Tolkien's talk of "greater" and "lesser" men (and the same with different types of elves) is a bit smelly by modern standards, but one of the points of his works is that while the Men of Numenor are stronger, larger, more clever, etc. than "lesser" men, that doesn't make them morally superior in any way, shape or form.
D&D General Are You There D&D? It's Me, J.R.R. Tol-KEEEEN!
- Thread starter Snarf Zagyg
- Start date
It is good for an artist to know and understand the rules in their field. A good understanding of them also means knowing when to break them.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
I’m not familiar with Timothy Hunter but it sounds like it might be too modern. However, The Worst Witch is just the right vintage, and was on TV in the 70s. But it would be filed under “Children’s”, not “fantasy”. And there was a lot of other fantasy around in the children’s section in the 70s, several of which made it to TV. Things like Lizzy Dripping and Catweazle look like direct influences on HP, but are probably unknown to anyone who didn’t grow up in the UK in the 60s/70s. So folk cry “Tolkien” because they don’t know about the general fantasy background radiation.I don't think Rowling tracks to Tolkien. HOWEVER, Rowling tracks pretty darn closely to the Books of Magic comic series about Timothy Hunter, and the Worst Witch series.
I am not saying she ripped them off. Just that there are some close similarities.
Joshua Randall
Legend
Tom Brown's School Days is arguably the greatest influence on any "kid goes to magic school, shenanigans ensue" fiction of any sort.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
I would say real life is a bigger influence. I went to a British boarding school, and it really was just like Hogwarts (without the magic and the girls). We had four boarding houses, each of which was named after a supposedly famous man, and had a reputation for a certain type of student. Romney was very sporty, Crabbe was academic m, Talis was dossers and Scott - had me, which probably made it Hufflepuff.
Joshua Randall
Legend
Err... right. That's exactly the real life that Tom Brown's School Days was describing.
My point was that if you want to point to literary influences upon Harry Potter, you cannot ignore the biggest, most obvious, most British influence of them all.
...I am getting concerned that my non-post has a lot more comments that some of my actual posts do!
Subtle as a finance bruh driving a bright orange cybertruck. I get it... popularity is the one insult that has not yet been offered to Snarf.
Subtle as a finance bruh driving a bright orange cybertruck. I get it... popularity is the one insult that has not yet been offered to Snarf.
payn
Glory to Marik
I constantly do it wrong. I cant ever start a thread that gets more than a few replies...
Paul Farquhar
Legend
Well, actually, Mallory Towers is both closer to HP and closer to my real life experience, and far more likely to have been read by a girl growing up in the 1970s.
Tom Brown was very badly dated even by the 1940s, when Mallory Towers was written.
bedir than
Full Moon Storyteller
It's fitting that something inspired by JRR gets overanalyzed.
There must be entire books written about a single paragraph of his
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