How original was Tolkien really? Much of his names, concepts

How original was the Kalevala really? Many of the stories were transcribed from various oral sources and folktales passed down for generations before being written down,

>>51913667

There is no such thing as originality.

>>51913667


He invented entire languages, plural. And I'm talking real languages, with grammatical rules, how they drifted from their equally fictional roots, how certain words were borrowed from one to the other, not just a bit of made up gobbledygook. If that doesn't count as originality, I don't know what does.

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>This thread again

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXAvF9p8nmM&t=29s

>I know from clear memory that I would not want to re-experience some of those moments again with my own child; the anxiety, the illnesses, the exhaustion..but what wouldn't I give to be able to go back to some of those moments in more than memory? The pain is only made bearable, the sadness only made blessed by love and by art.

>Reading is a kind of doubled conciousness, existing somewhere between pure memory and lived experience. When we look at our own children, we see not only their current forms but all they have been before. In this kind of doubled perception, love and sadness are intertwined.

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>>51913813
>The ruin in the landscape, or the textual ruin created by all of Tolkien's techniques catalyses this change, linking together the imagination, the current experience and recollection, intwining the past and the present with each other so that they are, in Aragorn's dying words, more than memory. More than memory transmutes the pain of exile, of separation and loss through the movement of time, the "Heimweh", into something still sad but now, as Tolkien says of the tears of the hobbits at their parting at the Grey Havens, blessed, without bitterness.

>The past is everywhere and yet at the same time out of reach, overlaid permanently by the present, worn away by time and change and even fallible memory. You don't have to wait a quarter century from the time of some of your most cherished memories to have this feeling, though such a gap certainly accentuates it. The price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings, says the song. Pain for the lost home is common to every human as we are separated from our childhoods, from our youths, from our first experiences.

>How do you read Tolkien? By paying attention to the ways that different features of his works combine to produce and transform sadness not into bitterness, but into something richer, greater, something fully human. Reading Tolkien this way you see the true scope of his achievement to touch the heart and you understand now much more fully how Sam's words "Well, I'm home." are both joyous and heartbreaking.

>>51913667
>Much of his names, concepts and stories are taken quite directly from various sources like the Kalevala.
No, no, no. It's clear that you've never read it.

>>51913986
>what is Kullervo

>>51913747
>there's only sub-creation

t. Tolkien

Tolkien is obviously plagarist, especially compared to his peers. Norse/Breton myth 101, Arabian Nights extracts, etc. It's well written, though, and full of novel moments of humanity before the eventual indulgent Christian shit.

A lot of people talk about the babies first world building, but it's hardly comparable to the school of tabletop-inspired authors that came after him. I mean M.A.R Barker and the like, not some juvenile 2000's fantasy author.

Originality is overrated.

Did Shakespeare ever produce any original work?

>>51913747
>>51913667
This. the only way true originality could exist would be in a vaccuum with zero outside influences.

Define originality, anyway. If you take inspiration from bugs in nature to create a bug-like race that's never been done in fiction before, are you original? Or is it only taking things from other fiction that cripple originality? What if you have a trope as part of your story that has been done before? Uh oh, no longer original.

>>51914176
This is a trick question, he, much like Tolkien, didn't exist.

He invented 2.5 languages, dumbass.

The Universe is a yawning chasm, filled with emptiness and the puerile meanderings of sentience.

Tolkien never meant to be original. His idea was to write an epic like Kalevala or Beowulf for his people and he used historical sources openly.

>>51913986
>Kullervo
OP didn't specifically say Lord of the Rings, lad.

>>51913667
Not very, and no one cares because originality isn't the point unless you're a ridiculously pretentious hipster faggot. He knew what he was trying to do, and he achieved it pretty damn well regardless of whatever sources he drew on to do it. There you go, faggot.

>>51914319

And to be theologically compatible with Christianity.

Most people who criticize Tolkien either don't understand what he was doing, or do understand but are against it.

So you get people going off half-cocked about how he had some scene reminiscent of a mythological source. Well... good thing we have idiot anon who's so mythologically literate that he could pick it up where nobody else ever did-- Tolkien's sneaky trick was foiled! Except that Tolkien openly described what he was doing, what his sources were, and why he was doing it. All the old mythologies had a million versions of each story, because each storyteller would take what he'd heard, weave it into a new form, adding new details and twists to suit his own taste and preferences, and then push that as the new retelling of an old legend. Tolkien's no different from any of his sources in that regard, nor did he pretend to be.

The other kind- to my mind much worse because at least the first group is just immature/ignorant -say that Tolkien sucked because he said X instead of Y. "Blah blah Tolkien wasn't detailed enough about the things I like like lemony lemony lemoncakes and tax policy and orc babies." When what they're really saying is, "I disagree with Tolkien's message and wish he'd adopted cynical grey-on-grey morality in an agnostic, spiritually barren story that glorifies power and justifies any crime committed in its pursuit. But rather than just say that, I'll bitch about quibbling details instead."

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In college I took a Tolkien course to satisfy an English requirement. It focused less on what he did and more where he drew inspiration from. Basically we read all of the stories and mythologies that he used to help build his universe. It was actually pretty interesting.