# a Reddit post discussing three threads of fantasy literature



## ryubysss (Dec 2, 2019)

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		https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/dvcrf7

 I found this mostly persuasive, though I don't know that Gaiman falls solidly into the Dunsanian tradition, as a rule. (_The Ocean at the End of the Lane_, probably doesn't. it falls more like a sort of humanistic fantasy tradition that I associate with the work of E. Nesbit, P.J. Travers and Diana Wynne Jones [and Harry Potter? I have't read those books, though.] anyway, a thread worth reading and thinking over.)


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## Karn's Return (Dec 2, 2019)

I myself tend to prefer Tolkien tradition, simply because I feel that I can get into them the most. It has more philosophical aspects than Howardian or Dunsany, though I suppose there's only a limited number of ways one can really build up a hero's journey sort of tale. I also believe that Tolkienesque tradition gives the greatest opportunity for world-building and lore creation, which I believe is one of my strongest suits to writing. Focusing on only one or two-at most-MCs and having just a couple throwaway characters just isn't my style, to me it's like pushing a person off a cliff after they deliver something to you. I just can't do a one-and-done approach to characters like Howardesque tradition does, and while I do enjoy Gaiman's work-Neverwhere being one of the best stories I've read in recent years-again, I just feel like it isn't my own particular style. I can improvise certain things well enough, but exploration for sake of exploration and characters only being able to react to surprises just smacks of laziness to me.


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## ryubysss (Dec 2, 2019)

Karn's Return said:


> I myself tend to prefer Tolkien tradition, simply because I feel that I can get into them the most. It has more philosophical aspects than Howardian or Dunsany, though I suppose there's only a limited number of ways one can really build up a hero's journey sort of tale.


Dunsanian fiction has also put forth philosophy, though, it doesn't tend to dwell on ethics and morals.


> I also believe that Tolkienesque tradition gives the greatest opportunity for world-building and lore creation, which I believe is one of my strongest suits to writing.


the other traditions mentions _don't even have to care _about that. we all have our strengths.

I personally struggle with the idea of even Dunsanian fantasy for the simple reason that fantasy readers seem so uninterested and indifferent to it, nowadays.


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## Karn's Return (Dec 2, 2019)

I'm just one who prefers a cast of characters as opposed to the singular protagonist and all the attention on them. Just seems to be able to add more lighthearted tones to such things. Loneliness breeds melancholy.


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## The Big Peat (Dec 3, 2019)

*shrugs* I think Gaiman has plot and character. Ditto Morgenstern. And the accusation of being all about the charm of exploring a magical world and screw character is one I've heard levied against Tolkien many, many times. So... I dunno, there's something to this, but I'm not sure its for the reason the writer of this thinks.

I'd also grumpily point out that not everything in these categories stem from one author. Plenty of authors regularly cited as Tolkien-esque draw a lot of inspiration from other older works such as Eddison or Dunsany himself (see Eddings in particular) and plenty of the S&S draws from Lovecraft or Asher Smith more than Howard (and in Moorcock's case Fletcher Pratt, and indeed a rejection of Tolkien). But whatevs.

More pertinently... I don't think there's a mould here for the picaresque less-macho, more-sneaky, more humanistic adventures that arguably form a fantasy tradition stretching from Leiber to Wolfe and Vance to Pratchett to Lynch with a decent number of others along the way. I guess you'd argue for them being Howardian, but they're not. Maybe they're Leiberian.

And there's a bunch of hybrids out there. More or less the entire Grimdark genre is some Howardian-Tolkien mix if we're going to use these terms to cherrypick one easy example.


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## Star-child (Dec 3, 2019)

I don't think Tolkein actually fits the hero's journey structure ascribed to it.


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## The Big Peat (Dec 3, 2019)

Star-child said:


> I don't think Tolkein actually fits the hero's journey structure ascribed to it.



True. And neither Bilbo or Frodo are that young and Gandalf doesn't really mentor them. The beats seem to come far more from Star Wars, or Gygaxian "Level 1 to level 20".


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## ryubysss (Dec 3, 2019)

The Big Peat said:


> *shrugs* I think Gaiman has plot and character. Ditto Morgenstern.



the theory doesn't say that Dunsanian works have _no_ plot and _no_ characterization, only that the narrative doesn't focus on them. as I said above, I don't know that Gaiman falls into the Dunsanian tradition (most of the time) but I have noticed that his protagonists seem thinly drawn and he doesn't go for intricate plotting. I don't say that to criticize him. (for the record, I haven't read _American Gords, _which I suspect might prove the exception in terms of protagonists.) 



> And the accusation of being all about the charm of exploring a magical world and screw character is one I've heard levied against Tolkien many, many times. So... I dunno, there's something to this, but I'm not sure its for the reason the writer of this thinks.



Frodo, Gandalf and Bilbo and Gollum. even people who've never read those books know those names. so I don't think Tolkien eschewed characterization. 



> I'd also grumpily point out that not everything in these categories stem from one author. Plenty of authors regularly cited as Tolkien-esque draw a lot of inspiration from other older works such as Eddison or Dunsany himself (see Eddings in particular) and plenty of the S&S draws from Lovecraft or Asher Smith more than Howard (and in Moorcock's case Fletcher Pratt, and indeed a rejection of Tolkien). But whatevs.



the article doesn't claim, I think, that _only_ Howard served as the inspiration, just that he serves as the archetype. (also: Clark Ashton Smith, not Asher Smith.)



> More pertinently... I don't think there's a mould here for the picaresque less-macho, more-sneaky, more humanistic adventures that arguably form a fantasy tradition stretching from Leiber to Wolfe and Vance to Pratchett to Lynch with a decent number of others along the way. I guess you'd argue for them being Howardian, but they're not. Maybe they're Leiberian.



Howardian doesn't have to mean cloning Conan in every detail. I think Leiber's sword and sorcery falls into that category. I haven't read a number of the people you also mentioned. Howardian work doesn't, as a rule, interest me. just not my thing. 

if you mean _The Book of the New Sun,_ I don't think you can classify it as belonging to any one of those traditions, IMO. now that I think of it, having tried to reread it this year, the first volume has more of a Dunsanian feel and I loved it. then it more plot-orientated and I got less into it. th



> And there's a bunch of hybrids out there. More or less the entire Grimdark genre is some Howardian-Tolkien mix if we're going to use these terms to cherrypick one easy example.



I think that Martin-Glen Cook type of works form their own tradition.


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## ryubysss (Dec 3, 2019)

The Big Peat said:


> True. And neither Bilbo or Frodo are that young and Gandalf doesn't really mentor them. The beats seem to come far more from Star Wars, or Gygaxian "Level 1 to level 20".


it doesn't have to do with age. it has to do with life experience and with how they grow and in what ways.

_The Mandalorian_ has a protagonist in his thirties (apparently) and has attained adulthood but it still seems Hero's Journey to me. or Tony Stark in the first Iron Man movie. in both cases, they grow out of self-involvement, out of their predictable worlds. it doesn't just come down to callow kids who learn how to fight dragons in the last act, though, it could. 

Level 1 to 20 means what sh*t you can do. what physical tasks you can accomplish. not the same.


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## tegeus-Cromis (Dec 3, 2019)

To me, fantasy is much more interesting outside of these categories. Peake's *Gormenghast*, M. John Harrison's *Viriconium*, K.J. Bishop's *The Etched City*, Aldiss's *The Malacia Tapestry *-- these are my favorites, and they don't really fit in that categorization, though I suppose if you wanted to force them, they'd have to go under "Dunsanian." But "literary fantasy" would be closer. Also, how about LeGuin? How about Gorodenker's *Kalpa Imperial*? And the whole area where "fantasy" shades off into Weird Tales, the New Weird, Magic Realism, etc etc.


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## Star-child (Dec 3, 2019)

ryubysss said:


> it doesn't have to do with age. it has to do with life experience and with how they grow and in what ways.
> 
> _The Mandalorian_ has a protagonist in his thirties (apparently) and has attained adulthood but it still seems Hero's Journey to me. or Tony Stark in the first Iron Man movie. in both cases, they grow out of self-involvement, out of their predictable worlds. it doesn't just come down to callow kids who learn how to fight dragons in the last act, though, it could.
> 
> Level 1 to 20 means what sh*t you can do. what physical tasks you can accomplish. not the same.


Frodo doesn't grow. He suffers.


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## The Big Peat (Dec 3, 2019)

ryubysss said:


> the theory doesn't say that Dunsanian works have _no_ plot and _no_ characterization, only that the narrative doesn't focus on them. as I said above, I don't know that Gaiman falls into the Dunsanian tradition (most of the time) but I have noticed that his protagonists seem thinly drawn and he doesn't go for intricate plotting. I don't say that to criticize him. (for the record, I haven't read _American Gords, _which I suspect might prove the exception in terms of protagonists.)
> 
> Frodo, Gandalf and Bilbo and Gollum. even people who've never read those books know those names. so I don't think Tolkien eschewed characterization.



Okay. I think that Gaiman and Morgenstern concentrate as much on character and plot as your average fantasy author - and frankly more than Howard - and if we're measuring whether an author concentrated on characterisation by popularity/knowledge of the character, then Gaiman's characters would start ringing fairly highly on the polls once we got the current big three of Tolkien/Rowling/Martin out of the way. And also consider what the volume of "Tolkien only did exploration of a magical world!" criticism means.

Long story short - it simply doesn't make sense to me to draw the dividing line between Dunsany and Tolkien in terms of importance of character/plot vs exploring a magical world. 



> the article doesn't claim, I think, that _only_ Howard served as the inspiration, just that he serves as the archetype. (also: Clark Ashton Smith, not Asher Smith.)
> 
> Howardian doesn't have to mean cloning Conan in every detail. I think Leiber's sword and sorcery falls into that category. I haven't read a number of the people you also mentioned. Howardian work doesn't, as a rule, interest me. just not my thing.
> 
> if you mean _The Book of the New Sun,_ I don't think you can classify it as belonging to any one of those traditions, IMO. now that I think of it, having tried to reread it this year, the first volume has more of a Dunsanian feel and I loved it. then it more plot-orientated and I got less into it. th



Leaving aside that I don't like naming a tradition after one person when there's many people involved -

Is Howard actually the archetype, particularly if we're counting Leiber (who seems far more influential to me) in the tradition? With Leiber himself heavily influenced by Lovecraft? Obviously they don't have to clone Conan, but he should be more an influence than any of the other potential influences. Pratchett is heavily influenced by Leiber. Is Pratchett Howardian? No way.



ryubysss said:


> it doesn't have to do with age. it has to do with life experience and with how they grow and in what ways.
> 
> _The Mandalorian_ has a protagonist in his thirties (apparently) and has attained adulthood but it still seems Hero's Journey to me. or Tony Stark in the first Iron Man movie. in both cases, they grow out of self-involvement, out of their predictable worlds. it doesn't just come down to callow kids who learn how to fight dragons in the last act, though, it could.
> 
> Level 1 to 20 means what sh*t you can do. what physical tasks you can accomplish. not the same.



If it's got nothing to do with age, then why do people keep referring to young heroes and Farmboys of Doom?

In any case - Frodo and Bilbo don't really grow in the way Rand Al'Thor, Belgarion and Jon Snow do.


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## ryubysss (Dec 3, 2019)

tegeus-Cromis said:


> To me, fantasy is much more interesting outside of these categories. Peake's *Gormenghast*, M. John Harrison's *Viriconium*, K.J. Bishop's *The Etched City*, Aldiss's *The Malacia Tapestry *-- these are my favorites, and they don't really fit in that categorization, though I suppose if you wanted to force them, they'd have to go under "Dunsanian." But "literary fantasy" would be closer. Also, how about LeGuin? How about Gorodenker's *Kalpa Imperial*? And the whole area where "fantasy" shades off into Weird Tales, the New Weird, Magic Realism, etc etc.



in my opinion, they _do_ fall under Dunsanian, other than _Titus Alone_, which doesn't. (I haven't read _The Malacia Tapestry_, though, so no opinions there.) New Weird tends to fall into Dunsanian. magic realism falls outside the schema altogether, since most everybody writing about it wouldn't know or care about any fantasy writers other than Tolkien. (it largely originated outside of the English-speaking world, anyway.)

I haven't read _Kalpa Imperial_ (though I know of it) so no option there. I think that Le Guin's work fall under Tolkienian. but I don't believe that every work, ever, falls into any of the three categories and I think that, as I said before, humanist fantasy, usually written by woman writers like Diana Wynne Jones, exists. 

actually, this reminds me of a radio prank/long sketch called "Rock, Rule and Rot". they had a fake music critic on who claimed that every work of rock music fell into three categories and proceeded to troll the call-in audience about it. (the host knew about the prank. most of the callers didn't get the joke.)


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## ryubysss (Dec 3, 2019)

Star-child said:


> Frodo doesn't grow. He suffers.


embarrassing admission, but I haven't read _The Lord of the Rings,_ though I've tried. (_The Hobbit _I have read.) regardless, based on what you said, he _changes_ and I have to guess that the story shows that change.


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## ryubysss (Dec 3, 2019)

The Big Peat said:


> Okay. I think that Gaiman and Morgenstern concentrate as much on character and plot as your average fantasy author - and frankly more than Howard - and if we're measuring whether an author concentrated on characterisation by popularity/knowledge of the character, then Gaiman's characters would start ringing fairly highly on the polls once we got the current big three of Tolkien/Rowling/Martin out of the way. And also consider what the volume of "Tolkien only did exploration of a magical world!" criticism means.



Dunsanian fantasy means, to me, not only a magical world but an _exotic_ magical world. not redolent of old European myths. Howardian fantasy does that, a little, but doesn't go to with it.

I don't disagree with you that Howardian fantasy does not tend to have the best characterization. 

with Gaiman (and again, I haven't read _American Gods_) I tend to go, "typical Gaiman protagonist". sort of an Everyman. the others tend to fall into archetypes. the fair maiden, the mentor, all that stuff. unlike big Hollywood productions, I don't think that every story has to do every single in a single work. so I absolutely, _absolutely_, do not have a problem with that. at all. I don't consider it a flaw. 

disagree with you on as to their having strong plotting. they don't have _incompetent _plotting (a good writing wrote them, after all) but I don't think you go to it for all the intricate twists and turns. compare with _Mortal Engines_ or _Gideon the Ninth_, which I just finished (and loved) that revel in plot. the latter book has fifty things going on at once. sudden reversals, all of that.



> Long story short - it simply doesn't make sense to me to draw the dividing line between Dunsany and Tolkien in terms of importance of character/plot vs exploring a magical world.



okay, well, sit down and read some Dunsany some time if you haven't. you'll see how the approaches differ. 



> Leaving aside that I don't like naming a tradition after one person when there's many people involved -



I didn't come up with the nomenclature. but I do like it because you can focus a bit on specifics.



> Is Howard actually the archetype, particularly if we're counting Leiber (who seems far more influential to me) in the tradition? With Leiber himself heavily influenced by Lovecraft? Obviously they don't have to clone Conan, but he should be more an influence than any of the other potential influences. Pratchett is heavily influenced by Leiber. Is Pratchett Howardian? No way.



no, but I don't think that the model covers every single writer, either.



> If it's got nothing to do with age, then why do people keep referring to young heroes and Farmboys of Doom?



for the same reason that fantastical schools get compared to Hogwarts: intellectual laziness and lack of knowledge.



> In any case - Frodo and Bilbo don't really grow in the way Rand Al'Thor, Belgarion and Jon Snow do.



but still, Tolkien has had more influence than the writers who created those other characters. without Tolkien, you wouldn't have those guys.


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## The Big Peat (Dec 3, 2019)

ryubysss said:


> Dunsanian fantasy means, to me, not only a magical world but an _exotic_ magical world. not redolent of old European myths. Howardian fantasy does that, a little, but doesn't go to with it.
> 
> I don't disagree with you that Howardian fantasy does not tend to have the best characterization.
> 
> ...



And? So?

Most fantasy that would get lumped in as Tolkien-esque relies on archetypal characters and doesn't have an intricate plot. Including Tolkien. Just because there's some very intricate plotting out there doesn't make it the norm. Which means it isn't a point of difference as far as I can see.

Also, if we're looking for exotic magical world not redolent of old European myths, then Gaiman is very much coming and going here.



> okay, well, sit down and read some Dunsany some time if you haven't. you'll see how the approaches differ.



Read some, disagree, and your attitude is coming across as quite patronising there.



> no, but I don't think that the model covers every single writer, either.



But if you're sticking an author under one school and an author heavily influenced by him doesn't fall under that school, is that author in the right school to begin with? I'm not saying they're definitely not, but if the models are worth talking about, that's a question worth examining. Leiber had a rather different take on the S&S genre to Howard; if we're going by the author of this theory's original blurb about tracing back to source of inspiration, he was more inspired by Lovecraft than Howard. I'm sure Leiber is meant to fall in the same tradition as Howard but the way this is presented, he doesn't.



> for the same reason that fantastical schools get compared to Hogwarts: intellectual laziness and lack of knowledge.



Don't agree with handwaving away this away. The fact is that most of the most famous examples of this sort of hero are young; this is a red flag for the idea that they are of the same ilk as Frodo and should be examined.



> but still, Tolkien has had more influence than the writers who created those other characters. without Tolkien, you wouldn't have those guys.



Not the point. The point is that saying Tolkien's with the Hero's Journey crowd is questionable. 



One last final point -

I could dance around on various points for all of eternity but the short of it is that this model is too simplistic. It is too simplistic in that it tries to say "Here is the original great wellspring of a genre" which is simply a bad way to look at a genre as writers pick up too many influences and often the secondary wave of a new sub-genre are looking as much to influences outside or from before as they are the influence of the original. It is perhaps also not simple enough in that we list a great many differences and attributes that invite more argument than necessary.

And there is, of course, the fact that trying to build a taxonomy about source of inspiration when Tolkien and Howard both drew plenty from Dunsany is... well, I guess not automatically wrong, but certainly suggests rethinking three fairly immutable strands.

Maybe this would work as the beginning of a discussion, but only if the discussion is all the ways it needs to be improved and added to.


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## Dan Jones (Dec 3, 2019)

ryubysss said:


> Dunsanian fantasy means, to me, not only a magical world but an _exotic_ magical world.



True Scotsman Fallacy.



ryubysss said:


> magic realism falls outside the schema altogether, since most everybody writing about it wouldn't know or care about any fantasy writers other than Tolkien. (it largely originated outside of the English-speaking world, anyway.)



Fake news.



ryubysss said:


> haven't read _The Lord of the Rings,_ though I've tried.






ryubysss said:


> I haven't read _American Gords_


Me neither. But I read Adrian Tchaikovsky's _Russian Marrows And Where To Find Them._



The Big Peat said:


> Read some, disagree, and your attitude is coming across as quite patronising there.


I think you misunderstand. Patronising means to talk _down_ to someone. Look it up in the dictionary, and you'll see.


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## ryubysss (Dec 3, 2019)

The Big Peat said:


> And? So?
> 
> Most fantasy that would get lumped in as Tolkien-esque relies on archetypal characters and doesn't have an intricate plot. Including Tolkien. Just because there's some very intricate plotting out there doesn't make it the norm. Which means it isn't a point of difference as far as I can see.



I didn't say that Tolkienesque fantasy had intricate plotting! I mean that it places more emphasis upon.



> Also, if we're looking for exotic magical world not redolent of old European myths, then Gaiman is very much coming and going here.



agreed.  



> But if you're sticking an author under one school and an author heavily influenced by him doesn't fall under that school, is that author in the right school to begin with? I'm not saying they're definitely not, but if the models are worth talking about, that's a question worth examining. Leiber had a rather different take on the S&S genre to Howard; if we're going by the author of this theory's original blurb about tracing back to source of inspiration, he was more inspired by Lovecraft than Howard. I'm sure Leiber is meant to fall in the same tradition as Howard but the way this is presented, he doesn't.



I don't honestly get a lot of Lovecraft vibes from Leiber's sword and sorcery. in his other work, I do. (I should say that I attempted to get into it and failed. Leiber as a writer in general does a lot for me. just not that particular subset of his writing.)



> Don't agree with handwaving away this away. The fact is that most of the most famous examples of this sort of hero are young; this is a red flag for the idea that they are of the same ilk as Frodo and should be examined.



the most famous, though, doesn't mean all. hero's journey (in my estimation) means overcoming internal and external struggles that intertwine and getting out the other side better. since hero's journey functions as a sort of mythic roadmap to the education of the young, yes, younger characters commonly go through it but by no means every single time. 



> I could dance around on various points for all of eternity but the short of it is that this model is too simplistic. It is too simplistic in that it tries to say "Here is the original great wellspring of a genre" which is simply a bad way to look at a genre as writers pick up too many influences and often the secondary wave of a new sub-genre are looking as much to influences outside or from before as they are the influence of the original. It is perhaps also not simple enough in that we list a great many differences and attributes that invite more argument than necessary.



sure. the model has some flaws. but it, for me personally, showed me a lot about myself as a reader and a writer. it explained to me, for instance, why I never got far into _LOTR, _for example. 



> And there is, of course, the fact that trying to build a taxonomy about source of inspiration when Tolkien and Howard both drew plenty from Dunsany is... well, I guess not automatically wrong, but certainly suggests rethinking three fairly immutable strands.



well, felines and canines evolved form the same ancestor. they seem pretty different, though! (not trying to snark here but I sincerely find it hard to wrap my head around Robert E. Howard liking Dunsany. I heard that Tolkien read and read Howard, though.)



> Maybe this would work as the beginning of a discussion, but only if the discussion is all the ways it needs to be improved and added to.



sure!


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## ryubysss (Dec 3, 2019)

Dan Jones said:


> True Scotsman Fallacy.



not, really, I mean the originator of the theory explained, I think.



> Fake news.



Allende, Calvino, Borges and Marquez. none of them English language writers. granted, magical realism can mean lots of things.



>


I read mostly for pleasure and if a work doesn't grab me for around 10% of its length, I put it down. I approached it (twice) as historically important, but couldn't get into it, even on the second. 



> Me neither. But I read Adrian Tchaikovsky's _Russian Marrows And Where To Find Them._


me, too! my favorite book ever!


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## Dan Jones (Dec 3, 2019)

Fair play.


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## Brian G Turner (Dec 3, 2019)

The Hobbit certainly follows elements of the Hero's Journey. I'm not so familiar with LOTR, though.

And Gaiman - yes, I've posted before about how his protagonists tend to not really do anything, except serve as a center from which the story revolves around. It's certainly not something I tend to see elsewhere in modern fiction. I'm not sure if the appeal is really due to a sense of wonder, as much as the protagonist serving as a foil for secondary characters to tell their short stories, and thus to the reader.

I wonder how historical fiction would fit into all this?


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## tegeus-Cromis (Dec 4, 2019)

ryubysss said:


> in my opinion, they _do_ fall under Dunsanian, other than _Titus Alone_, which doesn't. (I haven't read _The Malacia Tapestry_, though, so no opinions there.) New Weird tends to fall into Dunsanian. magic realism falls outside the schema altogether, since most everybody writing about it wouldn't know or care about any fantasy writers other than Tolkien. (it largely originated outside of the English-speaking world, anyway.)


Well, they fall under "Dunsanian" only inasmuch as, if the only three color names you had were brown, green, and amber, the color of poppies would fall under brown and that of the sky under green. That is to say, these categories are not exact, and far from enough. Can the New Weird be about "the charm of exploring a magical world"? I suppose, but that goes at best 1% of the way toward exploring what the New Weird is about. (And "charm" hardly seems to fit in this context.) How does such a notion of exploring a world sit with Harrison's notorious critique of world-building, not to mention his attempt to scramble the world of Viriconium from story to story? I'd rather think of such stories as being about how words get built into worlds (and into characters, actions, etc) which is not the same thing as exploring a pre-given world. As to magic realism originating outside the English-speaking world, I don't understand why that should be a criterion. Besides, a book like _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ seems to me to fit the "Dunsanian" category better than the books I mentioned. On the other hand, Borges's fictions fit none of these categories.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Dec 4, 2019)

Star-child said:


> Frodo doesn't grow. He suffers.



I think Frodo does grow; he takes on more responsibility, becomes more courageous.  What is that if not growth?  On the other hand, the story doesn't end with him heroic and triumphant, rising therefore to power as in so many Tolkien imitations.  Instead it continues to the point where his suffering and the pull of the Ring bring him to the brink of disintegration at Mount Doom.  He knows it and that is why he doesn't return home and take on a leadership role like Merry, Pippin, and Sam do. To regard *The Lord of the Rings* as a typical hero's journey one has to figure that Sam is the hero in question, which, as a matter of fact, a lot of readers do.


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## Star-child (Dec 4, 2019)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> I think Frodo does grow; he takes on more responsibility, becomes more courageous.  What is that if not growth?  On the other hand, the story doesn't end with him heroic and triumphant, rising therefore to power as in so many Tolkien imitations.  Instead it continues to the point where his suffering and the pull of the Ring bring him to the brink of disintegration at Mount Doom.  He knows it and that is why he doesn't return home and take on a leadership role like Merry, Pippin, and Sam do. To regard *The Lord of the Rings* as a typical hero's journey one has to figure that Sam is the hero in question, which, as a matter of fact, a lot of readers do.


As much as I agree that Sam definitely has more growth and agency than Frodo, it really isnt a story about Sam. He doesn't even come along until a chapter or so in. People like to regard Sam as the protagonist to make the formula apply to a story where it really doesn't work.

It is a similar problem to identifying the protagonist of 2001.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Dec 4, 2019)

I don't think that Sam is the protagonist, either, but many people do.  The fact is, what Tolkien ultimately decided to write was not a typical hero's quest.  Frodo was given an impossible task.  Somewhere in his collected letters Tolkien wrote that _no one _could have resisted the ring and thrown it into the fire. 

Frodo's achievement was simply in getting it that far, and he couldn't have done it without Sam, and he couldn't have done it without Aragorn leading his army to the Black Gate, nor without all the other things that his companions had done along the way (like neutralizing Saruman as a threat).  It's a story about a group of individuals each one doing the job that is before him, and hoping that others are doing the same ... having no assurance at all that this will be so, or that any of it will really matter.  It's about faith and grace.

That said, the Frodo who made the decision to leave the fellowship and go on to Mordor alone is not the same Frodo who relied on the advice and guidance of others up to that point.  That's growth.  Making the arduous journey across Mordor while the burden of the Ring was nearly killing him, that required a steely courage that Frodo never had or thought of back in the Shire.  That's growth, too.


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## Star-child (Dec 4, 2019)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> I don't think that Sam is the protagonist, either, but many people do.  The fact is, what Tolkien ultimately decided to write was not a typical hero's quest.  Frodo was given an impossible task.  Somewhere in his collected letters Tolkien wrote that _no one _could have resisted the ring and thrown it into the fire.
> 
> Frodo's achievement was simply in getting it that far, and he couldn't have done it without Sam, and he couldn't have done it without Aragorn leading his army to the Black Gate, nor without all the other things that his companions had done along the way (like neutralizing Saruman as a threat).  It's a story about a group of individuals each one doing the job that is before him, and hoping that others are doing the same ... having no assurance at all that this will be so, or that any of it will really matter.  It's about faith and grace.
> 
> That said, the Frodo who made the decision to leave the fellowship and go on to Mordor alone is not the same Frodo who relied on the advice and guidance of others up to that point.  That's growth.  Making the arduous journey across Mordor while the burden of the Ring was nearly killing him, that required a steely courage that Frodo never had or thought of back in the Shire.  That's growth, too.


The context of the discussion (I thought) was that Frodo grows in a Campbellian way.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Dec 4, 2019)

And my point is that to try to fit him in as a Campbellian hero is a mistake.  But there are other ways for a character to grow and to develop.  (Nor is growth the only way that a protagonist can develop.  Some are destroyed by their experiences.  Suffering, in particular, refines character, either for the better or the worse.)


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## Star-child (Dec 4, 2019)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> And my point is that to try to fit him in as a Campbellian hero is a mistake.  But there are other ways for a character to grow and to develop.  (Nor is growth the only way that a protagonist can develop.  Some are destroyed by their experiences.  Suffering, in particular, refines character, either for the better or the worse.)


I thought Frodo not being a Campbellian hero was my point.


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## The Big Peat (Dec 4, 2019)

Re Character and role, particularly Protagonists -

I have heard Brian's criticism of Gaiman's MCs (I think Jo's particularly fond of decrying their lack of agency). I have also heard similar criticism of Epic Fantasy MCs. I would personally say that Gaiman's MCs are often ordinary people blown around by the winds of change, maybe lacking a little agency and finding it in the end, maybe not as loud and large as life as the supporting cast but easier for us to understand... and I'd say that for some Epic Fantasy too. And arguably Frodo and Bilbo are the most famous examples of such MCs.

And of course, there's plenty of scope in Gaiman's MCs. American Gods? Shadow is almost deliberately a blank slate. Richard from Neverwhere is the quintessence of what Brian is talking about. Charlie from Anansi Boys? I'd say he's fully drawn and active. Good Omens? Who the hell even is the MC there? And as for Morpheus himself, a more active and richly detailed MC in all of Fantasy is hard to find. Which just goes to show why I dislike doing this by author (another reason - Howard's Hour of the Dragon arguably veers towards the Tolkien-esque, while Tolkien's Smith of Wootton Major is pure Dunsanian to use the terminology in the OP). Books are in traditions (sometimes), authors hop around in them.

And to go back to Frodo... I think, stepping back and looking at it, you can see certain elements of the monomyth in Frodo. But he doesn't fit in with the sort of heroes made while looking at Campbell's work, and the type that are the most famous of the 70s-90s wave of Epic Fantasy that's most commonly held up as Tolkien-esque. To a certain extent, when people are saying Frodo isn't Campbell-ian, it's because the march of time has led to a certain type of hero being heavily identified as being like the Hero's Journey, to the point we maybe overlook others that aren't dissimilar because they're not what common parlance has as fitting in.


Now, to go back to the OP -

For me at least it is easier to think of these genre strands by descriptors rather than by names - trying to say "X is the source of Y" has too much luggage for me.

If we do that we get Saga/Epic - a large number of people experience events that shape the world, often in the shape of good vs evil; Adventure - a small number of people experience events that often change very little, frequently just for the hell of it; and... Fairytale/Myth? In which people encounter a strange world and lessons are learned? I find the "Dunsanian" the hardest to give a name to and what attributes I can give to it, mainly feel like Fantasy for the sake of Fantasy, the creation of new myth... and that is the very root of Fantasy.

So. I would suggest that if "Dunsanian" - Fairytale/Myth - should be held as the original strand of Fantasy, from which the Adventure Fantasy and the Epic Fantasy both spring - Adventure from American pulp writers, Epic from British writers steeped in medievalism. And I think you can see strains of Dunsany (who Howard described as one of his favourite poets) in both Howard and Tolkien; some of Howard's descriptions of ancient wonders (of which there's a fair few) have a certain similarity.

From there, I think you get further mutations and splits; trying to keep Fantasy into three main traditions is as trying to say all of Rock is either Rock, Metal, or Punk. I think Adventure splits fairly early into the "Ultimate Warrior" Conan style and the "Sharp Operator" style that more of Leiber, Wolfe, Moorcock and so on. There's a split between the more Good vs Evil Tolkien-esque Epic, and the grimmer "Stuff just happens" that you get with The Broken Sword and maybe even The Deep, that then leads into (to a certain extent) SoIaF and Malazan and Grimdark. 

The interesting question to me is where you put all those Fantasy stories that are very deeply embedded in one particular community. Most of the books I've described so far are about wanderers (at least for the course of the book). But there's a big strain of Fantasy, which I guess you'd say starts with Gormenghast, that's about one particular group and society. Is that its own strain? Adventures? Or a mutation from the Epic? Or even the Fairy Tale? I found this interesting comment on whether Peake's books were fantasy:

"If your definition of fantasy requires wizards throwing fire, heroes questing for fairy-queens, then no. But if a vast castle encompassing bizarre peoples and ancient ritual can be considered 'fantastical', for their absurdity, their beauty, their dream-like reality of infinite age and significance... then put Gormenghast on the map between Earthsea and the Shire, just south of Anhk-Morpork."

To me... I guess they share that "Exploration of creation" type feeling with Dunsany when described thus. The manner of them is far distant on the spectrum though.

All I can say is the more I try to make sense of it, the more I am convinced that Fantasy has a very unruly family tree. 



I did consider a whole new methodology last night/today - one built on where a book lies on four different spectrums; scale, morality vs amorality, action-heavy (i.e. fighting) vs light, and level of fantasy. And I do think you get some interesting results - Elric looks more similar to LotR than to Conan, because the scale and level of fantasy is closer - but it becomes obvious there's a lot of other measuring sticks that go missing with that.


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## The Big Peat (Dec 4, 2019)

Oh, and something I forgot to say -

When judging any historical author's depth of characterisation or plot, it is probably wise to compare them to their peers, not to today. The number of words we'd use t o describe characters today and the things we'd expect to know about them just aren't the same, nor is the language we use to do so completely the same either.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Dec 5, 2019)

Star-child said:


> I thought Frodo not being a Campbellian hero was my point.


Yes and I was agreeing with you about that, but disagreeing that Frodo shows no growth.


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## BAYLOR (Dec 5, 2019)

Here is a question for all of you . Which of the categories would you put Clark Aston Smith stories. for example *The City of the Signing Flame* . Or Jack Vance *Tales From the Dying Earth* , *Magus Rex* by Jack Lovejoy or  The books Abraham  Merritt  *The Moon  Pool *or *The Ship of Ishtar *?


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## The Big Peat (Dec 6, 2019)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> Yes and I was agreeing with you about that, but disagreeing that Frodo shows no growth.



I think Frodo does change, but it is subtle and measured by modern standards. I think you're right about him realising he has more strength than he realises, but I think that what this changes about his choices are what he feels able to do rather than what he wishes to do. He's still the same Frodo, just more so and wounded. Compare that to a lot of modern protagonists, particularly the young ones, and at times it barely feels like growth.

I wonder who's the first real big time teen to adult bildungsroman fantasy character. I want to say Ged,


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