Although fantasy had long existed in various forms around the world before his time, J. R. R. Tolkien has been called the "father of fantasy", and The Lord of the Rings its centre. That novel, published in 1954–1955, enormously influenced fantasy writing, establishing in particular the form of high or epic fantasy, set in a secondary or fantasy world in an act of mythopoeia. The book was distinctive at the time for its considerable length, its "epic" feel with a cast of heroic characters, its wide geography, and its battles. It involved an extensive history behind the action, an impression of depth, multiple sentient races and monsters, and powerful talismans. The story is a quest, with multiple subplots. The novel's success demonstrated that the genre was commercially distinct and viable.
Many later fantasy writers have either imitated Tolkien's work, or have written in reaction against it. One of the first was Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea series of novels, starting in 1968, which used Tolkienian archetypes such as wizards, a disinherited prince, a magical ring, a quest, and dragons. A publishing rush followed. Fantasy authors including Stephen R. Donaldson and Philip Pullman have created intentionally non-Tolkienian fantasies, Donaldson with an unloveable protagonist, and Pullman, who is critical of The Lord of the Rings, with a different view of the purpose of life.
The genre has spread into film, into both role-playing and video games, and into fantasy art. Peter Jackson's 2001–2003 The Lord of the Rings film series brought a new and very large audience to Tolkien's work. Tolkien's influence reached role-playing games as early as 1974 with Gary Gygax's Dungeons & Dragons; this was followed by many Middle-earth video games, some directly licensed and others based on Tolkienian fantasy culture. Tolkien's fantasies have been illustrated by artists such as John Howe, Alan Lee, and Ted Nasmith, who have become known as "Tolkien artists".
Context
J. R. R. Tolkien was a scholar of English literature, a philologist and medievalist interested in language and poetry from the Middle Ages, especially that of Anglo-Saxon England and Northern Europe. His professional knowledge of works such as Beowulf shaped his fictional world of Middle-earth, including his high fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. This did not prevent him from making use of modern sources including fantasy as well; the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia discusses 25 authors whose works are paralleled by elements in Tolkien's writings.
Fantasy in Tolkien's hands
Distinctive features
The Lord of the Rings was constructed with several distinctive features. These included its considerable length, remarkable for its time when few genre novels exceeded 65,000 words. This was accompanied by an "epic" feel, created by a combination of features such as its cast of heroic characters, its wide geography, and its battles. The story is told with allusions to older times, giving both an impression of depth behind the action, and a past that fades into mythology. The heroes encounter multiple sentient races, including both free peoples like elves and dwarves, and monsters like trolls and giant spiders. Powerful talismans are deployed, such as swords with their own names, wizards' staffs, magical rings and seeing stones. As for the story, there is a quest, accompanied by many subplots. Moreover, Tolkien gives the plot a moral dimension: the characters have to rely on their own courage and luck, believing that the unseen powers will support them.
The Lord of the Rings, and to some extent also his 1937 children's novel, The Hobbit, make use of multiple elements to make the fantasy world of Middle-earth convincing. These include detailed maps with a large number of placenames; an impression of depth; a frame story; poetry interspersed with the narrative; family trees; invented languages that had been worked out in detail, complete with scripts; artwork; and heraldry.
The impression of depth in particular helps to make Middle-earth feel like what Tom Shippey has called "a coherent, consistent, deeply fascinating world about which [Tolkien] had no time [then] to speak". As another example, the heraldry helps to convey impressions such as the "evident majesty" of the hero Aragorn:
Mythopoeia
Mythopoeia is the creation of a fictional mythology, incorporating traditional mythological themes and archetypes within a work of literature. Tolkien was not the first author to create fictional worlds, as George MacDonald and H. Rider Haggard had done so, and were praised for their "mythopoeic" gifts by Tolkien's friend and fellow-Inkling C. S. Lewis. Tolkien however went much further, spending many years developing what has been called a mythology for England, starting in 1914. The Finnish scholar Jyrki Korpua argues that Tolkien followed a specific mythopoetic code in his legendarium, spanning creation (Ainulindalë), world-building (Valaquenta, start of Quenta Silmarillion), the fall (Quenta Silmarillion), a period of struggle (Akallabêth and The Lord of the Rings), and the end of the world (as in Morgoth's Ring). Korpua states that this code is both linear and somewhat Biblical, and that it makes use of archetypes. Tolkien created numerous archetypes in his Middle-earth writings. He established as stock fantasy elements, familiar and attractive to readers, the distinct races of Elves, Dwarves, Ents, Trolls, Orcs, and Hobbits.
Impact
The Lord of the Rings had an enormous impact on the fantasy genre; in some respects, it swamped all the works of fantasy that had been written before it, and it unquestionably created "fantasy" as a marketing category. Tolkien has been called the "father" of modern fantasy, or more specifically of high fantasy. Tolkien's works brought fantasy literature a new degree of mainstream acclaim; numerous polls named The Lord of the Rings the greatest book of the century. The author and editor of Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Brian Attebery, writes that fantasy is defined "not by boundaries but by a centre", which is The Lord of the Rings.
Diana Paxson states in Mythlore that Tolkien had founded a new literary tradition.Shippey, Tom (2007) "Literature, Twentieth Century: Influence of Tolkien", in Michael D. C. Drout, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis, , pp. 378-382 Tolkien's influence, and his literary criticism, greatly popularized secondary worlds, as his formative essay "On Fairy Stories" termed them. This led to the decline of such devices as dream frames to explain away a fantastical setting.
Tolkien-influenced fantasy writing
It has been said of Tolkien that "most subsequent writers of fantasy are either imitating him or else desperately trying to escape his influence", while "his hold over readers has been extraordinary".
Inspired by Tolkien
The immense success of Tolkien's works started a publishing rush. Lin Carter edited the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series from 1969, reprinting Morris, Dunsany, MacDonald, and Mirrlees, alongside some new works. Many authors wrote "Tolkienesque" books, with stories rooted in folklore, myth, and magic, set in a medieval countryside. Among these were Patricia A. McKillip's The Forgotten Beasts of Eld and Jane Yolen's The Magic Three of Solatia, Tolkien-inspired fantasies for young adults written in the mid-1970s."Patricia McKillip and Jane Yolen, both American, should also be mentioned here: the former's The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (1974) echoes Tolkien in its nuanced prose...the latter's The Magic Three of Solatia (1974) bears a similar relationship to Tolkien." Jamie Williamson, The Evolution of Modern Fantasy: From Antiquarianism to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series. Springer, 2015. Yolen comments that while some of the writing was good, "what began in grace and power easily degenerated into a kind of mythic silliness", with "pastel unicorns, coy talking swords, and a paint-by-number medieval setting with the requisite number of dirty inns, evil wizards, and gentle hairy-footed beings of various sexual persuasions. Tolkien ... would have been horrified."
In 1977, Lester Del Rey, seeking to mirror Tolkien's work, published Terry Brooks's The Sword of Shannara. The book was heavily criticised by Carter, Attebery and others for copying the plot and characters of The Lord of the Rings wholesale; Attebery wrote that it attempted "to evoke wonder without engaging the mind or emotions", reducing Tolkien's artistry "to a bare formula". Despite this, it gained the sort of breakthrough success that Del Rey had hoped for; it became the first fantasy novel to appear on, and eventually to top, the New York Times bestseller list.
Guy Gavriel Kay, who had assisted Christopher Tolkien with the editing of The Silmarillion, later wrote his own Tolkien-influenced fantasy trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry (1984–86), complete with dwarves and mages. Dennis L. McKiernan's Silver Call duology was intended to be a direct sequel to The Lord of the Rings but had to be altered. The Iron Tower trilogy, highly influenced by Tolkien's books, was then written as backstory.Interview with Dennis L. McKiernan Fantasy series such as Terry Pratchett's Discworld and Orson Scott Card's The Tales of Alvin Maker were "undoubtedly" influenced by Tolkien. reviewed in
In 1992, Martin H. Greenberg edited a festschrift collection of short stories by 19 fantasy authors including Yolen, Stephen R. Donaldson, Terry Pratchett, Poul and Karen Anderson, and Peter S. Beagle on the centenary of Tolkien's birth. Yolen, commenting that "sometimes it is difficult to remember that there were fantasy books written before J. R. R. Tolkien's work", stated that the stories were not imitations, "for none of us are imitators—but in honor of his work".
Many writers have made use of Tolkienesque plots, settings, and characters. The plot of Pat Murphy's 1999 There and Back Again intentionally mirrors that of The Hobbit, but is transposed into a science-fiction setting involving space travel. J. K. Rowling's 1997–2007 Harry Potter series, too, is influenced by Tolkien; for example, the wizard Dumbledore has been described as partially inspired by Tolkien's Gandalf. Further, Rowling explores the Tolkienian themes of death and immortality, and the nature of evil and how it arises, with Lord Voldemort taking the place of the Dark Lord Morgoth. S.M. Stirling's "Emberverse" series includes a character obsessed with The Lord of the Rings who creates a post-apocalyptic community based Tolkien's Elves and Dúnedain. The same plot point was used by the Russian writer Vladimir Berezin in his novel Road Signs (from the Universe of Metro 2033). The horror writer Stephen King has acknowledged Tolkien's influence on his novel The Stand and his fantasy series The Dark Tower. Other prominent fantasy writers including George R. R. Martin, Michael Swanwick, Raymond E. Feist, Poul Anderson, Karen Haber, Harry Turtledove, Charles De Lint, and Orson Scott Card have acknowledged Tolkien's work as an inspiration.
Reacting against Tolkien
Some writers have reacted against Tolkien by creating fantasy that does not fit the expected pattern. Thus, Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant has an unloveable protagonist quite unlike a hobbit: John R. Fultz calls Covenant "a whiner, a complainer, a broken man with no hope for himself or the kingdom he was charged with saving." The world that Covenant visits might resemble Middle-earth, as might his quest, but the book's approach, a "dark counterpoint to Tolkien's shining heroism", is entirely different.