ot-my mini review of Children of Hurin

Jesper Svedberg · 16 Apr 2007, 21:05 · from 2007-April.txt.gz

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From: jsvedberg at gmail.com (Jesper Svedberg)
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 23:05:18 +0200
Subject: (urth) ot-my mini review of Children of Hurin
In-Reply-To: <428900.56593.qm at web32402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <428900.56593.qm at web32402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <4623E50E.1020105 at gmail.com>

don doggett skrev:
> --- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>I would make a guess (and I'm fairly confident of
>>it, though I too hope
>>Don will step forth and say in his own words what he
>>meant) that the
>>estimable Mr Doggett was suggesting that, though it
>>contains elements
>>of the fantastic, Tolkien's work was not created in
>>the context of the
>>commercial genre of "fantasy," as we know it today,
> 
> 
> Thanks Dan'l! This is more or less exactly what I
> meant, especially regarding the Children of Hurin, and
> the tales in the Silmarillion. They are written in the
> tradition of myth and epic romance - Tolkien was
> playing a different game, so to speak.

It strikes me as very weird to define the book after what it tries to be 
rather than what it is. The fact is that when you look at what kind of 
story it is, it is indistinguishable from much modern fantasy. It's a 
secondary world story with magical or fantastical elements that draws 
its estetical inspiration from myth and epics, like most modern epic 
fantasy of quality. The fact that there are some hideously unoriginal 
role playing stories doesn't change this fact.

Tolkien did not invent this tradition. Before him there were writers 
like William Morris, Lord Dunsany and E. R. Eddison who did similar 
things and just because the tradition hadn't spawned widely marketable 
genre until after Tolkien doesn't make his stuff much different from 
what came later.

   // Jesper

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