[Lindale]

There's this book I just saw this afternoon. Tales Before Tolkien, published by the same publisher as my LotR and Sil and Hobbit (the American). Contains bits of the Icelandic sagas, a really short version of the Ring of the Nibelungs, and stuff I don't remember. Somewhere in the back cover it says that the book
s content influenced Tolkien and will continue doing so the next generations of creative writers. The nature of the old epics, isn't it?

Also, an interesting notion in Lit is that There is Nothing New in under the Sun.

For the Hero, example Aragorn, it follows a certain archetype. More or less the same as the hero thing with, say, Arthas or Luke Skywalker or whatnot. Prophecy before birth and so on: it's in Joseph Campbell's book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. And so on with characters like Gandalf, Iluvatar, Elendil and the fall of Numenor, the list is endless. Of course the details vary. For example, the "goddess" of Aragorn is Arwen, whereas Luke doesn't have one exactly. But they both have the wise old bearded man for their mentors.

In the University of the Philippines, this is an example of Plagiarism:

Old pond — frogs jumped in — splash! (the original stuff by Basho, the haikuist)

which I change into, say,

The river -- frogs jumping -- the sound of the water

(Of course it's very crudely done, but I hope you see the point.)