Stereotypes

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Gwathagor

I'm also inclined to think that pre-Tolkien elves are smaller and weaker, but that may only be the subversive effect of the Enlightenment tainting my soul. Now that I think about it, I believe that in the oldest elf-tales, the elves are rather tall and bright-eyed, like Tolkien's, but they seem to get smaller and more tame the farther we get from the middle-ages. So, at least in that case, it seems that Tolkien reverted to the oldest stereotypes in a kind of stereotype-revolution.

I'd say so. Read Tolkien's On Fairy-Stories. He somewhat explains there his aversion towards "stereotypes" of fairy-tale elves (or fairies, both of these terms being exchangeable for one another in his case) being of diminutive size and having wings and such.

Originally Posted by Morthoron

Amusingly, Tolkien said in an interview with the BBC that he'd constructed Khuzdul like a Semitic language. If anything, a dwarf might sound more like Topol in Fiddler on the Roof. Oyveh!

Oh my, I didn't know - but now thinking of it, if I imagine the Dwarves in Bag End singing their song in the manner of let's say "Hinne ma tov", or "Avinu malkeynu" (that could especially fit singing the song in Beorn's house), it might sound really good and fitting - the chorus of the deep thirteen voices...

I would finish with a question - what do you think about Orcs? (Or goblins, or whatever...) I am not aware of the concept of Orcs in the mythology before Tolkien, of course they probably were up to no good, whatever they were, but simply: Were they like that, or in which aspects were they like that? I.e. to which point is Tolkien constituing a new, set view of Orcs, against the concept that was before (if there was any)? I mean, since Tolkien, Orcs are portrayed in every fantasy book (movie, computer game...) like they are, you say "Orc" and everyone knows what to imagine under it - and they imagine more or less the same, at least concerning the basical traits. With goblins, it's somewhat different, but Orcs as Orcs seem to be more or less the same everywhere. What is Tolkien's invention about them, and what was here before?