J. R. R. Tolkien's influences

Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1960s however,... a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other media. Stories involving , paranormal magic and terrible monsters have existed in spoken forms before the advent of printed literature. Homer's Odyssey satisfies the definition of the fantasy genre with its magic, gods, heroes, adventures and monsters. Fantasy literature, as a distinct type, emerged in Victorian times, with the works of writers such as William Morris and George MacDonald. J. R. R. Tolkien played a large role in the popularization and accessibility of the fantasy genre with his highly successful publications The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings . Rarely does one consider modern fantasy without conjuring the memory and image of Tolkien and his creations. Tolkien was largely influenced by an ancient body of Anglo-Saxon myths, particularly Beowulf, as well as modern works such as The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison.
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As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic... circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as having heroic qualities, who goes on a quest. Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with ironic, satiric or burlesque intent. Romances reworked legends, fairy tales, and history to suit the readers' and hearers' tastes, but by c.1600 they were out of fashion, and Miguel de Cervantes famously satirised them in his novel Don Quixote. Still, the modern image of "medieval" is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, and the word medieval invokes knights, distressed damsels, dragons, and other romantic tropes. Originally, romance literature was written in Old French, Anglo-Norman and Occitan, later, in English and German. During the early 13th century romances were increasingly written as prose. In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there is a marked tendency to emphasize themes of courtly love, such as faithfulness in adversity.
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The adventure novel is a genre of novels that has adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main storyline.... Critic Don D'Ammassa, in the Introduction to the Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction defines the genre by stating that "an adventure is an event or series of events that happens outside the course of the protagonist's ordinary life, usually accompanied by danger, often by physical action. Adventure stories almost always move quickly, and the pace of the plot is at least as important as characterization, setting and other elements of a creative work." D'Ammassa argues that adventure novels make the element of danger the focus of their story; hence he argues that Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities is an adventure novel because the protagonists are in constant danger of being imprisoned or killed, whereas Dickens' Great Expectations is not because "Pip's encounter with the convict is an adventure, but that scene is only a device to advance the main plot, which is not truly an adventure." Adventure has been a common theme since the earliest days of written fiction.
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High fantasy or epic fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy that is set in invented or parallel worlds. High fantasy was brought to fruition through the... work of authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, whose major fantasy works were published in the 1950s. High fantasy has become one of the two genres most commonly associated with the general term fantasy, the other being sword and sorcery, which is typified by the works of Robert E. Howard. High fantasy is defined as fantasy fiction set in an alternative, entirely fictional world, rather than the real, or "primary" world. The secondary world is usually internally consistent but its rules differ in some way from those of the primary world. By contrast, low fantasy is characterized by being set in the primary, or "real" world, or a rational and familiar fictional world, with the inclusion of magical elements. Nikki Gamble distinguishes three subtypes of high fantasy: Where the primary world does not exist, detailed maps, geography and history of the fictional world will often be provided. The secondary world often is based on, or symbolically represents, the primary world.
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