Responding to Rusty's comments:
>A point I'd like to make re: REH vs. Tolkien and other
>"world-creators," is that Howard's "creation" seems to me to have
>been of a wholly different character, in that he was essentially
>using actual historical cultures, etc., to comprise his world. It
>is a world in which the ancient Egyptians, the pirates of the
>Spanish Main, the Cossacks, the Celtic Irish, the Vikings, and
>American frontiersmen could all mingle. It's a brilliant
>world-conception, in my view, but not the same thing as those guys
>who sit down and try to carefully construct a new planet and
>cultures from scratch. I think this is one reason Howard didn't
>need to write such detailed references either into or apart from his
>stories -- as many have noted repeatedly, Bob could assume that you
>already had a lot of the needed descriptive material in your head.
>Why should he spend a couple of pages describing a Shemite? You
>know what they look like....
True, I believe, about the difference between Tolkien's and Howard's
created imaginary worlds. Tolkien is doing the more purely
MYTHOPOEIC (myth creating/myth making/myth inventing). Howard, at
least to a degree, is doing what could be called MYTHOMORPHIC [my
term for this] or "myth shaping." In other words, REH is taking at
least inspiration from history and legend and filling in and
fabricating to fill holes or to explain legendary material -- sort of
like the many retellers of the Arthurian business and the "Matter of
Britain" as it's often called.
REH does get Mythopoeic though and springboards from this reshaping
of legend and a good grounding in historical research into the realms
of "wild surmise." Tolkien sets out from the get-go to create his
own world. It has bases, of course, in the myths, legends, and
languages of our world, but it is more of a total fabrication from
the inception onward. JRRT dabbles in history a bit with "The
Homecoming of Beortnoth, Beorthelm's Son" and "Farmer Giles of Ham"
(see TREE AND LEAF or in pb, THE TOLKIEN READER).
Frank
