Elves in Modern Fantasy Literature
Early pioneers of the genre such as Lord Dunsany in The King of Elfland's Daughter and Poul Anderson in The Broken Sword featured Norse-style elves. However, the Elves (capitalized, since they are considered a nationality of sorts) found in the works of the 20th-century philologist and fantasy writer J. R. R. Tolkien have formed the view of elves in modern fantasy like no other singular source.
The first appearance of modern fantasy elves occurred in The King of Elfland's Daughter, a 1924 novel by Lord Dunsany. The next modern work featuring elves was The Hobbit, a 1937 novel by J. R. R. Tolkien. Elves played a major role in many of Tolkien's later works, notably The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's elves were followed by grim Norse-style elves of human size in Poul Anderson's 1954 fantasy novel The Broken Sword.
Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) became astoundingly popular and was extensively imitated. In the 1960s and afterwards, elves similar to those in Tolkien's novels became staple non-human characters in high fantasy works and in fantasy role-playing games. Tolkien's Elves were enemies of goblins (orcs) and had a long-standing quarrel with the Dwarves; these motifs would re-appear in derivative works.
Read more about this topic: Elves In Fantasy Fiction And Games
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