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Tolkien didn't like how Shakespeare portrayed faeries in A Midsummer Nights Dream. But Shakespeare's faeries are much closer to the original folklore - they are
by goto11 4y ago
Tolkien didn't like how Shakespeare portrayed faeries in A Midsummer Nights Dream. But Shakespeare's faeries are much closer to the original folklore - they are mischievous and dangerous and wantonly play with humans leading to madness and disaster (for the humans).
Tolkiens Elves are more like superhumans - better, more beautiful, more heroic than ordinary men. They are more like how people in antiquity and premodern times thought of the ancient heroes and kings of the heroic age.
While much have been made of Tokiens fascination of Northern European folklore, his outlook is still pretty classicist and Return of the King is basically a fantasy about the re-establishment of the Roman Empire.
- xg15 4y agoThat's interesting. I think to a degree you can even see that shift inside Tolkien's works. In the Hobbit, the elves are actually portrayed as playful, mischievous and a bit fairy-like (in particular in the Rivendell chapter) whereas in LOTR they changed into graceful, deeply serious superhumans. ...of course it might also be that the elves in the "Silmarillion universe" i.e. today's Middle Earth were always like the latter, and the playful elves from the Hobbit where another glimpse from the hypothetical "standalone Hobbit universe" before the Hobbit got moved to Middle Earth.