What About Including Elves?

[scribblerworks]

I've been doing some thinking lately about why so many fantasy writers have the impulse to include "elves" (by that or any other name) in their fantasy worlds. I'd looked at the issue of immortality before, but this was a broader impulse.

I've posted the main discussion over on my Arveniem blog on my website.

Why do we have this impulse to include

Comments

[sartorias]

Tolkien. (Before him, there weren't elves in his sense in fantasy, though there were plenty of wee, twee folk.)

[scribblerworks]

It's been a long time since I read Eddison's The Worm Oroborus, and although he calls one of the races "witches", I think some of his peoples would qualify on the "elves" scale. And then we have the elves of Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter where the denizens are certainly more like the Sidhe than they are "wee, twee folk."

So I think there were at least a few examples of "Tolkien-style" elves before JRRT. They just didn't make as big an impression.

Hmmm. It would require more research. Think there's a Mythcon paper in it?
:D

[sartorias]

I don't recollect anything like Tolkien's elves in those--but like you, I haven't reread them for decades!