Moria's Nameless Things...

[Checkmate]

Is there any evidence that Tolkien was even aware of Lovecraft? Yes, I can easily imagine the Nameless Things as something vaguely Lovecraftian, but that doesn't quite fit with Tolkien.

Let's see. Something so unbelievable horrible that the most powerful entity to ever walk the earth refuses to talk about it? And so beyond comprehension that its simply referred to as "Nameless Things."

Hmm. Yeah. Only "vaguely" Lovecraftian all right.

I'm with Lonemagpie. I'm sorry, but you have to be pretty self-deluded to not see that he stole the idea from Lovecraft even if he never bothered to mention it. Unless you want to try and go down the equally deluded path and claim that it's some kind of simultaneous creation between the two. Nevermind that, once again, almost everything Tolkien put out aside from a made-up language was ripped off from other sources. Clearly he would have stopped here and made up "his" Nameless Things totally from scratch. Yessir. Without a doubt, that must be it!!!

 

[Klaus]

Well if that's your take on what Tolkien did, you must REALLY not like George Lucas then...

...but I'm puzzled at your vehemence. JRRT never claimed to invent the Quest story or to have made his mythology out of whole cloth. As a student of such things he knew that the various European mythologies [and others] share many elements, so he used what he liked and combined them in a different way with emphasis on different things.

Speaking for myself and many other of his fans, what makes him so appealing isn't that he did something that had never been done before, but that we think he did it as well or better than anyone else has, at least in English. [I won't claim superiority over what I haven't read] We love the detail and passion of Middle-Earth and its peoples, the classic characters, the clash of good and evil, and the other things that make fantasy appealing to its fans.

I'm not saying you have to like him, but I just find your criticism puzzling...

 

[Checkmate]

I don't mind him doing it at all.

I mind the people trying to claim that he came up with all (or really any) of this stuff completely on his own, either directly or indirectly. Note the guy I quoted was questioning the possibility that he would have borrowed something from Lovecraft that screams Lovecraft. That's a prime example of what drives me barmy.

 

[Klaus]

Well I'm not sure if he read Lovecraft or not... from what I've read of his life I'm not sure he read much "current" fantasy [or anything else other than academic needs] while writing The Hobbit and LotR [other than what was read to him by his fellow Inklings]... it may indeed be a coincidence, I'm not sure there's a way to know. The passage, as much as I love it, seems more of a literary aside than something he went to the trouble to borrow, but that's just me. The concept of unknown things living deep in the earth certainly predates Lovecraft too.

 

[Thestral]

I don't mind him doing it at all.

I mind the people trying to claim that he came up with all (or really any) of this stuff completely on his own, either directly or indirectly. Note the guy I quoted was questioning the possibility that he would have borrowed something from Lovecraft that screams Lovecraft. That's a prime example of what drives me barmy.

If you don't mind him doing it, why the phrase "ripped off"?

And you do have to give him credit for his language(s?)... the man was a linguist by trade, after all.

Ultimately no storyteller in the last several thousand years comes up with something completely on his or her own, especially in the realm of mythology/mythic history. At best, they recombine, repackage, reinvent, re-present, and Tolkien was an expert at that.

And that applies to Lovecraft too; the idea of ancient unnamed/unnameable beings doesn't originate with Lovecraft (see for example C.S. Lewis in The Silver Chair for another, vastly different, cameo of the ancient unnameables), he just made them a centerpiece and crystallized their origin, depiction, and result of encounter for generations to come.

It's perfectly fair to think of Moria's Nameless Things as being an independent cameo of the sort of primordial beings that Lovecraft developed into a unique, horrific mythology.

 

[RoJoHen]

It's funny. I love the world that Tolkein created but I can't stand the books.

I'm right there with ya. It took me 3 years to get through LOTR because I kept getting annoyed with it.

 

[Annoiu]

I'm guessing that Checkmate has yet to understand the difference between influence and plagiarism and reconcile the idea of originality in art with the fact that no art is created in a cultural vacuum. This is the only explanation I can think of for his constant use of the phrase "ripped off" and his refusal to acknowledge any originality in Tolkien because Tolkien used ideas from various European mythologies in the creation of his own.

As for any influence from Lovecraft, I suppose it's possible, but since we don't have to look beyond the sources we know that Tolkien used to find similar concepts it seems more likely that the idea of unnamed creatures in the bowels of the earth comes from there than from a contemporary pulp writer that Tolkien may or may not have been aware of.

I find it interesting that he is at least as derisive of Tolkien for the one bit of originality he is willing to acknowledge as he is for the perceived lack of originality in the other aspects of Tolkien's work.

 

[Lonemagpie]

I'm with Lonemagpie. I'm sorry, but you have to be pretty self-deluded to not see that he stole the idea from Lovecraft even if he never bothered to mention it.

I wouldn't say stole an idea- I'd say gave a nod to a recent contemporary in the creating-a-fictional-world-and-mythology thing...

 

[Lonemagpie]

Is there any evidence that Tolkien was even aware of Lovecraft? Yes, I can easily imagine the Nameless Things as something vaguely Lovecraftian, but that doesn't quite fit with Tolkien.

Actually it does - Lovecraft was creating a new fictional worldview and mythology in his day, and JRR must have at least heard about that. More importantly, he's known to not be above little humourous injokes - for example "casting" his friend CS Lewis as Treebeard. (The "hrrrm-hroom" thing that Treebeard does was well known to students of the two writers when they taught at university, as the sound that preceded Lewis' entry into a room!)

If you want to look at Tolkien maybe nicking stuff, you'd be better off looking at de la Motte Fouque's Der Zauberring... There's not much similarity but again it's something you can see JRR had to have been aware of and made some nods to.

 

[TedShatner10]

Tolkien made a blatant nod to Lovecraft (ie. the horrible tenticled monster emerging from a large body of water, where the huge ancient ruins of a dead civilization are located, etc).

 

[Greylock Crescent]

Is there any evidence, though, of Tolkien being influenced by Lovecraft? Beyond speculation, I mean? Certainly it isn't unreasonable to at least consider the possibility, but is there any evidence that Tolkien had read Lovecraft? Or was even aware of Lovecraft's work? Unless there is, the discussions seems purely speculative and without any real point -- as in, it's tough to disprove a negative and all that.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Is there any evidence, though, of Tolkien being influenced by Lovecraft? Beyond speculation, I mean? Certainly it isn't unreasonable to at least consider the possibility, but is there any evidence that Tolkien had read Lovecraft? Or was even aware of Lovecraft's work?

We have Tolkien's notes and letters and he's never mentioned Lovecraft in any of them. Of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Tolkien made a blatant nod to Lovecraft (ie. the horrible tenticled monster emerging from a large body of water, where the huge ancient ruins of a dead civilization are located, etc).

That could as easily be Nessie, or the Kraken

 

[Alpha_Geek]

What were they?

Bea Arthur and Ernest Borgnine doing the nasty, Moria style.