What Fiction Writers Are Getting Deals With Publishers?

Gaston said:

As for Tolkien clones being absent, this will be my last post on this thread, as pretending to pass Game of Thrones (and about a thousand others) as not clone or derivative-like is just too inane for me to discuss this any further.

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I am a Ph.D. in English. My fields of specialization include Medieval English and Celtic Languages and cultures.

I have taught, published, and presented on Tolkien's fictive and scholarly works, particularly on the relationship between Tolkien the Philologist and Medievalist, and Tolkien the myth-maker and fantasist.

GOT is not derivative of Tolkien.

It is fair to say that Martin drew on some of Tolkien's literary techniques, particularly the idea of the Fellowship, a tight band of companions, who diverge on different tasks/quests, and the idea that magic is used but with consequences and thus, rarely. See Martin's own words.

Derivative means something much closer than literary techniques. Derivative describes the relationship Tolkien has with Germanic medieval myths, for instance, though Tolkien's borrowings were largely at the level of nomenclature and motif.

Martin owes more to Froissart's Chronicles and England's Wars of the Roses than he owes to Tolkien.

BethS said:

You don't have to discuss it any further, but I will say, from having read both works, there is no similarity. None. They are both works of fantasy. That's literally all they have in common.

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Don't forget swords! And walls! And castles!

AW Admin said:

Don't forget swords! And walls! And castles!

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And dragons, if one includes The Hobbit. But those predate Tolkien, so does that mean Tolkien is also guilty of...no, say it isn't so.

BethS said:

And dragons, if one includes The Hobbit. But those predate Tolkien, so does that mean Tolkien is also guilty of...no, say it isn't so.

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I used to regularly teach the sophomore survey of British lit for English majors.

Every Single Time we did Beowulf, someone would tell me, with indignation, that Beowulf was plagiarizing The Hobbit.

AW Admin said:

Every Single Time we did Beowulf, someone would tell me, with indignation, that Beowulf was plagiarizing The Hobbit.

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AW Admin said:

I used to regularly teach the sophomore survey of British lit for English majors.

Every Single Time we did Beowulf, someone would tell me, with indignation, that Beowulf was plagiarizing The Hobbit.

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What a mess! Now I need a screen wipe.

AW Admin said:

I used to regularly teach the sophomore survey of British lit for English majors.

Every Single Time we did Beowulf, someone would tell me, with indignation, that Beowulf was plagiarizing The Hobbit.

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Now I'm really curious about what the reaction was when the "publication dates" were pointed out to them, and they were left to do the math.

Or is this BECAUSE the publication date on their latest school textbook copy of Beowulf came after the Hobbit that they were so confident they had a "gotch'a" moment?

AW Admin said:

I used to regularly teach the sophomore survey of British lit for English majors.

Every Single Time we did Beowulf, someone would tell me, with indignation, that Beowulf was plagiarizing The Hobbit.

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I suppose it's something that they'd actually read The Hobbit.

BethS said:

I suppose it's something that they'd actually read The Hobbit.

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Probably not. Only seen the movies.

caw

Shoeless said:

Now I'm really curious about what the reaction was when the "publication dates" were pointed out to them, and they were left to do the math.

Or is this BECAUSE the publication date on their latest school textbook copy of Beowulf came after the Hobbit that they were so confident they had a "gotch'a" moment?

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Honestly, for a lot of undergraduates, whose parents read The Hobbit to them, or who grew up with the Rankin Bass animated Hobbit, they think of Hobbit as something that "everyone knows." I've even had students earnestly tell me that it's based on "folk lore."

A victim of his own success, I suppose

AW Admin said:

Honestly, for a lot of undergraduates, whose parents read The Hobbit to them, or who grew up with the Rankin Bass animated Hobbit, they think of Hobbit as something that "everyone knows." I've even had students earnestly tell me that it's based on "folk lore."

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Heh. Ironic, since I believe one of Tolkien's original purposes in inventing languages and the world that grew out of those languages was to create a mythology for England.