I hear people say this all the time and it bothers me. I just read the Odyssey and I found MANY comparisons....why? THE ODYSSEY IS AN EPIC POEM. IT IS THE BASE OF ALL EPICS (along with other epic poems) So, every epic seems to be 'coping LOTR'. I will be happy if I can change even one person's mind about that. I am doing a giant project on comparisons right now...I can post all of the comparisons of epics drawn in a little bit.

Agree, Disagree? what're your thoughts?

_________________
<center>
Can't take the Kid from the Fight take the Fight from the Kid
engaged to Tyson Ritter-my love forever
<a href="http://www.dance-to-this-beat.net"> Dance to this Beat</a>
</center>

My thought is that LOTR is such an all encompassing fantasy that it is hard not to have elements from it.

Yes, that's what i said....but people then say that things like Eragon or Narnia steal elements from LOTR, when in truth these are just the elements of an epic that LOTR uses in order to be an epic.

_________________
<center>
Can't take the Kid from the Fight take the Fight from the Kid
engaged to Tyson Ritter-my love forever
<a href="http://www.dance-to-this-beat.net"> Dance to this Beat</a>
</center>

whether or not elements were used in earlier epics is somewhat beyond the point - if authors use things they've found in lord of the rings, that's where they're borrowing them from, even if it means they're borrowing from the odyssey or beowulf etc by proxy.

anyhow, not everything tolkien wrote was nicked from somewhere else - he did invent things for himself and those things have been borrowed since, therefore people do borrow things from tolkien.

_________________
<center>

**MY BOOK**

~ proud to be a shieldmaiden for christ ~</center>

Maybe I should retitle this thread? I'm not saying tolkien was not completely original. I know that he was. He wrote a piece of literature that will be forever remembered. I meant only that tolkien borrowed basic plot from epic structure and i once heard somebody complaining that Eragon was 'copying lotr because you know, they both go on a journey totake down an evil lord' or something along the lines of that. That makes me angry, only because that is epic structure.

i have heard some things about names being borrowed, and I suppose if you see that you can go ahead and get angry about that. That is rather uncalled for. Plot though? Anything to do with plot should be considered taking from LOTR because imagine all of the trillions of books out there. An author may come up with something SIMILAR to LOTR of the top of their head, with no consideration of it being from LOTR at all. As a writer, I know how hard it is to come up with something that's NEVER been explored before. As Nauriel said, it's such a wide range that it emcompasses a bit of everything. If tolkien went and did all of that, then it means that things are going to be similar, because otherwise, there would be no new books of the sci-fi/fantasy nature.


*has read her post in other thread* I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to come off all jerky-like and wasn't referring to you at all but more to 'people' as in OTHER people. Please forgive me. I say stuff without thinking sometimes.


I dislike heated arguments. *decides to be more open*

I will say that I do understand that other people borrow somethings from tolkien, but add their own ideas to it so it develops and is not so much a - of LOTR.

Now lets turn this into a discusion rather than an arguement.

_________________
<center>
Can't take the Kid from the Fight take the Fight from the Kid
engaged to Tyson Ritter-my love forever
<a href="http://www.dance-to-this-beat.net"> Dance to this Beat</a>
</center>

discussion it is.

i totally agree about it being hard to come up with something totally original. it's so easy to unintentionally have the same idea as someone else and then get accused of stealing. i think you have to look really carefully at what authors have read before you decide what they have and haven't borrowed.

tolkien's borrowing from other epics is part of why lotr works really - it feels familiar because it draws on myths that we all already know, which fits in with the idea that the tales of middle-earth are part of our own history and should therefore be recognisable in some way. hope that makes sense - tried saying that in my oxford interview and the tutor looked at me like i'd fallen out of my tree. i think she thought i was trying to say that lord of the rings actually happened. maybe that's why they didn't want me! lol

_________________
<center>

**MY BOOK**

~ proud to be a shieldmaiden for christ ~</center>

*giggles* I agree on that. That's why I love all epics. They give a sense of warm and fuzziness like you know them. I do feel like LOTR could be our true history. The good thing about epics is that you can see things coming, like major s....however I did not see Gandalf's rebirth coming.....that's not a normal epic thing

_________________
<center>
Can't take the Kid from the Fight take the Fight from the Kid
engaged to Tyson Ritter-my love forever
<a href="http://www.dance-to-this-beat.net"> Dance to this Beat</a>
</center>

being a christian, gandalf's resurrection wasn't much of a surprise - it is, after all, the major climax of the bible and the bible's pretty epic in its own way. it certainly influenced tolkien a lot (he was majorly intense about his faith).

_________________
<center>

**MY BOOK**

~ proud to be a shieldmaiden for christ ~</center>

hmmm...i do suppose you are right about that....*ponders this*

_________________
<center>
Can't take the Kid from the Fight take the Fight from the Kid
engaged to Tyson Ritter-my love forever
<a href="http://www.dance-to-this-beat.net"> Dance to this Beat</a>
</center>

In Brave Heart, when William is rallying the troops, it was the same thing Aragorn was doing in ROTK.

_________________

Faith isn't the ability to believe long and far into the misty future.
It's simply taking God at His Word and taking the next step Joni Erickson Tada

there are some great lotr references in the discworld books by terry pratchett. there's a rather amusing one about elves, but i can't remember the quote exactly and i don't have my book with me unfortunately. plus, the nature of the discworld pretty much fits tolkien's description of the world in roverandom.

pratchett's never been ashamed of borrowing from tolkien - he says "we are all standing on mount tolkien, influenced by him in some way". then again, he's not ashamed of borrowing from anyone - wyrd sisters is basically a (brilliantly funny) parody of macbeth.

_________________
<center>

**MY BOOK**

~ proud to be a shieldmaiden for christ ~</center>

Now this is one of those things I meant: Rallying troops is extremely common in epics. Unless he was saying the exact same words (which I doubt), then it's not truly 'the same thing as Aragorn' nor does it mean that Tolkien invented the idea of rallying troops, though he did a spectacular job of portraying it in his story.

_________________
<center>
Can't take the Kid from the Fight take the Fight from the Kid
engaged to Tyson Ritter-my love forever
<a href="http://www.dance-to-this-beat.net"> Dance to this Beat</a>
</center>

The only thing I dislike is that everyone copies elves now, and I don't just mean has a race calls elves. Most elves in books now follow the guidelines of: fair, immortal/live longer than humans, have short pointed ears, sing, sail, love nature. Ok the nature thing came before LotR but the elf in Eragon seemed like a bit of a rip-off (I didn't get the whole way through that book, but it was the one in the prologue).

yeah, but tolkien nicked that whole idea of elves from somewhere else - some old european mythology i think (i forget which one and i didn't bring the book i read it in to uni with me so i can't check).

in the old mythologies, elves were seen as being in between man and god - they were believed to be wiser and nobler and more beautiful etc than men. it was only with the advent of christianity that such beliefs started to change and elves were shrunk down to be tiny, insignificant creatures that no one really believed in any more.

we must have had some great stories at some point but they all got suppressed by the coming of christianity, and even as a christian i think it's a shame - greece is a christian country yet it's still proud of its ancient mythology, and i wish western europe was a bit more like that.

_________________
<center>

**MY BOOK**

~ proud to be a shieldmaiden for christ ~</center>

*laughs* darn christmas elves. Well, in the US we don't have mythology to go from...*hates non-culturedness of US*

I agree. And it's not just eragon if you have a grudge on that. Pic up ANY fantasy book nowadays. Elves are everywhere. Same kinda elves that eowyn just mentioned. * s that people pick solely on Eragon* Pick it up, pretend that LOTR doesn't exist, and read it. I assure you, you'll enjoy it.

Maybe it comes right back to morals. I guess that's the problem with books. It's not always about the elements in the end now, because all elements are starting to become extrmely common, but what the book portrays. how it makes youfeel. every book has something special to it that you don't find in another book. It's about the prose, and the personalities of characters, not whether or not their species is the same. If you can't read every book by concentrating on those things, then it's a shame.

I think that it's better to compare books to find positive similarities rather than setting up a book to fail by your standards.

_________________
<center>
Can't take the Kid from the Fight take the Fight from the Kid
engaged to Tyson Ritter-my love forever
<a href="http://www.dance-to-this-beat.net"> Dance to this Beat</a>
</center>

Yeah, after Shakespeare wrote about elves being small, and happy little creatures, the idea stuck until modern day. Tolkien said that what Shakespeare did to the elves was unforgivable.

_________________