Posted by Gobnait on April 9, 2000 at 00:16:52:
In Reply to: That and Eye of the World = Cheap Tolkien ripoff posted by Narev on April 8, 2000 at 11:18:24:
While it's nice to think that Tolkien was some fantastic pioneer, he really just took stuff that was already around and put it together in a new way. Read an annotated version of the hobbit sometime. All those riddles between Bilbo and Gollum are based on existing riddles in english literature. I'm sure most of the themes in the LotR are also based on older legends. Tolkien just put it all into a new package.
Robert Jordan has done much the same thing.