/lit/ - Literature

cool

nice

For sure, the breadth of his imagination is ridiculous.

>>21694246
How is it better than tolkien?

Interesting.

It would be unfair and contrarian to call him better than Tolkien, and anyone is better than Martin, but he definitely has something going on that is different or at least inspired Tolkien but particular to Lord Dunsany. I discovered him thanks to Lovecraft, who owes him his most fantastic stories such as the white ship.

>>21694561
Lord Dunsany is both poetic and adventurous. Read Carcassonne to get an idea of his style. https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/dun/adta/adta14.htm

>>21694246
I find Dunsany pure dross, more in common with a dry, "Just So" fablespinner like Wilde than any truly imaginative writer. Definitely below Poe.

>>21694933
Martin is better than Tolkien

>>21695239
You must be a fat turkey to write this dribble and think yourself smart. Did got reminder to wipe the grease off your hands before you typed this.

>>21695239
At writing mediocre books, yes. But we are talking about literature.

>>21696232
>FAT PINK MAST

>Martin is better than Tolkien
Shit bait

>>21694246
I haven't read it but I wouldn't doubt it. Did you know LotR wasn't even the first 20th century fantasy set in Middle Earth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Worm_Ouroboros
>The Worm Ouroboros is often compared with J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (which it predates by 32 years). Tolkien had known Eddison personally and had read The Worm Ouroboros, and praised it in print

>>21694933
Just check out this beautiful prose:

>And the diviner rose up, stroking his grey beard, and spake guardedly—"There are certain events," he said, "upon the ways of Fate that are veiled even from a diviner's eyes, and many more are clear to us that were better veiled from all; much I know that is better unforetold, and some things that I may not foretell on pain of centuries of punishment. But this I know and foretell—that you will never come to Carcassonne."

>>21699292
>spake

>>21699387
>frog

>>21694246
Dunsany was certainly not greater than Tolkien in any stretch of the imagination but his imagination was nonetheless a great foundation for Tolkien et al to build upon.

On the topic of pre-Tolkein fantasy, has any read James Branch Cabel? Is it good? There's a library and a few other things named for the guy in my city but I've never seen his stuff on any shelves.

>>21694246
This but Eddison.

>>21694246
Big ups to the Lord Dunsany chads for reminding me I have pic related to get back to. Its so fuckin good. You want to talk about world building, This man created a whole cosmological mythology just to tell a few stories in its world.

>>21694933
>I discovered him thanks to Lovecraft, who owes him his most fantastic stories such as the white ship.
I remember reading that after Lovecraft had died, one of his friends sent Dunsany some of his Dream Cycle stories and Dunsany replied that he felt that Lovecraft had copied him but he still enjoyed the stories.

>>21701186
I wouldn't be surprised. Copy is a dirty word, but he was strongly influenced by him, and I think he gave credit were it was due.

>Unexcelled in the sorcery of crystalline singing prose, and supreme in the creation of a gorgeous and languorous world of iridescently exotic vision, is Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Eighteenth Baron Dunsany, whose tales and short plays form an almost unique element in our literature. Inventor of a new mythology and weaver of surprising folklore, Lord Dunsany stands dedicated to a strange world of fantastic beauty, and pledged to eternal warfare against the coarseness and ugliness of diurnal reality. His point of view is the most truly cosmic of any held in the literature of any period. As sensitive as Poe to dramatic values and the significance of isolated words and details, and far better equipped rhetorically through a simple lyric style based on the prose of the King James Bible, this author draws with tremendous effectiveness on nearly every body of myth and legend within the circle of European culture; producing a composite or eclectic cycle of phantasy in which Eastern colour, Hellenic form, Teutonic sombreness, and Celtic wistfulness are so superbly blended that each sustains and supplements the rest without sacrifice of perfect congruity and homogeneity.

https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.aspx

Is Dunsany literature ?

>>21702271
Yes.

>>21699292
>So, that just happened.

>>21694951
>"Just So" fablespinner like Wilde
???
Oscar Wilde's fairy tales are great..

>>21694246
>It’s better than Tolkien
No it isn't. Stop lying to yourself.

>>21694933
He leaves plenty to the imagination. Not much in the way of “world building” (which is cancer). If the book in the OP is like this then I’ll read it.

>>21694246
I wouldn't call Dunsany better than Professor Tolkien but they are probably in the same league. Some very beautiful writing from them both

>And when the unicorn got to the top the hounds were close behind him, so that he suddenly whipped round his great single horn and stood before them threatening. Then the hounds bayed about him, but the horn waved and bowed with such swift grace that no hound got a grip; they knew death when they saw it, and eager though they were to fasten upon him they leaped back from that flashing horn. Then Orion came up with his bow, but he would not shoot, perhaps because it was hard to put an arrow safely past his pack of hounds, perhaps because of a feeling such as we have to-day, and which is no new thing among us, that it was unfair to the unicorn. Instead he drew an old sword that he was wearing, and advanced through his hounds and engaged that deadly horn. And the unicorn arched his neck, and the horn flashed at Orion; and, weary though the unicorn was, yet a mighty force remained in that muscular neck to drive the blow that he aimed, and Orion barely parried. He thrust at the unicorn's throat, but the great horn tossed the sword aside from its aim and again lunged at Orion. Again he parried with the whole weight of his arm, and had but an inch to spare. He thrust again at the throat, and the unicorn parried the sword-thrust almost contemptuously. Again and again the unicorn aimed fair at Orion's heart; the huge white beast stepped forward pressing Orion back. That graceful bowing neck, with its white arch of hard muscle driving the deadly horn, was wearying Orion's arm. Once more he thrust and failed; he saw the unicorn's eye flash wickedly in the starlight, he saw all white before him the fearful arch of its neck, he knew he could turn aside its heavy blows no more; and then a hound got a grip in front of the right shoulder. No moments passed before many another hound leaped on to the unicorn, each with a chosen grip, for all that they looked like a rabble rolling and heaving by chance. Orion thrust no more, for many hounds all at once were between him and his enemy's throat. Awful groans came from the unicorn, such sounds as are not heard in the fields we know; and then there was no sound but the deep growl of the hounds that roared over the wonderful carcase as they wallowed in fabulous blood.

Dunsany is /lit/

>>21702271
Yes, and more securely than Tolkien

>>21702271
>>21704809
What do you guys mean by 'literature'?
Does it mean 'good writing that isn't pulp', or something more specific?

>>21704833
Writing that is good enough to have actual lasting power that are not meme's (things that are funnier because we made them last) or copy (things designed latch on to human nature to sell a product other than itself).

>>21703764
Houndchads keep winning

>>21694246
It's better up until the elf king freezes elfland.
Then it's significantly worse.

>>21694246
I like me some William Morris, too.

>>21694246
Yeah. Dunsany is pretty great.

>>21694246
I wasn’t very impressed by Elfland. Felt like he didn’t want to write a novel, characters especially Alveric or whatever were terrible. That said, he probably did description and whimsymogg Tolkien, and I was very pleased by the whole faerie vs. Christ subtext. The council elders definitely got what they asked for but didn’t want in the end funny little parable there though I couldn’t exactly tell whose side Dunsany was on

>>21694246
Martin is just a hack pornographer... Dunsany did some magnificent writing, although HPL'sDream Quest out-Dunsanys Dunsany, IMO.

The ending felt really rushed and that ruined it for me.

Tolkien is overrated but unfortunately I still have to put him above Dunsany and Eddison.

>>21694246
King of Elfland's daughter was pretty kino.