5 ms·
> Copyright law says one thing, but at what point do we as humans say that the creator has died long ago, and his work should now pass to the public to retell a
by derleth 14y ago
> Copyright law says one thing, but at what point do we as humans say that the creator has died long ago, and his work should now pass to the public to retell as it sees fit?
Especially in this case.
Do you know why Dungeons and Dragons was able to be so Tolkien-esque without being sued? Because there actually was a court case, decades ago, and the only thing the court ruled that the Tolkien people (I don't know if J.R.R. was still alive at the time) actually owned was the word 'hobbit'. Everything else was taken from the public domain. Hence 'halflings' in all subsequent D&D works.
Not that Dune, to pick an example, was that much more original, but with Tolkien's work it's especially easy to pick out the borrowings.
- Evbn 14y agoThe languages and plots were original with Tolkien. The races were not.
- stargazer-3 14y agoWould you care to expand a little bit here? I tend to think that most of the races were original.
- ianstormtaylor 14y agoPretty sure lots of the Tolkien races come from Norse mythology.
- stargazer-3 14y agoThey did (except for orcs and hobbits), but if not for LotR, they would not appear in popular fiction as they are appearing now. Besides, the comment above looks like it's disagreeing with originality of hobbits.
- tellarin 14y agoDwarfs, elves, trolls, goblins, and plenty others come from Norse mythology. Orc I think was original to Tolkien, but derived from Old English for giants and ogres. Many others, like uruk-hai and hobbit, were original. Also, even though some of the races come from Norse mythology, Tolkien's description of them and their habits are unique (and many times quite different from the "sources").
- saraid216 14y agoIt is worth pointing out that Tolkien was a phonologist--a linguist specializing in how words sounded--and his stated goal for the entire Middle-Earth universe was to provide a mythic backstory for England. These two facts converge to make claims of originality very strange and difficult, because the derivations themselves are examples of original work.
- raverbashing 14y agoI've been reading a book on Irish Mythology (Lady Gregory's compilation) and it reads a lot like LoTR Tolkien came up with new stories and characters, but the style is similar (and of course with sources from Norse Mythology and others, that mixed and grew apart, etc)
- saraid216 14y agoI very much recommend Tom Shippey's Road to Middle-Earth, which discusses Tolkien's influences from the perspective of a contemporary and friend and academic colleague. http://www.amazon.com/The-Road-Middle-Earth-Tolkien-Mythology/dp/0618257608/ http://www.amazon.com/The-Road-Middle-Earth-Tolkien-Mytholog... I haven't yet read Shippey's "Author of the Century", which is about a second set of influences (like the World Wars).
- johncoltrane 14y agoNo. He was a philologist. Whatever… I agree with the rest of your comment. For more background, Tolkien was heavily inspired by - among other material - a compilation of Finnish oral tradition called "Kalevala". I've read that he used to complain that the English culture lacked such a tradition which most certainly lead to what the Silmarillion, The Hobbit, The Lord of the rings and everything else.
- saraid216 14y ago> No. He was a philologist. I forgot the exact term, googled the one I used, saw it was a thing, and assumed I had remembered it correctly. :( My bad.
- chc 14y agoWell, I know trolls, elves, goblins, orcs, wraiths, wargs, wizards, dragons and eagles at least were all existing notions. Some of them he popularized (e.g. "orc" and "warg" were both lost to modern usage before Tolkien brought them into currency), but he didn't invent them. I know "balrog" and "hobbit" were original, but I think most of it was a synthesis of existing mythology. Can you come up with many more original species?