What was the fantasy genre like before the rise of Tolkien?

There was a whole thread about the eagles senpai.

>Q: Why didn't they just give the ring to one of the eagles and have THAT bastard drop the ring into the volcano?

Edwardian gentleman goes to magic world where talking animals teach him political, religious or self-help lessons for his real life.
It's not quite so bad as it sounds.

Conan the Barbarian.

lovecraft desu. even though lovecraft didnt get popular until much later it was out there before tolkien.

you can also kind of consider alice in wonderland fantasy, kind of.

>Q: Why didn't they just give the ring to one of the eagles and have THAT bastard drop the ring into the volcano?
ive also been wondering this as well. there seems to be no good reason this shouldnt have happened.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not assume you're retarded.

>Sauron will know fucking immediately when they start to fly into Mordor. You might as well be ringing a dinner bell.

>His archers on the ground will fucking unleash hell. Remember that he had more orcs than men and elves combined, ten times over.

>His Nazgul would immediately take to the air and harry their ass

Assuming they got to mount doom after any of that, the ring would direct its own course as it fell, because fuck you, it's magic.

If they rode the eagles, they would be ten flavors of fucked the moment they got into a hair's breadth of Sauron's shit. And this is all assuming Sauron ISN'T expecting this, which I guarantee you he would be expecting a grand entrance like flying in like a retard. What he wouldn't be on guard for is two defenseless faggots going through crags behind his lines entrusted on a suicide mission by elves and men with a lust for his ring.

None of those are the reasons why. You're stupid. Anyone who asks this question is stupid. Infact this question and answers like this one are indicitive of the problem with contemporary fantasy. More interested in DnD stats and mechanics and saving throws than the literary signifigance of the work. There is a very good reason why they didn't fly the eagles and anyone who doesn't get it should read the book again.

He's not wrong. But yeah you have a point as well. The eagles and Tom Bombadil dont give a crap about the ring. They didnt include Tom in the movies most likely because his presence wouldnt alter the story much but it would cause confusion for people who didn't read the any of tolkiens work.

Amadis of Gaul and all the other Chivalric romance that Cervantes was making fun of in Don Quixote is probably the closest thing to pre-tolkien fantasy, unless you count the ancient myths and legends that Tolkien based LOTR on in the first place.

You should check out old chivalric romance books if you like sword-and-sorcery books. They're good stupid fun.

Conan is the pinnacle of fantasy honestly. Nothing comes close, the elves and dwarves shit doesn't compare. It's a shame to see sword and sorcery devolve so much

Le this, talk about getting bogged down in the minutiae. The whole point is that it's supposed to be a larger than life legend, a fairytale type thing.

this is some dark souls shit

Read the Worm Ouroboros for pre-Tolkien *high* fantasy, if you want to compare it to pre-Tolkien low fantasy.
I took a look at the whole health potion thing and thought "I've played D&D campaigns like this".
Dark Souls is some renaissance shit.

>Before Tolkein
??????? He is a major jump?

I would say with the rise of movies, mass media, and nerd D&D/Warhammer culture in the 80s and 90s before it was annexed by normies and turned into the cancer it is today.

Tolkein was entirely inspired by European/Norse Mythology so for the most part the genre of Tolkein would originate there and evolve into what it is today as a cash cow.

Really? OP is asking about classical fantasy and noone mentions pic related?

I am disappoint, Veeky Forums

Weirder. Also, more emphasis on wenching.

Very little wenching in Middle-Earth.

>everything is the fault of anime

Tolkien's forerunners include George MacDonald, William Morris, and Lord Dunsany. All are well worth a read

Sword and sorcery is edgelord garbage

>edgelord garbage
>tfw

butthurt gajin

Just before Tolkien: Dunsany, Macdonald, Howard, bunch of others who have already been noted, and probably more.
Before that: Chivalric romance, Walter Scott, Gothic romance, Wagner, Arthurian legend and so on.
Waaaay before that: ancient myths, biblical and other religious narratives, epic poems, folklore, fairy tales (also relevant as just before Tolkien, since editors and philologists like Andrew Lang, Charles Perrault and the Brother's Grimm are relatively recent), Beowulf, the Kalevala, and more.

It gets muddled beyond that because there aren't any agreed criteria on what fantasy, properly speaking, covers. The Iliad, for example, probably has some influence in how fantasy is written and understood, but it's by no means a fantasy text. Popular fantasy of today has most of its roots in the 20th century, particularly Tolkien, or Lewis, Lovecraft and Howard, and so on, and drawing from sources beyond those probably requires some proximate estimations.
Anyway, I liked The Wertzone's survey of modern fantasy history. Also, guy called Michael Saler has some pretty interesting texts on fantasy, in particular his book As If and an article called "Modernity, Disenchantment, and the Ironic Imagination." Loads has been written on fantasy literature and not much of it is very interesting, desu.

Conan isn't literature. It's a Saturday morning cartoon in book form.

Saturday morning cartoons, my ass. Tastes may differ, sure. But come on. Really? You're going to shit on this?

>Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west...hither came Conan the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet. - The Phoenix on the Sword

I literally just created a thread about this yesterday. Read that out loud and tell me that's *not* pretty damn good.

kill yourself soul babby

The problem is there is no substance beyond what youre shown. Conan is big and strong and kills something the end.

Okay, so...can't quite see the forest for the trees here? Ever wonder why he's so frequently depicted *brooding* on a gigantic throne? Even though there are naked girls frolicking everywhere and he's there in all his barbaric splendour?

It's because he gets it. He gets the tragedy of reciprocal violence. It's why Howard was so into the rise and fall of empires, which was this huge thing in the US at that time, all of that racial shit that was going on. What links everyone and everything together is violence, and Conan knows it. So what does he do? He doesn't sit around and mope about it, but he's not waiting for Godot either. He fucking gets in there and wrestles gorillas or whatever the fuck.

I'm not trying to make a case for Howard in the canon. In the thread I put up yesterday my Mount Rushmore goes Herbert, Tolkien, Lovecraft, Howard. Howard is the last guy in and it's not a walk. I don't even like Lovecraft, desu (even though Howard did, I think). But Conan is wickedly underrated.

He's not Tolkien. He was an inspired American visionary-poet who totally managed to get some of the stuff he was feeling down on paper. I like the Schwarzenegger film (Oliver Stone! John Milius) but Conan just gets slept on because he's now cliche. But that's the thing about cliches: they're only cliche because people repeat something over and over, and they do that because there's something in there that just seems true.

gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0603571.txt

Seconded. Read lovecraft or the guy who created Conan the barbarian

Other guy, but there totally is substance to Howard. There's a whole worldview with a cyclical view of time, bringing epochs of endless barbarism, underscored by the few stories with weird timeline interjections between his characters. There's the Hobbesian, anti-civilization materialism that tear through the complexities decadent societies. Might not be much in terms of substance, but there's a conviction behind it which gives his stories their power. And frankly, Howard was, after all, only a half-literate, frontier settler with little money or education, who offed himself at age 30. We'll never know if there was something deeper within him, but what we have is testament to a powerful and endearing writer, if you ask me.

And here's a bit from Mirrors of Tuzun Thune that I like, because why not.
>"This fiend wrought most craftily," said Brule. "KULL, do you not now see how he spun and flung over you a web of magic? Kaanuub of Blaal plotted with this wizard to do away with you, and this wench, a girl of the Elder Race, put the thought in your mind so that you would come here. Ka-na of the council learned of the plot today; I know not what you saw in that mirror, but with it Tuzun Thune enthralled your soul and almost by his witchery he changed your body to mist--"
>"Aye." Kull was still mazed. "But being a wizard, having knowledge of all the ages and despising gold, glory, and position, what could Kaanuub offer Tuzun Thune that would make of him a foul traitor?"
>"Gold, power, and position," grunted Brule. "The sooner you learn that men are men whether wizard, king, or thrall, the better you will rule, Kull."

Alright anons. I'll consider your position.

>What links everyone and everything together is violence
What a depressing view. This is why I prefer Tolkien and similar fantasy over the current trend for grimdark. Some authors seem to disregard the importance of hope and light in creating a fantasy. The real world is violent and depressing, how do people enjoy fantasy that reflects that- is fantasy not escapism?

good

100% this, and well said. Plus the lore seemed to have worked pretty well for Frank Frazetta.

Except conan, as presented by that user, is little different from Tolkien. user says that Conan understands that everything is violence but tries to do something about it. The characters in Tolkiens works are surrounded by despair but have hope against hope.

Really the only distinction is that conan is distinctly american while tokien is catholic.

Conan's real problem was that he was such a sexual tyrannosaurus that his junk magically turned into gigantic snakes while he was locked up in weird dungeons. Fucking Robert E Howard, man. What a guy.

I think he was just looking into the same places Nietzsche was looking into. He found his answers in dark places, and turned it into literature.

But yeah, Tolkien and Lewis et al see things differently. I think you hit on something really interesting though:

>the real world is violent and depressing, how do people enjoy fantasy that reflects that- is fantasy not escapism?

Maybe people realize escapism is just delusion, and so they double down on the stuff that they can't escape from. Tragedy and violence. It's part of why we read, maybe. But honestly, user, I don't really know either.

I think if the Eagles had been sent in directly then LOTR would have been more like a fantasy version of Blackhawk Down.

Which now I think about it sounds sort of rad.

.

Fantasy is not escapism. Not good fantasy. No good literature is escapism. That's the point of literature; to not be an escape, to reflect the world as the author sees it.

That is actually the beginning of the story I was looking for.

From the "If you ask about the Eagles ur a tard" thread yesterday I got inspired to write about what happens when the eagles decide to help, and end up getting corrupted.

Of course there is ton's of resistance from Sauron, shit goes crazy, the Hobbits are killed, and the King of Eagles ends up with the ring, turning him into an evil, invisible supereagle.

Middle Earth has to unite against the Eagles in Act III, of course.

This.

Arabian Nights is the shit

I would not say it is purely the fault of anime and manga, as much as I like those mediums it is purely the fault of combining conventions with television and film. If that had not happened then Comiccon would've died in the early 00s, a slow and honorable death but because of the MCU and trash like TBBT giving everyone a voice to express their love for psuedo-nerd shit it was allowed to thrive and grow again. Anime and manga is basically what the old fantasy fans used to be after things like comics and gaming have gotten popular with the mainstream, all the hate and ostracized behaviour has shifted onto them.

For you, maybe. I read fiction and fantasy so that I don't have to face the real world. The distorted reflection of reality that books provide is preferable to the real thing.