Epics often served as encyclopedias for their age, teaching history, morals, laws, myth, and geography-as may be seen in Homer or The Bible. Each had a purpose, even if they didn't serve the story, they were part of a grand and strange world. The many digressions, conflicts, repetitions, asides, fables, songs, and minutiae of these stories came together organically. The Eddas were long and convoluted because they drew from many different stories and accounts, combined over time by numerous story-tellers and eventually compiled by scribes. Tolkien needed this length in order to reproduce myth. Yet Tolkien's length had a purpose, it was not merely an affectation. Tolkien made it 'okay' for writers of fantasy to produce books a thousand pages long, and to write many of them in succession. If they had copied merely the sense of wonder or magnificence, then they might have created perfectly serviceable stories of adventure, but they also copied those parts of Tolkien which do not fit a well-built, exciting story-like his work's sheer length. They mimicked his style, but did not understand his purpose, and hence produced merely empty facsimiles. Yet they failed to do what Tolkien did because they did not have a whole world of mythic tradition, culture, and language to draw on. As a translator, Tolkien was intimately knowledgeable with these stories, the myths behind them, and the languages that underpinned them, and endeavored to recreate their form.Ĭontrarily, those who have followed in his footsteps since have tended to be inspired by a desire to imitate him. While he began by writing a fairy story with The Hobbit and other early drafts, his later work became a magical epic along the lines of the Eddas. His writing was chiefly influenced by his familiarity with the mythological traditions of the Norse and Welsh cultures. There was a tradition of high adventure fairy tales, as represented by Eddison, Dunsany, Morris, MacDonald, Haggard, and Kipling, but this was only part of what inspired Tolkien. He didn't have an audience, a genre, and scores of contemporaries. Tolkien's reasons for writing were completely unlike those of the authors he inspired. His writing was chiefly influenced by his familiarity with the mythological traditions of the Norse and Welsh cul Writers who inspire a genre are usually misunderstood. Writers who inspire a genre are usually misunderstood. Tolkien's three volume masterpiece is at once a classic myth and a modern fairy tale-a story of high and heroic adventure set in the unforgettable landscape of Middle-earth. The Lord of the Rings tells of the great quest undertaken by Frodo Baggins and the Fellowship of the Ring: Gandalf the wizard the hobbits Merry, Pippin, and Sam Gimli the dwarf Legolas the elf Boromir of Gondor and a tall, mysterious stranger called Strider. He finds himself caught up in a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon. In The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins is whisked away from his comfortable, unambitious life in Hobbiton by the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves. Tolkien's epic masterworks The Hobbit and the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King). He finds himself caught up in This four-volume, boxed set contains J.R.R. This four-volume, boxed set contains J.R.R.
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