/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15420934]

Is Tolkien's Legendarium the first truly fantastic world? By which I mean the first invented fictional universe existing completely independent of our real universe?

There's definitely some fictional universes that almost make the grade but don't.

Worlds like Neverland, Oz, and Narnia are connected to our world by some physical or magical means, and so are disqualified. So too is something like the Hyborian Age or the Cthulu mythos, as these are essentially alternate histories. Some places like Utopia or The Lost World are fictional places that exist in our reality, so they are disqualified on those grounds, while Plato's Republic is disqualified on account of being an admitted thought experiment.

I think Blake's mythology comes close, but it literally borrows from mythology, Adam and Satan for example, so it is not truly independent either.

Of course Tolkien was inspired by some European mythologies, but as far as I can tell he takes literally nothing directly from them, nor does it connect his universe directly to any mythology nor to our universe.

[Anonymous No.15421188]

>>15420934
There were others doing mythopoeia before Tolkien, though it wasn’t nearly as expansive as Middle Earth. The gods of Pegana by Dunsany, the works of George MacDonald, and The Worm Ouroboros by Eddison come to mind.

[Anonymous No.15422822]

Tolkien stole 90% of his mythos and mythology from Kalevala. You must be a fucking retard ifyou think it was "the first fantastic" world when it was basically just a copy of the Kalevala.

Pic related. Stay retarded kid.