Why hasn't Tolkien been surpassed yet? Fantasy is still, like 80 years later...

Trash

What's the difference? Is genre fiction just less original?

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>he didn't spend his adult life reading fantasy and science fiction and making a living out writing them, as he fought in WWI and had a fucking job
This is the key. The trick to being a good fantasy/sci-fi writer is not being a fucking nere.

Because people are convinced fantasy is strictly swords and magic and elves when it really encompasses Ghibli-esque worlds and Bulgakov

Well said

I would also say that the quality of his prose is key. My wife has recently been ill and I've read Lord of the Rings to her to keep her mind occupied and hearing aloud passages that I have read and reread a fair few times over the years honestly took my breath away. Theoden charging to his death brings tears to my eyes and lets Tolkien stand in company with Faulkner, Nabokov, anybody else whose prose is almost distactingly beautiful. If there is another fantasy writer about whom this could be said then I have never heard of them. If you want a better fantasy writer than Tolkien you'd have more luck searching for a better playwright than Shakespeare

>Fantasy is still, like 80 years later, stuck using his conventions and character molds.

Does it truly? Certainly there are many shit books littering aeroports, but I don't think the ones people actually talk about contain all that much Tolkien. Certainly there are rightful kings returning and Chosen Ones (insofar Frodo even counts as one), but even magical artifacts rarely are evil rings. I don't think I've actually seen dwarves in any fantasy novel, orcs only in Wheel of Time, and the elves I've encountered tend to take from folklore more often than not.

>This is the key. The trick to being a good fantasy/sci-fi writer is not being a fucking nere.

This is true though.

Even as an atheist I have to admit that fantasy probably gets worse the more non religious the world becomes.

Perhaps it is that he founded the rules of the art on solid grounds and that these are yet to be shaken and transformed. It is very rare for entire disciplines to evolve so fast as within a century, especial when they are newly found. And anyhow haven't read enough fantasy to be able to speak about it extensively.

Didn't he steal from the Finns?

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I agree. Read it many times and he first I was sort of bored with it. By my most recent read you realize the whole thing is incredibly beautiful and well written as a simple work of prose and that’s before you understand the word choice from an etymological view or the plot and characterization.

It’s all highest quality through and through. I’ve read Martin, Shannara and some fantasy and it all reads like 8th graders wrote it. Hard to care.

Tolkien’s work is almost an academic experiment to see what a new language would be like and how language can’t be seperate from culture and history so he creates that to help with the language . There’s really no way anyone can compete.

>as an atheist

Go back

He was, by Mervyn Peak, but unfortunately he died before finishing the Gormenghast series so it could never become as popular as Tolkien’s world.

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>Following the conventions of archetypal myths and canonical epics is trash

E R Eddison is still unsurpassed

Yeah, that's sort of what I was trying to say, you just said it much better than I did

Also, whoever keeps posting George Martin you can stop now. To put him in the same league as Tolkien is absurd

Conan wrote cartoons

Unironically, yeah. It's really cringe to secularize ancient religion as a form of hedonistic entertainment, especially if you don't have any belief in the supernatural. Tolkien works because it's an aesthetically beautiful Christian allegory, building on the cultural traditions of the Gaels and on the literary tradition of England--particularly Pearl.

And he just used old conventions and character molds himself. The problem with fantasy is it's meant to be fantastical and alien but is really just the same trite conventions and it's not going to change.

>why hasn't Tolkien
You mean Wagner

>le wacky barbarian xDD
kek what a shit taste

*blocks your path*

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This. The man meant every word of it. When he's writing about a fellowship you know he's writing from his big heart about the friends he met in life. He knew evil, he knew darkneas but his big heart knew good. It knew God.

sorry but I'm not a caveman, I don't find ancient myths all that compelling

based.

Fiction is interested in novelty. Genre fiction is interested in reproducing tropes.

Why did he steal from the Finnish people?

Reusing ancient figures in a new context (stripped of their original religious state) is old as shit, it's even in Dante, and later in Camoens, Ariosto. etc. Even Tolkien transfers old pagan myths into a new story.

Tolkien was just that good, a language genius, encyclopedic when it came to mythology and ancient history, and extremely hard working, as well as having a vast and varied wellspring of experience to draw from. If he was just an academic, he still would have been exceptional on a historic scale. Combine that intellect with fiction and you get The Lord of the Rings.

This

Also LOTR is analogous to man's struggle against the modern world and that resonates with a a lot of people.

I think Shadow of the Torturer and Conan the Barbarian are good examples of fantasy *not* influenced by Tolkien, but their authors are not quite as technically skilled.

I'm pretty sure his predecessors aren't writing anything, at least not anymore

How do you define technically skilled? I'd say Robert E Howard has a better grasp on how to evoke emotion, paint a picture and tell an intriguing story with fewer words than Tolkien, although I'm not bashing Tolkien in any way.

Nice, what's the source? I suppose it's not originally from Yea Forums.

You mean hi successors? In this case yes that's on point.

Haven't read Camoes and Ariosto but Dante was using seminal Christian and pagan material in a deeply Christian world that admired pagan thinkers. He and his readers were deeply connected to the cultural roots of what he was using.

Basically yes.
Like chivalric-eroic poem became a parody of itself after Tasso.

The value of a device does not depend on the whims of your contemporaries - what was virtuous in Dante is still virtuous today.

>Theoden charging to his death brings tears to my eyes and lets Tolkien stand in company with Faulkner, Nabokov, anybody else whose prose is almost distactingly beautiful

what´s the deal with americans trying to elevate garbage to something akin to high art?

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idk the source

Why is Tolkien garbage?

it´s low brow entertainment

Art is improved far less by iteration than material technology. Greatness is more a matter of chance and zeitgeist than predecessors. And ours is an age with lesser souls.

yeah, but why

Much like Odyssey?

You basically said the same thing twice.

-good vs evil plot
-bad guy is bad because he´s bad
-themes doesn´t have subtlety, industrialization bad, nature good
-genre fiction
-tolkien ripped off the ring from Wagner´s the ring cycle and didn´t acknowledge it´s influence, even had the nerve to called out on him in negative light because he was butthurted that Wagner´s cycle was the definite fantasy story in his lifetime

Just to make this explicit, do you believe that a key element of quality is realism and moral ambiguity?

>good vs evil plot
not an intrinsic vice
>bad guy is bad because he's bad
his motives are superfluous
>themes doesn't [sic] have subtlety
thematic subtlety is not a virtue, thematic consistency is
>genre fiction
meaningless buzzword
>tolkien ripped off the ring
originality is not a merit, and a magic ring is a common item in mythology
>even had the nerve to called out on him in negative light
his personal conduct is irrelevant to the work

if you want a great story yes, even homer knew that when he wrote the illiad

>his motives are superfluous
>not an intrinsic vice

you´re just using buzzwords

>thematic subtlety is not a virtue

yes, yes it is you bastard, in fact is one of the things that separates something like capeshit with a movie like Stalker

>thematic consistency is

even a fool can write thematic consistency, i don´t put it above subtlety

>originality is not a merit

yeah i know it isn´t the first one but wagner´s ring was the first who had the element of bad influence on the characters of his story (in form of greed)

>his personal conduct is irrelevant to the work

you´re right

>you´re just using buzzwords
I disagree, but even if we grant they are, you have yet to explain why "good vs evil" and "bad guy bad coz bad" are shortcomings
>yes, yes it is you bastard
How? The value of a sentiment is not derived from its subtlety, but from its truthfulness, a requisite of which is consistency (which is why it is more important)

wagner sucks though

Not the same user, but my problems with these elements is not that they are "unrealistic" or too "stubborn" in their morality; it's that they're very predictable.

If I predict that I will have a good day, and I do, is that bad? I don't think predictability in the broad strokes is a bad thing. Journey vs. destination and so forth.

>comparing real life with a story crafted by an individual

sup redditor

>The value of a sentiment is not derived from its subtlety, but from its truthfulness

oh so you´re judging from a sentiment value? well i value from a craftmanship standpoint, why putting more value in consistency if the themes i present lack subtlety, might as well write myself into the story and tell the reader how to think

>"good vs evil" and "bad guy bad coz bad" are shortcomings

it´s not bad but it´s a lazy form of creating conflict in your story

then why Oswald Sprengler called him the last great artist?

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No, that's not the same things. When you predict you're going to have a "good day" you're using "good" to describe your experience; it would be an equivalence if you predicted that it would be a "good book" and you were right, because you are the one dictating the criteria for which a book would be good and that particular one happened to match them. But ""Good wins in the end" is not an universally positive criteria, it's only a predictable one. Now this does not not necessarely means that the book is bad, you probably know tons of example when knowing the ending to a story doesn't detract anything to it; nonetheless, it's a weak point and a missed opportunity if played badly and if the ending is pivotal to the enjoyment of the story being predictable is pretty much the death of it. It's like going to a football game already knowing the end score: maybe you would still enjoy, but to a far lesser degree.

Do you think someone might derive value from reading the New Testament if they already know Jesus gets crucified and resurrected?

How would they surpass him? It would be like reinventing the wheel

Do you read the New Testament for the same reason you read fantasy books?

Yes. But I also don't read schlock designed for amusement.

Name what fantasy do you read then

Some recent examples are Voyage to Arcturus, The Worm Ouroboros, and The Night Land.

And what value do you derive from them?

>The Worm Ouroboros
My nigger. Horribly underappreciated book.
What do you think of "The Night Land?" It sounds interesting, but I've also heard harsh criticisms of it.

The Night Land is well-worth reading. I can't say what it's competing with in your queue, but I enjoyed it.

They each stretched my mind in different ways. Each of them presents very different ways of looking at the world, and I found the perspectives gratifying. This contrasts with modern fantasy where all the characters feel like urbanite D&D players at a Renfaire. The costumes switch around but their approaches to the world are all the same.

Successors, but yes. Tolkien himself is unironically far closer to his modernist contemporaries than to any fantasy writer, despite superficial similarities.

Good for you man.
By the way, returning to our argument, what I'm stating is that knowing the ending doesn't completely de-evaluate the worth of a piece of art, just diminishes it (especially if you're reading for amusement. This is even more true if the author is a hack and/or the ending is a pivotal point. Also, adhering to the cliches of the fantasy genres makes you predictable not only in the way you end your novel but in a plethora of other areas

But he has.

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just google a line from it with quotation marks around it retard

What? I'm Welsh mate

I'll grant you that works reliant on surprise or serialization are hurt by knowing the the end. But I don't think that classification applies to Tolkien's writings.

so? none of that makes it low brow

delet this

>Diana Wynne Jones
>Philip Reeve
>Eoin Colfer
All have a reasonable stake in their various subgenres of fantasy in terms of originality, Wynne Jones probably my favourite for blending the less domineering, more self-effacing tone of a later-twentieth-century fantasy author and sci-fi tropes of her time with the classical fantasy chops she gained studying under Tolkien. Much better than any edgy Tim Burton-esque Gaiman nonsense.

>Fantasy is a trash genre
The hallmark of a brainlet who can't think beyond what he knows.

>bro i like fantasy because of the action and spectacle

how ironic, more like moronic

thats a KIKE

why are finns so universally dumb and annoying and also dirty?

*blocks your path*

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>Fantasy is still, like 80 years later, stuck using his conventions and character molds
GRRM's new model of fantasy seems to have overtaken Tolkien's, as far as I see.

>Fantasy is a trash genre
Why? Obviously most of the books are bad, but is there something conceptually wrong with it

All fiction involves spectacle, not unique to fantasy at all

>Tolkien works because it's an aesthetically beautiful Christian allegory
You need to work on that bait, too obvious.

>good vs evil plot
I don't get it. There isn't that much moralfaggotry in his writings. Sure one side is far more prone to massacre and is physically disgusting, and you'd have to be turbo edgy to side with sauron. Plus we almost exclusively see the action from one side perspective. But the conflicts are largely treated as competing parties with different objectives. It doesn't devolve into pathos cringe about 'Maia man bad'.

I think it's because most fantasy gets bogged down in uninteresting world building rather than telling a good story, personally I think the real world is far more interesting than any of this fantasy crap

Yeah competing sides with different objectives. Poor little innocent hobbits against wicked man who wants to rule the world and be, like, wicked and stuff???? Also he has an army of ugly deformed orcs who can't be reasoned with and are bad because they bad.

Orcs being ugly and war involving killing is hardly a proof of anything. Even the fat fuck writing game of plebs realize that in the end men massacre the orcs even the little ones.
There is little victimization pathos in the novel. The 'baddies' have as clear motivations as the little we see from their side allows, be it sauron or saruman.

GOT'EM

The point is reusing material that has no connection to you is not the same as drawing from a well of shared cultural references. Using pagan mythology because "dude chimeras lmao" is Percy Jackson-tier (or to be more generous Harry Potter tier, which is still a league better than Percy Jackson).

>someone post something they obviously get from another source
>nice, source?
>just google it retard
It's one step faster to just give it when you have it, and two steps faster to give it and not being a cunt about it. It's also a way to keep having a discussion, which, as you may have inferred by now, is supposed to be the piont of the whole fucking website we're using.

And this could be an occasion to exchange anecdote like, "yes I come accross this post while doing research for my historical novel, it's cringy but it's my first try and I've been enjoying it so far", "this i from my lit prof who's a weirdo but very well read" or some other Yea Forums related story.

But no, you have to be a smartass and make a comment in a thread you've nothing to contribute to, just because "dude Google is your friend xD".

All of this begs the question: if you're not even willing to pretend to be interested in being here, why waste your time?
And this applies to all of you faggots on Yea Forums who use the same brainless retort.

what about peter jackson?

If you read the Silmarillion you'll understand that neither Morgoth nor Sauron where bad in the beginning, it ws a progressive (albeit rather fast) descent.
But you can brush that aside a "muh descent into evil cliché". Which is the point of those hyper-general criticisms, you can use them to brush anything aside without engaging with it. No comment on stylistic qualities, depth and consistency of worldbuilding, pertinence of literary references, tightness (or lack thereof) of the plot, credibility of charactrization, and the like. Just "I can see a clear bad guy and a clear good guy, and I can use my habit of reducing things to archetype to shoehorn a contemporary theme into the work, therefore the work has no interest and subtelty".

Your only precise criticism is the alledged plagiarism of Wagner which is ridiculous given how dissimilar both works are. The only common point are the ring and the ragnarok-ike end battle (which doesn't even happen in Tolkien's work, it's prophesized but never described) which, guess what, were taken by both Wagner and Tolkien from the same source. On should add that as a philologist expert on Norse myth Tolkien knew Wagner's own source much better than Wagner himself.

The most likely conclusion? You've not even read Tolkien's works, at best skimmed them. Or seen the movies perhaps.

>yes, yes it is you bastard, in fact is one of the things that separates something like capeshit with a movie like Stalker

The main difference is cinematography actually. Tarkovski was explicitly against using movies to develop "themes". Your choice of example is hilariously bad, like pretending the difference between Homer and Mad Men is that the realism and social criticism is better done in Homer.

>wagner´s ring was the first who had the element of bad influence on the characters of his story (in form of greed)
It's an age-old trope, it's literally in the Bible. You won't get anywhere with such imprecise comparisons.

Also as far as moral ambiguity is concerned, if, again, you had read the Silmarillion, you would understand than the elves are extremely ambiguous on moral terms. It's absolutely no coincidence than in Tolkien's fictional elvish, the work for sorcery, which gives its name to Minas Morgul and the Nazguls, has the same root as Noldo, which is the name of the tribe of elves that features most proeminently in all of Tolkien's works (most of the big shots elves in LOTR are pure or mixed Noldo, especially Galadriel).

In fact even the movies, with the scene where Galadriel refuses the ring, should tell you the elves are much more prone to corruption (and dangerous when they succumb to it) than an unsubtle manichean story would have allowed. Tolkien is not significantly less morally ambiguous than Homer in his portrayal of characters, I invite you to read both with attention.

Because he couldn't have predicted Snoop Dog obviously.

And i would argue the rest of Wolfe's work, and especially his short stories. The works that people are mostly arguing about here fall under the banner of fantasy, a banner which we defined by the work's conformity to a quasi tolkien-artifact identity, how close it is to an offshoot or remnant of his work. So OP's question is kind of reductive since I would argue Tolkien's work has been surpassed by works in what we would know call speculative fiction which owes much to fantasy (tolkien) and sci fi (asimov and the rest of them) along with borges, calvino etc. Wolfe and to a lesser extent RA Lafferty's work embodies that for me. Idk what do you guys think?

>Tarkovski was explicitly against using movies to develop "themes"

so you read him in an interview, but you´ve never watched none of his movies right??? oh so naive user, what an artist say and what an artist doesn´t always match up and of course that´s intentional on the part of the artist, of course a bugman like you wouldn´t understand that

>you had read the Silmarillion

i was talking about LotR, not appendix books

>It's an age-old trope

yeah i know the magic ring trope is old as human civilization but tolkien wasn´t inspired by Plato and his Ring of Gyges, but with Wagner´s ring, but of course he quickly twisted it with his "christians influences"

oh the ring is bad because it´s derived from the evil guy of the book
wow so clever!!!!!!!

>If you read the Silmarillion

and dropped, i don´t need to read another 1000+ book in other to "comprehend" a 1000+ book, a book that cannot hold on it´s own it´s the sign of a parasitic book

>Also, whoever keeps posting George Martin you can stop now. To put him in the same league as Tolkien is absurd
You're right.
George R R Martin is better than Tolkien

>so you read him in an interview, but you´ve never watched none of his movies right??? oh so naive user, what an artist say and what an artist doesn´t always match up and of course that´s intentional on the part of the artist, of course a bugman like you wouldn´t understand that

Nice cope, you're still a pleb according to Tarkovski's own assessment. Of course not mention of where Tarkovski contradicts his own dogma in his filmography. And you didn't adress my point that the main difference between Tarkovski and capeshit is not "themes" but cinematography.

>i was talking about LotR, not appendix books
You were talking about Tolkien and the Silmarillion is part of his fiction.

>yeah i know the magic ring trope is old as human civilization but tolkien wasn´t inspired by Plato and his Ring of Gyges, but with Wagner´s ring
Well first your posts implied Wagner was the first to use it, second you'd need evidence to prove Tolkien was inspired by Wagner when he literally was an expert on the very mythology Wagner drew from. Are you going to claim that anyone who mentions Hell is ripping of Dante too?

>oh the ring is bad because it´s derived from the evil guy of the book
>wow so clever!!!!!!!
Not sure what you're trynig to say here.

>and dropped, i don´t need to read another 1000+ book in other to "comprehend" a 1000+ book
Nobody said anything about comprehending, you don't need to understand why Sauron is bad to understand LOTR, just like you don't need to understand why the Troy war started to enjoy the Illiad. But since some people itt are too autistic to do that I referred them to a book that details a bit more the roots of evil.
Also the Silmarillion is not that long, stop being a lazy cunt.

The issue in your example is not the lack of a cultural connection, but the lack of meaning. Obviously, including things without sense is bad, but you can he sensible even without some personal connection to the matter - one could even say that it shall be easier

Fair enough, but I can't think of a well-known example when this was done well. I might find one upon thinking more maybe.

You’re a literal lobotomite.

the Kalevala is a shocking compelling read. I'm getting through it right now (Keith Bosley) and I can see exactly how it sparked Tolkien's imagination. Most European myth is a bit of a slog, but at least the translation I'm reading is really good.

>Wagner´s the ring cycle
Wagner didn't write the Nibelungenlied.

How's the translation look? As a Finn, a large part of the appeal of Kalevala is the catchy meter and the extremely pleasantly flowing language and wordplay (tons of alliteration everywhere, for example). I can't imagine it's as good translated.