/lit/ - Literature

>>23129578
Wagner came before him.

>The Lord of the Rings is full of a kind of degenerate version of the Wagnerian approach to things. But Wagner is the real artist, and Tolkien a kind of second-rate populariser.

>The emotions that are stirred by the cinematic realization of Tolkien’s rambling story are a faint echo of what would be felt, were The Ring to be performed as Wagner intended, with every single stage direction realistically obeyed. This would be the film to end all films, the Götterdämmerung of our modern era, in which Wagner’s moral would be apparent even to the unmusical. And almost certainly it would be banned.

>If Tolkien hadn’t been the first epic fantasy world building author, he would not be well known at all. Let’s look at his works. The hobbit is a children’s book. This sort of book if released today would never be treated seriously. The lord of the rings is an epic fantasy book but it’s very boring in its writing style and for how Tolkien will describe how far characters walked and what ordinary leaves on a tree or grass looked like. Not even fantastical things in nature literally just normal things like a couple of hills. People would say lord of the rings had potential but needed an editor. And the over use of deus ex machina would have not been as defended as Tolkien fans do today.
TOO MUCH TEXT......
TRY AGAIN, RETARD.

>>23129578
he wasn't though. there was mervyn peake and stuff

>>23129578
What a stupid argument
>If Newton wasn't the first to discover gravity, he wouldn't be so famous!
Dude, it was precisely because he was the first that he became known and revealed his talent

>>23129599
No.

>>23129599
Modern Physicists don’t read anything that Newton wrote. They may use his equations but his texts are not used as authoritative. Nobody says to read Newton to understand physics as modern physics texts are better. With Tolkien people do not just use him as a reference for historical reasons. There is this feeling of an obligation to claim that Tolkien is still a very enjoyable read and that
>Tolkien still holds up
When it obviously does not.

>>23129619
No.
You are wrong.

>>23129628
Mathematicians aren’t reading ancient mathematical tomes. You could if you are interested in him the history of math but it’s a waste of time for a mathematician or scientist to go back and read the musings of say Aristotle on natural philosophy. The modern texts are updated making the older ones essentially obsolete. With Tolkien it’s not the case. Tolkien is still held up as the best when it comes to fantasy. He has the best novel and the best world building according to fans.

>>23129662
>according to fans
Out of which 80% haven't even read the whole book (also let's be honest, more than half of the people who said that they've read it are lying, we're talking about a 1200 page doorstopper + 700 pages of Hobbit and Silmarillion and I'm not going to try to count in the other works, also just to remind you, your average millenial reads like 5 full books a year) and they base their whole experience from the Jackson movies, which do not provide "the genuine LOTR experience" and basically completely discard Tolkien's weirdly sluggish pacing and his almost autistic writing style and other quirks, and their whole knowledge of the fantasy genre is limited to works such as Harry Potter, the movie or Witcher, the game.

Maybe that's because I'm definitely not a fan of fantasy, but LOTR has literally filtered me. I used this book as a fucking sleeping aid at one point in time before shelving it. I just can't stand his style. There are so many better fantasy writers at this point, even GRRM, the hack, is much better.

>>23129578
What I can't stand about Tolkien isn't his shitty prose, where he thought autistically detailing every step of a journey would save him from never leaving his university grounds, because it hides some real gems. What I can't stand is his personality. What an asshole he was, deriding his best friend Lewis every chance he got, sneering at Walt Disney's revolutionary films that had the same source as his work, looking down on Dune, completely ignoring his multiple American counterparts. Maybe the real reason his prose is so obtuse is because he was too insular to step outside himself. And now we have a million little Tolkiens in their thrifted tweed suits, just as arrogant as their dad, but with none of the spark.

And despite all this, he is one of the greats that deserves to be remembered. He's just not the only one.

>>23129773
>where he thought autistically detailing every step of a journey
You didn't read the books.
>sneering at Walt Disney's revolutionary films that had the same source as his work, looking down on Dune, completely ignoring his multiple American counterparts
Based. Soulless golems get ye gone.

>>23129578
>first epic fantasy world building author
Absolute brain rot

But he wasn't the first. I also implore you to actually read his books and formulate an original though rather than regurgitate banalities you heard on Reddit, such as
>The lord of the rings is an epic fantasy book but it’s very boring in its writing style and for how Tolkien will describe how far characters walked and what ordinary leaves on a tree or grass looked like

It's not that Tolkien's prose hasn't aged well. Read some Howard, some Lovecraft, some Dumas, some Marlowe, literally anything from preceding centuries. It's that it was always the work of someone who enjoyed writing almost more than telling a story, but the story itself was that good in spite of its messenger. Tolkien was a living argument for the idea that some ideas come from someplace higher and writers are mere scribes. You can almost feel Frodo fighting his way away from his delirious captor to the end, sometimes.

leaving aside the assertion that he was the first; to be the first at something is easy, isn't it?

his influence is undeniable and every fantasy author who has come and will come will owe him a lot.

>>23129578
But he wasn't the first, you fucking retard.

>>23129735
Which of Tolkien’s works have you read?

>>23129796
Which fantasy author came before Tolkien that came up with a realized history with lineages of kings, and detailed maps?

>>23129798
Reddit loves lotr tho.

>>23129825
>>23129809
Which fantasy author came prior and developed a realized history, lineages of various kings, and detailed maps of the world the story takes place in?

>>23129848
>>23129856
Hello.
>a realized history with lineages of kings,
I don't think being autistically obsessive about details such as lineages is what made Tolkien famous, at least not for non-autistic people.

>>23129856
Robert E. Howard and ER Eddison were both interested in realized histories and that isn't the only thing people appreciate about Tolkien.

>>23129856
Genealogies are the most boring part of Tolkien.

>>23129918
Based Lord Dunsany mention. And yes, it's hilarious how autists think Tolkien's obsession with fake lineages was what made him famous, and I'm autistic myself. That deep, rich lore is the icing on the cake, imo, but the story itself stands on its own

>the first guy who do the le epic in the western mid-east.
>boring writing style like Autistically naming every ship going to Troy o r While somebody is shooting a bow he have to tell you how he got that bow and what its made of, when and how.
>People would say Iliad had potential but need an editor.
>Over use Ex-Machina
>Genealogy/Lineages Autism

Homer Bros..... i dont feel so good

>>23129578
You know, Tolkien's universe has a mathematical precision. For all the comparisons with GRRM he would have never written himself into a corner like that even if he tried.

>>23129794
>where he thought autistically detailing every step of a journey
>You didn't read the books.
NTA but that's exactly what The Hobbit and LotR are. Yes, I have read them.

>>23130073
Maybe he didn't read the books. Another empty tweed and sneed.

>>23130059
Tolkien would just use the eagles, the Valar or Eru to get him out of a corner

>>23129955
The difference is that Achilles was real, in some half-forgotten way.

>>23129955

>>23130186
Achilles symbolizes the men who didn’t want to be at Troy but had to power through it for the spoils or for glory and also just because their king told them to. A real person likely didn’t exist but the character has a metaphoric aspect.

>>23129578
Tolkien was real. Dusany (anagram of Sunday) was not, Tolkien put in the effort that he didn't.

>>23129619
Yea which is why we call them Newton's laws and use the Newton as a measure of force or denote calculus methods like Newton raphson in his name. And physicists don't need to read him to prove his work was important. You have a retarded sense of what Newton or any other important personality contributed and how to measure it. You might as well argue the same about your parents having sex and giving birth to a seething pedantic faggot.

>>23129585
Holy based

>>23130189
Wow Tolkien really ripped him off good and rightly

>>23130244
My point was that with physics, you take whats was imprints to and give die credit. But you don’t read through the original paper Einstein published on relativity to learn relativity. You read a modern text on the subject. But when it comes to Tolkien people do not simply see him cited as inspiration for the fantasy genre. They are told he is still a gian of the fantasy genre. That if you haven’t read through all of Tolkien including of course the silmarillion that you haven’t really been able to appreciate the fantasy genre yet. And then of course when many who start out with Tolkien get bored with the Blair at 300 pages of the fellowship of their ring which goes ok and on about the all the vegetables that grow in the shire, they will give up and go back to watching Marvel movies. The best thing to happen to Tolkien’s legacy were the Jackson films People can now appreciate the fantasy story without all the sludge that came from the abysmal writing. The songs are cut out. The over long poems. It’s just the meat of the story. But too many fantasy elitists will insist that anyone who wants to get into fantasy must first read through all of Tolkien first before being allowed to read anything else.

>>23130073
NTA but I've read both multiple times and that is not what they are. Now what?

>>23130407
me when I lie.

>>23130426
I have copies on my shelf and I can draw examples from them at any time.

>>23129578
I literally stopped reading after your first sentence. You don't get it. Without Tolkien, the modern fantasy genre would not exist. If Tolkien were to write today, he would still have written a masterpiece because he was a master. It's amazing how many are filtered by him, really.

>>23130467
You clearly need the refresher on the exacting details regarding the breaking of camp, the march from one hill to the next, ad naseuam. If you want to read it again, go right ahead. I know what I read.

>>23130477
You don't actually know what you read, you're forming an opinion of what you read based around misinformed banalities you've seen online. Nothing you mentioned is excessively detailed, nor is it even repetitive and in fact I can't recall any time in the book when moments like that did not serve some function narratively or in terms of establishing setting and tension. If anything, Tolkien's ability to bring to mind vivid imagery is one of his talents as a writer, and he does it without the excess you nerds ascribe to him.

>>23129841
Around 50% of LOTR, I didn't finish it because it was bad, and The Hobbit because I had to in middle school.

I don't really remember The Hobbit because I was a kid, but LOTR was the only book in my life that I DNF'd after getting 700+ pages deep into it.

>>23130476
>You don't get it. Without Tolkien, the modern fantasy genre would not exist.
That's almost literally what he wrote in the first sentence you idiot.

>>23129578
give me one epic fantasy series that bests Tolkien's work
I'm begging!
It's like a fucking curse, can't find anything that wouldn't seem retarded now
My whole fantasy reading is divided before and after reading LoTR + Silmarillion back to back

>>23130505
Whatever, man. The journey to Rivendell was absolute torture to me. Try reading some Wolfe or something if you want something with flavor.

>>23130505
You're misusing banality, btw. Banality would be the exact layout of the prancing pony or the fact that Aragorn's ranger boots go past his knees.

>>23130527
No, it isn't. Fucking sub 100IQ faggot.

>>23130553
Banality is a lack of originality or freshness. What you're saying has been repeated ad nauseum by misinformed non-readers and is not an opinion that comes organically from actually reading the books, it comes from being influenced by regurgitated nonsense you read online. It's a tired criticism of one of the more entertaining authors in genre fiction.

>>23129585
Sorry I am a brainlet, but wasn't Wagner a musician? I don't get it, what story are you referring to? Please help a retard out pleas.

>>23130587
Wagner wrote operas and operas follow a narrative.

>>23130596
Are there any terms I could google to get a better idea of what narrative you're talking about? How does it relate to Tolkien or the ring at all?

>>23129587
>Doesn't like reading
>Is on the literature board
*Yawn*

>>23129848

>>23130531
That just proves the fantasy genre is abysmal. Not that Tolkien was great.

>>23130600
Operas are theater plays where the actors sing their lines (theater plays are like movies before movies where invented btw). There's an old norse/germanic story called the Ring of the Nibelungs, which is about elves, dwarves, a cursed ring, and humans being the pawns of the gods. Wagner took that story and changed it so that the christian God is the driving force behind it all, and made it into an opera. Tolkien just repeated Wagner but without the music.

>>23130560
Please, enlighten my brainlet mind on why?
>If Tolkien hadn’t been the first epic fantasy world building author
>OP admits that Tolkien "invented" modern fantasy
>Without Tolkien, the modern fantasy genre would not exist
>It would not exist because he was the inventor
>Both of the claims coincide with each other and don't conflict
Are you autistic?

>>23129578
>>23129585
>>23129587
>>23129599
>>23129773
>>23129856
>>23130531
>>23130649
>Writers like Tolkien take you to the edge of the Abyss and point out the excellent tea-garden at the bottom, showing you the steps carved into the cliff and reminding you to be a bit careful because the hand-rails are a trifle shaky as you go down; they haven’t got the approval yet to put a new one in.
>The great epics dignified death, but they did not ignore it, and it is one of the reasons why they are superior to the artificial romances, of which Lord of the Rings is merely one of the most recent.
>The sort of prose most often identified with “high” fantasy is the prose of the nursery-room. It is a lullaby; it is meant to soothe and console. It is mouth-music. It is frequently enjoyed not for its tensions but for its lack of tensions. It coddles; it makes friends with you; it tells you comforting lies. It is soft
>Moderation was the rule and it is moderation which ruins Tolkien’s fantasy and causes it to fail as a genuine romance. The little hills and woods of that Surrey of the mind, the Shire, are “safe”, but the wild landscapes everywhere beyond the Shire are “dangerous”. Experience of life itself is dangerous. The Lord of the Rings is a pernicious con- firmation of the values of a morally bankrupt middle class. Their cowardly, Home Counties habits are primarily responsible for the problems England now faces. The Lord of the Rings is much more deep-rooted in its infantilism than a good many of the more obviously juvenile books it influenced. It is Winnie-the-Pooh posing as an epic.
Tolkienbros...not like this

>>23130649
>if Tolkien wasn't first he wouldn't be as well regarded
>give me a genre-appropriate example of something besting his works, any time period
>actually I can't
>so it doesn't matter that he was first, it's that he is best, at which point the original claim is counter-proven and OP is a fucking fag
that just proved you are a fucking fart sniffing retard incapable of rational thought but whatever

>>23130719
I love that whoever wrote this clearly didn't actually read lotr. The shire's comfort is the reason that the hobbits must grow beyond it, later they return to find it corrupted and use their newfound power to restore it to order, but their sheltered life before the quest is hindrance on a practical level, but a boon on the spiritual level as we see it give them the motivation to continue in the gace of despair. But the entire first third of fellowship is about how the shire cannot protect them from the nazgul. The books say that the shire's safety is an illusion: the rangers and elves protect them because they could not protect themselves. That entire point makes no sense.
>>The great epics dignified death, but they did not ignore it, and it is one of the reasons why they are superior to the artificial romances, of which Lord of the Rings is merely one of the most recent.
Oh nevermind, he hasn't read any romances either.

>>23130939
The best of a shit genre doesn’t sound like a good reason to hold anyone in high regard. Scifi is usually considered fantasy by some, and pretty much any decent sci-fi is leagues better than lotr.

>>23130531
You would just say it doesn't if we did, you groupthink fuck, but ... Robert E Howard does action better, Robin Hobb does characters better, Dragonlance does religion and evil better, John Carter does romance better and Gene Wolfe did Catholic fantasy better. Nevertheless, I do admire Tolkien. Read another book.

>>23130981
Only anon itt (and Der Ring chad) who has read a book before (not counting the genre fiction slop being touted here as superior to the modern epic, the Briton-myth retrieval that is LoTR.

>>23129578
Found the hobbit enjoyable, had to force myself to read Lotr and dropped it at bobmbadil or whatever his name was. Wouldn’t surprise me if Tolkien had a stroke prior to writing lotr, it’s like a completely different author wrote it.

>>23129578
>very boring in its writing style and for how Tolkien will describe how far characters walked and what ordinary leaves on a tree or grass looked like
you are honestly a braindead retard

>>23130719
this what ? that whole shit was a bunch of jargon and purple prose that don't say anything, much less pose any argument

Retarded thread. The Return of the King is the best thing I've ever read. Kys OP.

>>23130719
This is Moorcock right?

The weird thing about him is that his non-genre fiction is actually pretty decent but his fantasy suffers from being a tryhard 60s counterculture seethe at Tolkein, Howard etc.

/// They recruited the paralegals in the local area, and not surprisingly, these seemed primarily to be part of the district coordinator's political network /// This is the time of the year that studios release their tent-pole film /// Nor should it be reduced into Manichean lenses - blaming property developers and the civil service for creating the crisis /// She sent a ten-page missive to the committee, detailing her objections /// Manual work was considered below their station /// Then the woodcutter let his axe fly - Thwack! Everyone heard it /// Everywhere we go, we're low-key checking out coffee shops, parks, and window seats for maximum reading coziness /// He made his way up a flight of steep stairs and into the main keep of the castle /// We are going to have to put the pedal to the metal if we want to finish on time /// The drive cable was wrapped around the drum several times to provide sufficient traction /// She claimed to have had an affair with the candidate, which produced a huge media flap /// In his own photos, Savader looks like your average Beltway nebbish: pasty, bespectacled, bad hair /// How did the most American of retailers get mixed up with a hoity-toity Parisian boutique? /// There is a certain kind of bird that makes its nest high up on the sides of steep cliffs jutting out over the waters of the ocean /// As he left the theater, the singer was set upon by fans desperate for autographs /// A group of tiny brick houses is tucked away behind the factory /// To young people afflicted by social media anomie and fearful of climate doom, Kaczynski seemed to wield a predictive power that outstripped the evidence available to him /// Wood-carvers were plying their trade in the town square /// Thora bustled around the house, getting everything ready /// Why the company should have been taken in by such a hapless project is baffling /// He was moving from unction to abrasion with no perceptible interval /// They want "just the facts without the fluff" and have never met data they didn't like /// He's a little long in the tooth to be wearing shorts, don't you think? /// He's one of these men who went bald very young and has a terrible hang-up about it /// They swept the ashes from the hearth /// I'm extremely crabby when I'm hungry /// Native Americans from the Northwest Pacific Coast held potlatch feasts at which property and goods were lavished upon neighboring tribes, mainly for the purpose of showing off wealth /// As many women show depressive symptoms during the luteal phase, cyclical changes in cortisol levels may be causally related to changes in mood and cognition /// In this condition, we equated the luminance of the brightest leaves with the luminance of the fruit ///

>>23129848
Ruskin was earlier.

>>23130349
>But you don’t read through the original paper Einstein published on relativity to learn relativity

It is useful to read what he published on how he derived relativity via thought experiment and his thoughts and explanations of this.

>>23133145
Someone might actually read this if you didn't do the gay "///" shit
just use linebreaks instead of making fat blocks of text
oh and while you're at it, stop spamming in irrelevant threads

>>23129735
I didn't read books for years but then started LOTR because of a recommendation from a friend and found it awesome and captivating with a lot of philosophical depth. However, sometimes his descriptions of landscapes and settlements are too hard to follow and disrupt the reading experience because it just takes too much effort to try to visualize them. I am now slowly going through it again while focusing more on the landscapes and settings than during my first read. The descriptions could be better, I think. I also find his letters, that are often quoted online, to be quite hard to follow desu.

>>23131444
>Robert E Howard does cheap thrills better
good for him
>Robin Hobb does characters better
maybe haven't tried yet, adding it to my list
>Dragonlance does ... well it does something
lol ok
>John Carter does cheap thrills better
ok
>Catholic fantasy
what even is that and whats the metric for "better" "Catholic fantasy"?

so you got no author that did epic fantasy better?
ok I guess, thanks for wasting everybody's time

>>23130196
The Greek heroes were likely actual kings and mercenary captains whose lives and exploits became tall tales. The oldest tales of Hercules for example are about him leading mercenaries in Anatolia, which is something Myceneans and later Dorians did a lot in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

should I read the hobbit and lotr trilogy for the first time even though I already know most of what's going to happen from watching the films

>>23135962
I started with silmarillion, thee. Unfinished tales, and then hobbit, and then lotr. I have already watched the movies and have watched many lore videos. Reading is a different experience

>>23129578
Arguably Tolkien performed a creatively innovative act by introducing various elements of Nordic and Germanic folklore into the lexicon of fantasy. Dwarves and elves and orcs and shit were not predestined fantasy tropes. He invented them. Dwarves and elves and shit isn't what defines fantasy, but it's true that in our timeline everything built off the paths he set.
He also is a pioneer of worldbuilding, creating invented complete languages, a whole mythology etc. He prefigured what we think of as fantasy literature.

>>23135973
I've heard the silmarillion is shit. There must be a reason it's never included in the box sets

>>23129578
You know anon, I’m pretty sure if the Ipod Touch released today, it wouldn’t really sell well.

>>23130678
>Please enlighten me
No.

>>23136023
It’s basically a large lore codex. More like an outline of what happened in the early period of middle earth rather than a novel. It is interesting but some of a slog to get through. But anyone who says it’s Tolkien’s best work is just someone trying to seem elitist since the silmarillion does have the largest scope as it deals with the creation of the world through to the war of wrath. But it is nowhere near close to a proper fantasy book like the lord of the rings.

>>23136023
Silmarillion is an unfinished work of Tolkien. Christopher Tolkien took a nice j of his fathers notes and put them in chronological order. Each chapter is basically a completely different genre. Some read like it’s from the book of genesis. Others like a history text. Others like geography. And other like mini stories that are barebone outlines. The silmarillion might not have been published by Tolkien because he didn’t want to. Not because he didn’t finish them. An honest description of the silmarillion would be that they are notes from Tolkien dealing with the history of middle earth but they might not be indicative that what those notes contain were considered canon. In the unfinished tales there is explicit material on Galadriel showing that Tolkien would discard ideas he may have written down at one point. So, the silmarillion is interesting to get into the mind of Tolkien but it should not be considered to be canon material as Tolkien may have not wanted those notes published as he may have considered them to not be canon as there was possibly something wrong with them.

>>23135181
It took you a whole day to say "nah, he'd win"? Anyway, let's start fresh. Robin Hobb. Now there's someone with characters that spring to life. Obviously, you gotta start with her first book. Fitz goes through it all, but so does everyone he's ever met, too. It's actually a bit of a headache how complicated everybody's state of mind can be. Except for the villain. He's just a bastard... but not literally. That's Fitz, and his incredibly distorted but still reliable point of view is deeply marred by a lifetime of being called every name in the book and deserving half of them. I think one reason his stories are so popular is just how relatable his hardships can be for some, but nevertheless, he persists.

What even is your definition of epic fantasy?

>>23136261
I think I'll skip it then. I don't like the idea of forcing myself into an unenjoyable read that was compiled from a bunch of notes and published after the author's death which he may or may not have ever even intended to be published or canonized

>>23129619
>>23129628
>>23129662
I've seen you people have this same fucking argument three times now. You aren't real people. You're bots.

>>23130531
Lyonesse by Jack Vance comes close

>>23136334
The lord of the rings references it but not in a way that you need. Like aragorn and arwen are part of a pattern that repeats throughout the history of middle earth getting more mundane each time (culminating in tolkien and his wife, naturally).

>>23129578
I literally can’t comprehend why a grown man would ever sit down and read the lord of the rings.