In his review of Annette Lassen's Oldtidssagaernes verden (in the Medieval Review), William Sayers says:
The introduction establishes that these [Icelandic] sagas are centrifugal, not concerned with settlement and domesticity but with the post-Viking life abroad. The gallery of characters includes kings and serving girls, queens and dragons, gods, trolls, giants, warrior maidens, berserks, and seers--all the figures that Tolkien turned to our attention and that dominate our entertainment screens today.
The influence of Tolkien is so obvious that having a prominent scholar pointing it out is perhaps entirely insignificant. But not for me. I came to Tolkien in the mid-sixties, when I was sixteen. I was part of the earliest wave of American readers, and The Lord of the Rings changed my life. There were lots, of such people, mostly young, vulnerable to a different gospel. People of my parents' age were largely uninspired by the LotR. Some tears ago I reread the Hobbit and the LotR and found
1) it wasn't just me and 2) it really was as good as I thought it was, at least for people in my social and age group who had found it early on.
I had an evangelical feeling when I first read the books. I had a conviction that "everybody should read this" -- but no talent to express or audience to receive that feeling. I simply looked for the books in every l store and was irrationally disappointed when they weren't there. I knew this was irrational at the time, and the feeling soon passed.
Imagine my astonishment when, in connection with the release of Peter Jackson's movies, the books in various formats were actually everywhere. Thanks to the marketing strategies of the early 2000s, my fantasy had become reality,
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| Feb 22, 2023, 8:44 AM (6 days ago) |  | ||
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Lots of typos and non-words in this post, as though it had gone through a bunch of edits and copy-pastes with the cursor in different places from where you thought it was. I think you're saying some interesting things that I can't parse :-)
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