This is extremely brief and vague and I can’t really tell what you mean to do in this paper. You need to start with a thesis statement and then tell us how you mean to develop your topic.
Tolkien did not use the term “fae,” so I suggest that you not use it either. You also need to check your posts for punctuation, especially commas. Lydia Fish October 30, 2008, at 12:27 PM
As I am still waiting on my sources to arrive from the interlibrary loan, I’m severely lacking in specific information at this point in time. This is what I hope to achieve in my paper, though, with what I know so far.
The first topic I will address will be what Tolkien borrowed from Shakespeare, the most famous being his use of the ents to mirror the Dunsinane Wood moving in Hamlet. There are other correlations found between how Queen Titania is described in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and how he describes Galadriel. Following the correlations will be an examination of how Tolkien deviated from those portrayals of fae and magic folk, more importantly how he dignified them with culture. Here, I will emphasize his feelings expressed in his essay on Fairy Tales, as he does make a point against dressing the fae in cowslips and giving them carriages of spider’s legs.
The other information which I have not been able to read myself will concern the larger portrayal of fae and other magical creatures throughout early English fairy tales. Again, I have yet to actually receive this information, and am not sure on just what I have to work with. But, there will be a major emphasis on how Tolkien took the previous lore on magical creatures and dignified them with rich history, and cultures of their very own. The importance here is that Tolkien could have gathered all of the old tales concerning the whimsical creatures, stayed with the traditional image and wrote with that, but did not. He went off on a venture all his own, and was accepted.
Devon Cozad? October 29, 2008, at 07:25 PM
