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| SFReader Forums > SF Fiction and Art > Right Now I'm Reading.... > Worm Ouroboros, Chapters 15 & 16 | Forum Quick Jump
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Bill Ward
Biblioholic
      
Date Joined Jul 2006
Total Posts : 1669
| Posted 3/13/2008 4:35 AM (GMT -4) |   | Remember, it was only until comparatively recently that historians even bothered to look at ordinary lives, let alone storytellers. The conceit of the stories themselves was either that they concerned important people, or people that would become or do something important--they didn't stop to wonder if the fish wife had flat feet or how the farmhand felt about his religion (unless it made these stock characters the butt of some quick joke). I think the notion that ordinary lives should be even a part of a heroic story (or even really exist outside of an amorphous background) is a modern one.
Tolkien changed that for mainstream fantasy in two ways, I would guess. One, the hobbits are ordinary folk that actually celebrate their ordinary values...even when they become great and are proven exceptional examples of hobbitry, it's their ordinary values that remain their core strength and identity. (And we do see less attention to the little people later in the tale because the hobbits have basically made the transition from a mundane world to a heroic one--and I think this is much more effective than if Tolkien had dealt with the mundane details of rohan or gondor as he had the shire, as these places shouldn't be too knowable or cozy).
Two, Tolkien launched world-building in a big way, and even if his world didn't include, say, Gondorian rainfall averages shaping the lives of his peasants, the proponents of the world-building school that came after him followed his example to its logical extremes. They didn't just look at epics and sagas as their model (as Eddison primarily did I'm imagining), but at history and all the new soft sciences growing up around it (like sociology) as well as disciplines like geography. At the time these guys are pursuing these new models the histories they are looking at are very different from those of Eddison's day--gone is the Great Man Victorian school and instead we have the rise of social history, psychological history, and material history. A subtle shift occurs too in what I think audiences come to expect in fantasy, now they don't want mere fairy stories, they want 'authenticity,' they want secondary worlds that feel real and follow rules--whether that marks a new sophistication, or jadedness, or infantilism, I can't say.
I do find Eddison a bit snide and condescending toward some of his characters, but I can't really fault him for not giving us a fuller picture of his world, which is a fairly tale and an epic and not meant to be taken in the same light as the post-worldbuilding fantasy novels of a later era. And I think the word 'novel' is important here because I don't think Worm or similar books really are 'novels' in the way later fantasies are. Ovid and Homer and Sturluson weren't novelists either, and I think sometimes we forget that the word book and novel aren't synonymous, because the 'realistic novel' has become our baseline for fiction--but it wasn't always so.
billwardwriter.com | | Back to Top | | |
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James Enge
Maker
Date Joined Jan 2006
Total Posts : 208
| Posted 3/13/2008 1:45 AM (GMT -4) | | The sneaking around and intrigue of these chapters is great: these Witchland folk may be "bad" but they make stuff happen. I especially like Prezmyra.
The Tolkien discussion is interesting. I think there were some common type people in Gondor--the kid that Pippin pals around in Minas Tirith with and his father, and Ioreth (?) the old wife who dispenses old wives' tales in the houses of healing. But these guys (unlike the hobbits) seem to be there mostly to carry spears for the Big People, so there may be something to what you're saying, Nik. I hadn't thought about it before, but the farther the action gets from the Shire and Bree, the less common the "normal" people are: most of the characters turn out to be nobles, or whatever. If Legolas kills a wolf, it can't be just some schmoe-wolf; it has to be a "great warg chieftain" or something like that.
I read a few of Morris's fantasies a long time ago, keeping at it until I realized, "I am not enjoying this," and stopped. I can't remember what class his characters tend to fall in. (Calling them "characters" might overstate the case a little.) But MacDonald has common-folk as major characters: Curdie, in The Princess and the Goblin and its sequel, is a miner. Cabell's characters are mostly pretty upper crust--if they don't begin that way, they usually end up lounging cynically on purple cushions.
James Enge
http://jamesenge.com/
"A Covenant with Death" in Flashing Swords
"The Lawless Hours" in Black Gate 11
"The Gordian Stone" in Every Day Fiction
"The Red Worm's Way" forthcoming in Return of the Sword
"Payment in Full" forthcoming in Black Gate | | Back to Top | | |
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Nik
Adept
Date Joined Feb 2007
Total Posts : 774
| Posted 3/12/2008 6:11 PM (GMT -4) | | You're right. I should clarify--Tolkien really fleshed out the society and common folk of The Shire. But we never encountered these people in Eriador or Rohan or Gondor or Lorien--the other places where most of The Lord of the Rings takes place. I don't remember him really showing what these people were doing while war was happening all around them.
The only "modern" fantasy writers older than Eddison would be Morris, MacDonald, a couple of others? I haven't read anything by them yet, so I don't know how they treated the commoner. I will be mindful of this when I finally read them, though.
Nicholas Ian Hawkins
Forthcoming
"What Heroes Leave Behind," in Return of the Sword, Flashing Swords Press, March 2008
"Knowledge and Dust," in Magic & Mechanica, from Ricasso Press, Spring 2008
Published
"The Weald Maiden's Will," in Every Day Fiction, March 5, 2008
"Relativity," in FLASHSHOT, September 28, 2007
Visit my website, Trampler of Beautiful Phrases, at nihawkins.wordpress.com | | Back to Top | | |
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Nik
Adept
Date Joined Feb 2007
Total Posts : 774
| Posted 3/11/2008 10:09 PM (GMT -4) | | Well, these chapters were full of scheming, conniving, beautiful women. Outstanding! It read a bit like a soap opera to me, except with better dialogue and plot and no eye patches or demonic possessions.
I also recognized another parallel between Eddison and Tolkien: both are so focused on the main characters--the elite and nobility--that they really fail to give any sense of the rest of the world's people. I still have not gotten a sense of the society or economy of Eddison's world, just as I never really got a feel for these things in Tolkien's work. I must confess, there's a big, gaping hole where the "little people" should be, and it makes these secondary worlds seem less whole.
Nicholas Ian Hawkins
Forthcoming
"What Heroes Leave Behind," in Return of the Sword, Flashing Swords Press, March 2008
"Knowledge and Dust," in Magic & Mechanica, from Ricasso Press, Spring 2008
Published
"The Weald Maiden's Will," in Every Day Fiction, March 5, 2008
"Relativity," in FLASHSHOT, September 28, 2007
Visit my website, Trampler of Beautiful Phrases, at nihawkins.wordpress.com | | Back to Top | | |
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