/lit/ - Literature

>Christian foundation
>emphasis on linguistics
>it was copied by countless other works

>>19360708
Absolutely nothing and Tolkien wrote like a sissy.

>>19360708
Generic fantasy novels are better written and the eagles are cope.

>>19360708
Being coppied so often as to create generic fantasy

>>19360708
1. Being written by professor, who specialized in Old English literature and read a shitton of medieval manuscripts.
2. Infused with shitton of epic oral tradition and germanic myth tropes
3. Author differing from narrator. The style is eclectic, as if it were an actual manuscript (Bilbo's Red Book), i.e. rewritten and modified by several scribes (That's why we jump from fucking silver spoons squabbles to epic battles and have fucking songs everywhere)
4. Broken hyperlink intertextuality. LotR constantly references the Silmarillion lore, though the latter was never published during Tolkien's lifetime. Yet one can feel that the references are internally consistent.

>>19360708
Scriptural tone and atmosphere of "long defeat".

>>19360748
fpbp
/thread

>>19361027
>long defeat
That's the first time I've heard that term. Do you have any papers I could read about it?

>>19361138
Not him and nope but in Tolkien it's just the progressive weakening of the light of creation. First it was marred by Sat- I mean Morgoth, then by him and an Outer Evil, then by the folly of the Noldor. One gets the sense that the Third Age is the last stand of an enchanted world: magic is weaker and more rare, battles are smaller, men are more cynical; the light is fading on the western horizon.
>Feanor and Galadriel did nothing wrong

>>19360708

Not much beside better utilizing archetypes, but it is nostalgia for Aryana that is at the forefroont of the fantastic idealism that is present in "The Silmarillion", and in "The Children of Húrin".

>>19360708
Millions have tried to replicate and zero have done it half as well. Still the absolute best to ever do it.

>>19360708
autistic worldbuilding

>>19360708
Nigga it created fantasy novels. Reading LOTR in 2021 a lot of it seems trite and cliched, full of tired tropes. That’s only because Toilken created those tropes, he set the foundation for modern fantasy, my guy created the genre.

>>19361943
>a lot of it seems trite and cliched, full of tired tropes
It really doesn’t

>>19360708
Quality. Also, it is literally the original from which all "generic fantasy novels" are derived.

It possesses a metaphysically derived mythology. Further generic fantasy has no metaphysics, as such. They have stories about races, kings, battles, yet the author, as a cosmopolitan urbanite, has no connection to metaphysics (no wonder, Tolkien had a rural soul connected to the land). Hence, they misread Tolkien. All they see are "tropes" that he made up. This is one of the profound ways Tolkien's Catholicism made it what it was. Belief in Being, in symbol, and the spiritual mysteries behind the veil of mere narratives. All such great stories are made from great metaphysics.

After reading LOTR, I thought it was so good and fantasy was my favorite genre. I've never enjoyed a single other fantasy novel and I've tried hundreds. I hate fantasy, but Tolkien is a God tier author.

>>19360708
Nothing and that's the point. Tolkien invented the generic fantasy novel. Literally everyone stole from him.

>>19362091
Can you expand on having great metaphysics in a fantasy world? Getting filtered and don't know exactly what you're referring to

>>19362156
Not that anon and this is possibly irrelevant but this is a decent video regarding some of the bigger ideas in LoTR. It doesn't cover everything but it's a step in the right direction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-sTbaH-aA0

>>19362156
We must define what metaphysics is. In the basic understanding: the study of 'being' in philosophy. Or ontology: the study of entities. However, there's a problem with using the word "study" in the sense I'm using. Metaphysics is Being, in a sense in which religion is metaphysics, and metaphysics is disconnected with what philosophy is as an academic discipline today.
This produces beautiful art in even primitive cultures, which one can sense in the intuitive carvings of barbaric Germanics or illiterate African tribes. We all have an intuition of metaphysics, which even the most common person has to feel profundity.
In the sense art possesses metaphysics, it communicates it through ways of being.
If you want a more common sense or practical idea of what I'm talking about, consider this: Tolkien was a Roman Catholic. He was grounded in a Christian metaphysic concerning humanity and God. In the practical sense, you can draw a loose set of lines from the great tradition of Aquinas to Tolkien.
Hence, when he's writing about the Shire or Sauron, these have metaphysical themes which are not allegorical. It is a way of being. The Shire is metaphysically the idyllic, the rural, the land. But it is not so much an allegory for the rural and how industrialization has done things to the world, just as Tolkien repudiated the idea that LOTR was just allegorical for WW2 or WW1. In this sense, Tolkien wasn't rationalizing a metaphysics or making up a metaphysics, he was intuiting it through art. He wasn't "crafting" he was intuiting something he already possessed, his own faith, and his own grasp of old stories and myths. There's a reason there is no religion in LOTR, as such. Catholicism is the religion. It's why trifles about the material facts of Middle Earth are so shallow.

The problem writers come into is they think this is all some bullshit. It's all about the base craft (which is like saying sculpture is art because of the act of chiseling marble). But such contemporary writers simply make something consumerist. You can't train it. However, I do think, even in the most soulless cosmopolitan sense, you can communicate a deep metaphysic about that world. But you're not going to replicate what Tolkien did that way. And frankly, many writers today are simply vapid people. I know that doesn't sound helpful, but you don't just feign creativity and invent something metaphysically interesting.

the spiritual component

Nothing. It got market share by being first. It's mediocre and probably wouldn't get published today.

>>19362946
Does anything good get published?

I don't understand the point of this thread

>>19360708
Firstly, it largely set the standard for the entire fantasy genre. Tolkien used indo-european religious concepts, ancient northern-european religion, and european folk tales to establish the general plot and setting with elves and dwarves and orcs and whatnot. Following fantasy writers use these motifs because Tolkien established them.

Secondly, Tolkien was philologist, and one of the world's best at that, specializing in Old English. He invented what would become the elven languages before he had any idea of writing the trilogy. The novels evolved from simple backstories he had created to explain the languages. Thus, Tolkien's works are not only revolutionary in the fantasy genre but in language as a whole because their origin is an exploration of language from which a story sprung. Readers without this background who have just watched the movies will be baffled by the long section of poetry in the books but these are key to what the Lord of the Rings is.

Thirdly, and I think this is one of the most distinguishing features of the trilogy, the Lord of the Rings is one of the few works that appeals to every strata of society. Everyone from a little child, like me when my father read them to me as a body, to foremost professors of philosophy and theology read LOTR and find in it an astonishing piece of literature. Very few works, among the the Bible, have the ability to speak to every person, regardless of background or previous literary experience. In many ways it is easy to write a children's novel or young adult's book, and difficult to write something purely literary but to write something that can appeal to all is a rare feat of only the highest authorial order.

>>19362367
Thanks man, this rocks.

>>19362946
filtered THAT easily? really?

>>19360748
>>Christian foundation
>Christcucks seriously think this

>>19360708
One key differentiating factor between literature and pulp is whether or not its being a written text is indispensible to its essence. Common examples of great literature like Moby-Dick, Don Quixote, Ulysses etc. are novels by necessity, they only function as written works and attempts to adapt them into other mediums are doomed to fail. Never mind whether or not one likes them, they are undeniably literature.

Most (pretty much all) fantasy novels are written by "authors" whose idea of a fantasy world is dominant over their idea of a work of art. Works like Game of Thrones are not novels by necessity, it's just an author's feeble attempt to monetise their escapist ideas in the most accessible way possible. If TV shows were as easy to produce as novels, almost all these genre fiction hacks would give up the pen for the camera. Their books are written like stunted screenplays anyway. True novelists would remain true to the written word because it is crucial to their work.

Tolkien is a pretty low example of literature by this definition, but in his work there is at least some recognisable devotion to the written word and an attempt to create a work of art that is more than just selling shallow aesthetics and power fantasies to midwit losers who constitute much of the market for literature.

>>19362367
Yes, this articulates something that I think I have felt without being able to articulate it.
A lot of people reading it are like "wow, magic and maps and made-up languages and battles and monsters, so cool." Rereading it and thinking about it, we may even get to the point of recognizing the importance of the consistent history and backstory that underlies all the events. But there's something even deeper than that, consistently informing everything from the history to the monsters and battles.
I read Sword of Shannara, some of the Fionavar books, some of the Thomas Covenant books, etc. They all work hard to have the magic and maps and languages and battles and monsters, but the history is rather thin, and there doesn't feel like there's anything supporting it underneath.

>>19360708
This kind of post is only possible by someone with no taste or learning whatsoever.

>>19363290
The state of fantasy bothers me a lot because of what you describe. I always say I love fantasy, but I can only think of really Tolkien and Robert E Howard as examples, and as much as I love their work, I can't deny that compared to someone like Nabakov or something like the Iliad, they're flat and shallow by comparison.
It's weird, because this only seems to be the case in fantasy literature. Dark Souls is a Fantasy game, but it captures feelings of the sublime in isolation in a way no Fantasy novel ever does. And yet, apparently the leading examples of fantasy lit are Malazan and Game of Thrones by modern standards? I read those books, and I just get depressed. There's nothing mysterious or sublime about them at all.
So, what's going on here? Is it that Fantasy as a genre is just not suited for the written word, or is the issue publishers and nerd culture?

>>19363273
anon, lotr is basically the Bible but with elves

>>19361259
Feanor did everything wrong. Fuck that guy

>>19361259
Is the Outer Evil Ungoliant? Who is she supposed to represent if Morgoth is Satan?

>>19363397
>Tolkien's work is flat and shallow compared to.. Nabokov
wtf

>>19360748
fpbp. Tolkien started with a language and then built a world around it. He always said it felt more like the work of a historian. he didn't just make shit up because hurr durr awesome, he created a whole and consistent universe. Whatever it is he's throwing at you you just know there's some actual back-story there. If there isn't then Tolkien just died before he could get to it. In the Third Age, Middle Earth is filled with ruins of ancient times but there is a fucking story to each of them, a story that has a place and a context within the larger narrative of the universe. Most fantasy just dumps ruins everywhere because they're muh epic and then gives you some half-assed explanation at best. It's the scale and scope of the world plus Tolkien's incredible sensitivity for language itself. He even got involved with the German translation and brought suggestions. There were German words that he simply really loved and wanted to make sure they're in the translation, even if a stubborn translation would suggest other words. And yes his work eventually became so influential that it can almost seem derivative but it's the other way around. Most importantly he had a life and a wife and didn't use his writing to escape his own short-comings irl, he wasn't a confused and incapable alcoholic loner like so many other later fantasy authors

>>19362946
lobotomy take

>>19363038
The post that this thread needed but never deserved. Tolkien never wanted to be allegorical.

>>19363290
Another crucial post. When Tolkien said it was impossible to turn LOTR into a movie I don't think he meant for technical reasons. It's because the medium of film is fundamentally incapable on touching on what actually mattered for Tolkien. It wasn't about action or crazy monsters at all

>>19363296
Comparing it to the movies you will find that a lot of the action in the movies is only verbally related in the books, that is, you only hear the account of somebody talking about what Peter Jackson would show directly

>>19362115
same here

>>19360708
Respect. Something only men born before 1990 can understand. Respect for writers that were ahead of their time and that were historically influential.

>>19361943
tolkien did not create the modern fantasy novel.
pic related

>>19361010
>Broken hyperlink intertextuality. LotR constantly references the Silmarillion lore, though the latter was never published during Tolkien's lifetime. Yet one can feel that the references are internally consistent.
This is "deepest lore" done right. Nobody can do this today because readers absolutely need everything to be explained, and they must one-up each other on who knows more of the "lore" and what the author said in his latest Tweet about the setting or his AMA on Reddit, and you need to milk every facet of the setting with 23 sequels until nothing is left unexplored.

>>19360708
The melancholy

>>19362367
So let me see if I can break it down, cause I really have a hard time understanding this metaphysics concept.

Basically, Tolkien made Middle-Earth "be" the most authentic way possible? With his world he created he showed a way of being/existing that stands for itself rather than being a direct allegory, which wouldn't be a way of Being but just a straight written metaphor of whatever concept he was trying to convey? Am I getting that right?

If so, why is it that even when authors actively try to avoid allegory, it still falls flat or feel "pulpy"? Cause Tolkien isn't even my favorite fantasy author but his stories definitely feel other wordly and sublime. You said it was because of his grounding of Catholic metaphysics. He saw the world Being a certain way and he expressed it so through his world and story.

Did I get it somewhat?

>>19364562
People have way too much time in their hands and are wya too much into having a high nerd IQ

>>19363273
>"The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision."
- The Author