
The Odyssey and the Illiad are not fantasy books simply because, when they were written, people actually believe in those gods and godesses. While Odysseus, and Achilles were fictional characters, they do not turn those books into fantasy books. They were probably just considered something similar to our version of "fiction".
I guess I should shut up, as I don't want to get anybody mad, or make anybody feel attacked.
P.I