I meant that too Frodos guide.
Tolkien was the father of the fantasy genre, and the best part of his writing has at some time been copied. Most other writers try their hardest to hide the copied bit, but rowling shamelessly made the joins plain to see
Its not a good thing....

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"This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great. Who of all the Wise could have foreseen it? Or, if they are wise, why should they expect to know it, until the hour has struck? "

^Have you read much fantasy EonwesBestMate?

I don't know about what you read but I know that out of the majority of fantasy I've read (Eragon, Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind etc.) Harry Potter is far less like LotR than just about anything else in the fantasy genre.

Anyway I think it seems a bit odd to say that JKR "stole" from Tolkien while Tolkien was only "influenced" by other stories. There are definitly stories where Tolkien got ideas from. An obvious one would be Macbeth both with the woods moving and the no man who is of woman born can kill me thing. And then there is of course the various northern mythologies where Tolkien got lots of ideas including many names.

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i agree that it's unfair to say that rowling stole but tolkien was only influenced - you should use the same word cuz they both did the same thing. the only difference is tolkien did it with greater purpose and effect. he used other mythologies to show that all myth is part of a universal truth (e.g. he created his own atlantis story in numenor because he believed the legend of atlantis really happened and would therefore have to feature in his own writings if they were to be seen as history, which is what he wanted), whereas rowling seems to use other stories simply because she can't think of any ideas of her own.

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I think it's very unfair to say that JKR couldn't think of any ideas of her own. There is a ridiculus amount of new ideas in the Harry Potter books. Just think about how much the wizard world is fleshed out in these books. She gives you the description of one wizarding shop such as Honeydukes and we already have loads of new ideas of what wizards might buy and this carries on and on throughout the books.

I think that when JKR does use similar things to Tolkien it does done to pay hommage to the books. In her biography it says LotR was her favourite book at university so surely it would make sense for her to add wee bits from the stories. Think of the whomping willow. If you were stuck for an idea and wanted to secretly copy Tolkien's old man willow would you really make the tree the same type of tree? It wouldn't exactly be difficult to change the type of tree it was. Instead she's doing it as a direct reference to LotR.

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Ok, my friend Elanor I see I have to clarify myself. When I said Tolkien was the Father of th efantasy Genre, I meant modern fantasy. The thing about Tolkien is that he didnt have much in th eway of Fantasy precedent except works such as Beowulf, Jason and the Argonauts, etc. In these stories Tolkien found inspiration because they were some of the few precedents he had available to him. All writers need inspiration to start off with. I will admit that Tolkien did take some of his ideas from mythologies and plays and put a slight spin on them. But it is th eway it is span that reflects Tolkien. He did it so it was classy and tried to pay homage but not be overly obvious. JKR has taken ideas from Tolkien but hasnt been classy with the spin and has tried to be overly obvious about it. I will admit it was easier for Tolkien to write the Hobbit and LOTR as there were few comparitives whereas JKR's books are constantly being compared to Tolkiens and other such books currently out. Jkr did include more "fleshing" material because with all the precedents from which to draw sources ahe had a basic framework ready if she wanted to use it so she could spend more time working on fleshing it out and trying to distinguish it in a fierce fantasy market.
I think that if JKR wants to appreciate Tolkien and the fact she liked his books she could at least make it an "injoke," a private acknowledgement to tolkien ratehr than a raving list of similarites between the two. Her writing isnt that bad, you could do worse, but you could also do better.
Oh and by th eway Elanor, I do try to read other fanatsy and am possibly going to read Eldest at some point in the very near future.
Hope this answer provides some definitave balance to the fray m8.

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"This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great. Who of all the Wise could have foreseen it? Or, if they are wise, why should they expect to know it, until the hour has struck? "

That's cool, that was what I thought you meant. What I was getting at was that the majority of modern fantasy, at least that I've read, seems a lot closer to Tolkien than Harry Potter. My second paragraph wasn't really respeonding to your post but things that have been said in the thread in general.



I think the main problem for Harry Potter, at least on this site is that people havn't read the things that LotR is based on. This makes the similarities a lot harder to see. I have read various versions of king Arthur and every list I've seen with things that are similar between Hp and LotR for many of these things I can say that they were in King Arthur first.

If you look at the wiki article (yeah I know wiki's not always reliable) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_th ... Influences
it definitly appears that for somone who knew about Northern mythology the similarities in LotR would appear to be very obvious.



I wouldn't really say it's the same framework except in the very obvious sense of: Hero sets out to defeat villian and comes across many problems on his way which he overcomes with the help of others.

That kind of story frame work's been around since the start of time or at least the start of story telling. To me each Harry Potter book seems more like a detective kind of story with various twists and turns. This isn't really at all like LotR.




Hmm.. I've never seen a "raving list of similarites" which is at all convincing. All I'll seen is a few things that appear to be hommages e.g. the Whomping Willow and Longbottom, a few things where there could be a case to say there's at least a direct influence e.g. the dementors and argably Aragog and the rest the things on the list seem to be very tenuous connections at best and often things that were common in fantasy before Tolkien.

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i didn't mean rowling didn't have any original ideas at all, i just meant that where she borrows ideas it seems to be to plug a gap where she'd run out of her own ideas.

when tolkien borrowed from the atlantis myth to create numenor it was because he wanted you to believe that numenor was atlantis, but unless the whomping willow is meant to be old man willow, the reference to the lord of the rings doesn't really add much to the world of harry potter.

tolkien wanted to create a mythology for england and all 'real' mythologies have elements in common - compare the various flood stories from different cultures - so if the stories of middle earth are to be seen as consituting a 'real' mythology, they must tie in with other mythologies. because of this, tolkien needed to draw from existing mythology to acheive his goal. however, rowling didn't need to draw from tolkien - that's where the main difference lies, i suppose.

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You seem to be labouring under the illusion, Elanor, that this thread is for discussion on how the rest of the fantasy Genre has similarites to Tolkien. Thsi is for direct comparison between JRR and JKR.
As far as I am concerned. Hp is not at all a detective story. Its atmosphere si not at all the correct one for a writer to employ to write a whodunnit.
I have already acknowledged that Tolkien took ideas from existing mythologies and tales, but you seem to have skirted around teh fact taht Rowling was given a huge advantage in terms of precedent in writing over tolkien. She was given Ideas on which she could build on and it is far harder to invent a new idea to convince your audience (unless they ar etoddlers) than to expand an existing one.
Also there has been a hiuge advancement in info transfer nethods since Tolkien. The internet has started to allow people to find otu about tolkiena nd abotu his influences and also hollywood ahs started to have more of an interst in historical drama, thus increasing awareness.
Also the thing tolkien did, creating a mythology, is nigh impossible without some precedant ot go on. Tolkien had to use prior examples such as northen mythologies to help make his story convincing. Also Most mythology is shared from culture to culture and that i tolkiens work would merely parrallel the normal world.
Eowyn, you seem to have changedur tune form hating hp to where u r. At least keep ur opinion in a staedy position.
Continue.....

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"This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great. Who of all the Wise could have foreseen it? Or, if they are wise, why should they expect to know it, until the hour has struck? "

and how exactly have i changed my tune? i don't see that i have given any indication that i anything but hate the books - i still loathe them more than is probably reasonable.

admitting that tolkien and rowling both did essentially the same thing in stealing from other works is not in support of rowling because it is quite simply true. and if you'd read my posts properly you'd have seen that i followed that by criticising why and how rowling did it - i still think hp is 2nd rate literature and ergo i have not changed my mind.

if i haven't seemed quite so vehement as i did before (i.e. before we got yelled at for being off-topic), that's because we're talking about something completely different and i don't get quite so wound up about the particulars of rowling's writing as i do about the dangerous spiritual effect they can have.

i find the way rowling borrowed so enormously with (in my opinion) no good reason extremely irritating and i have said nothing to undermine that point of view. what i find more irritating, however, is your insinuation that i have changed my stance and the patronising tone in which you say it.

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I apologize unreservedly if I have seemed to be patronising. The vehemency with which you spoke earlier was admirable, yet yuo do seem to have softened your tone. If yuo truly hate something then you do not speak of some parts of it with a soft tone. I recognize your point and do aplogize ofr my mistake.

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"This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great. Who of all the Wise could have foreseen it? Or, if they are wise, why should they expect to know it, until the hour has struck? "

thankyou for the apology. i do see your point but i still don't think that it's contradictory to be harsher on hp's content than it's writing - for me, they're entirely different ball games. we'll just agree to disagree.

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All I was ever doing was responding to this point that you made:



Though now I read it again I see that you might have been talking about novels in general and not just fantasy. So lets just leave the point then.

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While it might not be a whodunnit in the traditional sence there's definitly elements of that kind of story there. There's the leaving of tiny clues which then turn out to explain everything, and such like. That's why on any HP forum most of the discussion is on what will happen in book 7 based on the other 6 books




I'm quite happy about that - I have no problems that Tolkien drew from mythology. However I'd also say that all fantasy stories have elements in common too and as all modern fantasy is to some extent influenced by Tolkien then maybe JKR did have to bring in some elements from Tolkien.


I am quite happy to say that HP is not as ground breaking as LotR. However I don't think that the existing ideas being in the form of books makes that much of a difference than if theywere in the form of myths.



There's a big difference between reading that Tolkien was influenced by this, this and this on the internet and reading the book yourself, preferably before reading Tolkien for the first time.

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i didn't like harry potter.i mean, it was ok. i watched the first 2 movies, and there was tooo much stuff that resembled lotr. like the one big guy with all the hair (i don't remember his name) reminded me of gimli, and harry reminded me of frodo and everything. yeah.......

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"Minas Tirith. City of kings."
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Hagrid and Gimli?? nahh .. Hagrid's probably five times gimli's size... did you even read the books? We're talking about the plot...

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oooooooo..........nevermind then

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"Minas Tirith. City of kings."
"Of all the inquisitive Hobbits, Peregrin Took, you are the worst."

GONDOR ROCKS!!!

RIDER of ROHAN!!!! oaths i have taken! (jan 4, 2008)