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Originally Posted by Galadriel55
Based on the few of Lovecraft's stories that I've read, I'd actually put him under sci-fi, with a little bit of fantasy and horror sprinkled in. Maybe I just haven't read the right stories, though.
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Yes, it really depends which of his stories you’re talking about– and genre boundaries weren’t as defined then as they are now anyway.
Thinking about the main question, it seems to me that there’s two traps to be avoided. One is that of assuming that every similarity is due to copying, and the other is that of assuming that none are. (Not that I think anyone here is literally doing either of these, by the way.)
I’d say there are four classes of similarity:
a.) Pure coincidence.
b.) Similarity due to use of the same sources.
c.) Actual influence.
d.) Direct copying.
There are still problems with this– exactly where c.) ends and d.) begins can be a matter of dispute. And you need to be careful about b.), because, for example, there is a difference between Elves or goblins as traditional folklore races and Tolkien’s versions.
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Originally Posted by jallanite
For elves in previous fantasy I suggest Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland's Daughter and Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword which predates The Lord of the Rings. True, Anderson’s Elves are more like Tolkien's Orcs than his Elves, but they are not little people. Or go back to the man-sized Elves in Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene. Tolkien did not alter any concepts. The idea of man-size Elves is common in medieval works.
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True– but it is none the less quite common for post-Tolkien fantasy writers to feature Elves who are
obvious direct copies of Tolkien’s (often filtered through D&D). As I said, there’s a difference.