[RashanThyr]

Hey Forum! I just got an assignment from my writing teacher to do a Comparison essay, and I chose to do MBotF vs LotR. I'm here to see if you have any advice on some of the topics and comparison I could do, as obviously there are a lot of them, but I want to pick the most important or interesting ones. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

[Grief]

Given Erikson's recent comments on the dangers of fantasy universes importing social and cultural norms from our universe without question (here and here), you could compare the manner in which both works use cultural norms from our universe, considering whether Erikson's comments are applicable to Tolkien as well as the extent to which Erikson succeeds at avoiding taking these norms into his universe without questioning them.

It depends on how long an essay you're trying to do, and what sort of level you're aiming at. You could narrow the above question down to particular norms if it's too broad for your word length.

Other comparisons could be the use of mythology, the manner in which morality is presented, depictions of the reasons for warfare and its validity, representations of immortality, representations of innocence and purity, depictions of the natural landscape... there are undoubtedly tons more, since we're talking about two really large works.

It might help if you could narrow down particular parts of the series, or characters, that you'd like to write about?

[amphibian]

Here's my idea: the treatment of women in LotR vs women in Malazan. Do they have complete plot arcs? How many of them marry a man? Are they arbiters of their own fate, someone else's fate and/or the fates of many others? Do they have sex? Are they important?

[RashanThyr]

For length, I'm thinking to keep around 5 pages, give or take a few pages. For topics, the only concrete one that I have would be a Tiste and Elves comparison, and how immortality has affected each. The women comparison would also be a good one to do. Would it be wise to a comparison of the use of Magic in both series, and how it's used? And could I write about how Malazan subverts the tropes that LotR presents?
Comparing cultural norms and how their used might turn out to be a bit too long for what I want.

[Puck]

I like amph's idea, would surely be an interesting topic that's both up to current social discourse and also precise enough to fit into five pages. Also, lots of examples that could be used.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

amphibian, on 31 March 2015 - 03:40 PM, said:

Here's my idea: the treatment of women in LotR vs women in Malazan. Do they have complete plot arcs? How many of them marry a man? Are they arbiters of their own fate, someone else's fate and/or the fates of many others? Do they have sex? Are they important?

This was going to be my suggestion, but amph beat me to it. Consider this seconded

[Grief]

RashanThyr, on 31 March 2015 - 04:31 PM, said:

For length, I'm thinking to keep around 5 pages, give or take a few pages. For topics, the only concrete one that I have would be a Tiste and Elves comparison, and how immortality has affected each. The women comparison would also be a good one to do. Would it be wise to a comparison of the use of Magic in both series, and how it's used? And could I write about how Malazan subverts the tropes that LotR presents?
Comparing cultural norms and how their used might turn out to be a bit too long for what I want.

There probably is scope for an essay on the magic in each world, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to avoid the essay seeming superficial. The differences are reasonably obvious, but you don't just want to list those, you'd want to talk about the narrative purpose served by magic in each universe, why it's the way it is in particular, and what influences they're drawing on.

The immortality question is certainly doable, you could also go beyond the Tiste and consider the Imass etc (and possibly also the Ents and Maiar) if you have space. Again, you'd want to avoid just listing the differences, and talking about how the different attitudes regarding immortality shed light on the different philosophical tones of the novel.

You could write about how Erikson subverts tropes from LotR, but I think you'd want to narrow that down so that it has a more specific focus. You could talk about tropes he subverts in a particular area, but I think just considering all the tropes he subverts might be a bit much for 5 pages, and lead to you only being able to give a brief discussion on each partiular trope. This could work similarly to doing an essay on social norms, with the main difference being that you'd be discussing genre stereotypes rather than stereotypes carried over from the real world.

If cultural norms would be a bit long, it's easily narrowed down. Amph has suggested gender norms as one possibility. There are loads of norms you could consider (racial, sexual, religious, political, economic, environmental, philosophical, scientific, aesthetic etc...), with the main difference being that some are more easily accessible in those works than others. I think gender is probably a rather accessible and fruitful norm to consider.

Puck, on 31 March 2015 - 04:50 PM, said:

I like amph's idea, would surely be an interesting topic that's both up to current social discourse and also precise enough to fit into five pages. Also, lots of examples that could be used.

I'm sure (though I haven't checked) that you could easily find some useful secondary work discussing women in Tolkien.

A different approach to the one suggested by Amph might be to consider the manner in which women talk and are talked about in each work. There are plenty of other possible approaches.

It does depend on the level you're writing for though. If you've not done this sort of work before, you might want to read some introductory articles on discourse theory and gender criticism to help structure your work.

Edit: I kind of want to write an essay considering how effectively MbotF succeeds in challenging imported norms in the way Steve's interviews suggest fantasy can and should...Great. I really don't have time for this

[worry]

Thesis: MBotF characters don't do enough singing.

[Ribald]

With 5 pages you are actually very limited in what you can address if you want to do any thorough analysis. Given the size and scope of both LotR and MBotF you might want to limit it to one book of each and a very specific aspect of the writing.
There is already a huge amount of material available online and in research libraries about Tolkien's work, so any topic you decide on with have a wealth of academic research that you can draw upon.

Two topics of interest are the apparent moral simplicity of Tolkien's world versus the moral complexity of Malazan, and the Eurocentric Medievalism of Middle Earth versus the cultural diversity in Malazan.

If you pick one specific example of Moral complexity from each work you can devote two pages of analysis to each, which leaves you with half a page for introduction and half a page for conclusion. If you used GotM you could easily do two pages on Rake as introduced as the 'Dark Lord of Moon's Spawn' and how that perception and perspective is challenged and changed in the latter sections of the books, and place that in contrast to Sauron who is the Evil Dark lord, because he is the evil dark lord.

The Eurocentric versus Diversity argument goes more to a genre argument rather than a comparison between works.

[Grief]

Ribald, on 01 April 2015 - 01:08 AM, said:

With 5 pages you are actually very limited in what you can address if you want to do any thorough analysis. Given the size and scope of both LotR and MBotF you might want to limit it to one book of each and a very specific aspect of the writing.
There is already a huge amount of material available online and in research libraries about Tolkien's work, so any topic you decide on with have a wealth of academic research that you can draw upon.

Two topics of interest are the apparent moral simplicity of Tolkien's world versus the moral complexity of Malazan, and the Eurocentric Medievalism of Middle Earth versus the cultural diversity in Malazan.

If you pick one specific example of Moral complexity from each work you can devote two pages of analysis to each, which leaves you with half a page for introduction and half a page for conclusion. If you used GotM you could easily do two pages on Rake as introduced as the 'Dark Lord of Moon's Spawn' and how that perception and perspective is challenged and changed in the latter sections of the books, and place that in contrast to Sauron who is the Evil Dark lord, because he is the evil dark lord.

The Eurocentric versus Diversity argument goes more to a genre argument rather than a comparison between works.

I like the idea of contrasting the morality of both works, but I'd be cautious about basing your analysis on differences in representations between GotM and the rest of the series, because of GotMisms. The differences between GotM and the rest of the series may partly be deliberately challenging a given representation by showing it from different perspectives, but they also might just be the result of SE changing the world a bit in the time gap between GotM and the rest of the series. It's still an absolutely feasible route, but with Rake for example I would maybe stick to comparing how he is presented at the beginning of GotM and the end of the novel, or comparing his representation in MoI with later in the series, just because there is a notable difference between GotM and the rest of MbotF in general. To avoid this, you could compare Sauron and The Crippled God, as TCG often seems to be presented as evil by nature or for its own sake, and doesn't appear in GotM.

When considering Eurocentricism and Diversity in Tolkien and Erikson, I think it ought to be possible to keep it specific enough. You can consider whether Tolkien associates Europe with a part of his world, whether it is a "good" part of his world or not, and whether he as a corollary connects non-European culture with other parts of his world. With Erikson you can use a somewhat similar technique, with Lether especially seeming a situation where he takes aspects of the real world into his universe in order to make a certain point. Again, it comes down to how you focus your essay -- here I might only use a few specific geographic locations for example. As a different approach, you could also consider which values and ideas each author presents positively, who holds these ideas in the work, and where these ideas are presented as originating, though this is perhaps harder in 5 pages, you could focus on only a few key values/ideas and it'd probably work.