Minor Works -- 1 - Farmer Giles of Ham

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Has anyone else seen things that remind you of other characters and events?

Well, there's Tailbiter, the semi-sentient sword, or at least animated by an agenda of its own, more bent on dragon-slaying than its wielder - a more light-hearted cousin of such wilful blades as Tyrfing of Norse legend, which inspired both Túrin's Gurthang and Elric's Stormbringer; but unlike in these cases, Tailbiter's activity works out for its wielder's benefit: another example of a classic fantasy trope Tolkien found in his sources and popularised in his own writings but which is here used in a humorous way. The central subverted trope is, of course, that of the dragon-slaying hero, be his name Sigurd or Túrin, Beowulf or Bard; unlike his more famous colleagues, Giles doesn't kill the dragon but rather strikes a bargain with the worm, wins him as an ally and even manages to avert the curse on the dragon's gold (another trope, see the Volsunga saga and the tale of the Nauglamír).

It's been a while since I watched Shrek, and my memory is a bit hazy, so I have to take your word on the parallels, Esty; but what all this does remind me of is the work of Terry Pratchett, which Farmer Giles seems to anticipate by a couple of decades. Like Tolkien in this tale, Pratchett uses staple fantasy tropes (many of which only became so because of Tolkien!) in a tongue-in-cheek parodic spirit, but his best works rise through and above parody to a genuine (though still humorous) mythopoeia.

Finally, I find Giles's defiance of the king (who comes to reap the fruits he didn't sow) echoed, across time and genres and most likely without any conscious influence, in the end of the manga AKIRA by Katsuhiro Otomo: the apocalypse brought about by a bunch of kids with superhuman powers is over at last, UN forces land in Japan to re-establish peace and order, only for Kaneda (teenage misfit turned into hero), backed by an army of his peers with machine guns and bazookas, to tell them "Get out of our country!" Tolkien being Tolkien, of course, his story ends with a Little Kingdom ruled by a benign monarch rather than the glorious anarchy of the Great Akira Empire, but I suppose that was the best that could be hoped for.