@dferg @bar1scorpio @KaliYuga1984 @BrianNiemeier Sure, man. There was a time not that long when people that wanted to write a fantasy story would imitate not J. R. R. Tolkien but Lord Dunsany. This is hard for many people to believe, but check Ursula Le Guin's essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" if you need confirmation.
@dferg @bar1scorpio @KaliYuga1984 @BrianNiemeier A lot of people have attempted to make fantasy more serious, more significant, and even more literate over the years. The irony here is that the people in the vanguard of these efforts will do anything but the sort of things that would actually make such an undertaking possible.
@dferg @bar1scorpio @KaliYuga1984 @BrianNiemeier But then you have Lord Dunsany doing it effortlessly at a time when Fantasy™ wasn't even supposed to exist yet. The timing here really is key. No world wars had happened yet. Women's suffrage hadn't happened. The Russian Revolution had not happened yet. It was another world.
@dferg @bar1scorpio @KaliYuga1984 @BrianNiemeier Tolkien may have shunned allegory, but The Lord of the Rings is very much in reaction to the worst the 20th century has to offer. And there is bitterness there, a deep sadness at a great many beautiful things irrevocably passing away.
@dferg @bar1scorpio @KaliYuga1984 @BrianNiemeier Tolkien made a great case that we read fantasy out of a desire for escape in his seminal essay "On Fairy Stories", so it is ironic that one would have to look outside of his oeuvre in order to find it. So weary am I with the fruits of modernity, that is where I find myself.
@dferg @bar1scorpio @KaliYuga1984 @BrianNiemeier Dunsany's command of the English language is astonishing. His innately Irish sense of rhythm is saturated in the prose of the King James Bible and is wielded with only one aim in mind: to produce undiluted wonder. It is awesome.
@dferg @bar1scorpio @KaliYuga1984 @BrianNiemeier He is one of those authors that most of us can't even imagine existing at this point. That is reason enough to read him in and of itself. But he also directly inspired H. P. Lovecraft. Fantasy's debt to Lord Dunsany is thus incontestable. Enjoy!
