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Moving sentient malevolent trees (from Phantastes) are, AFAIK, MacDonald’s own invention. Also the depiction of the goblin kingdom under the mountain is deeply
by macleginn 6y ago
Moving sentient malevolent trees (from Phantastes) are, AFAIK, MacDonald’s own invention. Also the depiction of the goblin kingdom under the mountain is deeply original, even though the idea itself is older. Tolkien copied both. There are other examples.
- yters 6y agoThe tree thing in MacDonald seems pretty different. In MacDonald's story it looks like a normal person. In Tolkien, we have ents, which are treelike moving giants. The idea of sentient trees in general is very old and appears in a lot of folklore. The root of goblin is kobold and the name means hollow in a rock, and goblins are also a very old and widespread folklore trope. But, perhaps an entire underground kingdom is unique to MacDonald, so Tolkien took that idea.
- macleginn 6y agoI meant the tree from early on in LOTR that tried to swallow the hobbits.
- yters 6y agoAh, that makes more sense. I would still say they are both drawing on common mythic material, e.g. myths of daphne, narcissus, and I think in the odyssey there are bleeding reeds. However, the tree smoothering is similar, so I can grant Tolkien was inspired by MacDonald.