|
Post by Eye on Aug 6, 2008 20:28:52 GMT -5
If Lord of the Rings is somewhat similar to Eragon, I'm not reading it.
|
|
|
Post by Zaid on Aug 6, 2008 20:50:25 GMT -5
It is, but much better. Eragon stole everything from Lord of the Rings. It's very descriptive, LotR, so if you like that kind of thing, it's absolutely amazing.
|
|
|
Post by Eye on Aug 9, 2008 21:18:47 GMT -5
Thanks.
|
|
|
Post by Dismay on Aug 17, 2008 16:24:04 GMT -5
Eragon was very much copied off of the Lord of the Rings and the Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey. I reccommend LotR a little over the other two series.
|
|
|
Post by thathoboravioli on Mar 6, 2020 0:35:22 GMT -5
Eragon was very much copied off of the Lord of the Rings and the Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey. I reccommend LotR a little over the other two series. Don't forget Star Wars. Eragon is basically Star Wars in a Tolkien world. The later books are a bit less derivative, but they are still pretty derivative.
|
|
|
Post by Hermes on Mar 6, 2020 8:18:49 GMT -5
From the 70's to the 90's there was a lot of fantasy that very blatantly aimed to follow Tolkien. It was known in science-fiction circles as EFP, for Extruded Fantasy Product. The starting-point is generally taken to be The Sword of Shannara, and Eragon was the culmination of it, the most extruded piece of fantasy one can imagine. Unfortunately, this formed a lot of people's image of fantasy, and you got - long after this sort of thing had actually stopped being dominant - claims like 'all fantasy books must contain a map', and 'fantasy is about the struggle between good and evil'.
Now the field has diversified a bit, and even the kind of fantasy that is otherworldly and mediaeval-ish (which isn't all of it, of course) has moved a bit away from that pattern - people like Jordan, Martin, Rothfuss, Sanderson, Abraham - though some have moved further than others. You can't assume a fantasy book will be full of elves and dwarves, at least.
But don't judge Tolkien by his imitators. He is the real thing. When he conceived that kind of world, it was new.
|
|
|
Post by Reba on Mar 6, 2020 9:16:34 GMT -5
whoa, tolkien invented fairy tales ?
|
|
|
Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Mar 6, 2020 9:39:41 GMT -5
I believe Norse mythology was Tolkien's main influence, not fairy tales per sé? (Both are folklore, but the former is more religious.)
Also, lol @ the OP
|
|
|
Post by Hermes on Mar 6, 2020 9:50:55 GMT -5
Of course Tolkien was inspired by fairy tales. (And Norse myths.) But fairy tales don't have a history carefully worked out over thousands of years. They don't have a map. They don't have constructed languages. Lord of the Rings is a different kind of story.
|
|
|
Post by Reba on Mar 6, 2020 13:08:42 GMT -5
actually, you can get rid of all the made-up histories, maps, and languages, and the story itself is exactly the same....
|
|
|
Post by Hermes on Mar 6, 2020 13:42:45 GMT -5
In some sense of 'story', sure. Just as you could get rid of all the literary allusions and Sunnyisms and 'words which here mean' from ASOUE, and the story itself is exactly the same. It would be a very different kind of book, though. And Tolkien, who creates a world with depth (and I did say 'world'), is very different from fairytales, which happen 'once upon a time' in an indeterminate kingdom somewhere.
|
|
|
Post by Reba on Mar 6, 2020 15:11:57 GMT -5
what i mean is, the bulk of his fiddly "worldbuilding" isn't in the actual text of the novel. it's not necessary for the writer (and especially not the reader). you can write about a fantasy world with just as much depth, and more, without actually filling out histories, drawing a map, and inventing a language. so what tolkien actually created, a medieval-ish fairytale/myth/folklore/whatever world full of goblins and elves, wasn't new at all. and it's not like he was the first to make a "world" in such depth either. it was already a children's lit convention to flesh out your fantasy land into something more specific. Wizard of Oz, Narnia, etc. and that nerd Lovecraft did it for grown ups too.
|
|
|
Post by Hermes on Mar 6, 2020 18:14:52 GMT -5
The books include lengthy descriptions of events in the remote past, they include poems in Elvish, and they include long journeys in which knowing the distances and directions actually matter. Yes, of course you don't have to know the whole of the constructed world (which wasn't published as a whole in his lifetime anyway) to appreciate the story, but the sense that it is there is important.
And I'm not saying Tolkien invented worldbuilding (though Narnia came quite a long time after The Hobbit, and the worldbuilding in Oz has a very definite made-up-as-he-goes-along quality). I'm saying it makes Tolkien different from fairytales. There are more fairytale-like works, without time or place, in modern fiction - The Thirteen Clocks, The Last Unicorn, Brokedown Palace up to a point. And, come to think of it, Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wootton Major. But not The Lord of the Rings.
|
|
|
Post by Reba on Mar 6, 2020 19:38:31 GMT -5
OK. yeah, tolkien is certainly more than JUST a fairy tale. i mentioned it simply as one of his obvious influences. point is, fantasy has always been an extremely derivative-- or archetypal-- genre. tolkien didn't conceive of any kind of new world, he just drew from tradition, unlike those he influenced, who drew from him. if you want "the real thing" you should read some folklore, and make sure not to judge it by its imitators....
|
|
|
Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Mar 7, 2020 7:59:33 GMT -5
I am relieved to hear you were not comparing anything to fairy tales to disparage the latter.
I don't have much stakes in the Tolkien debate, but I've read The Fellowship of the Ring &The Hobbit, and found them worthwhile lit back when I was interested in fantasy... If you're claiming that Tolkien is merely folklore fan-fiction (i.e. derivative), couldn't you also say (with the disclaimer that I haven't read Alighieri yet) that Dante's Divine Comedy is merely Bible fan-fiction? After all, he did not invent the world he's set his story in, having adapted it from Christian mythology.
|
|