Elves in fantasy fiction and games: Encyclopedia II - Elves in fantasy fiction and games - The Elves of Tolkien

Elves in fantasy fiction and games - The Elves of Tolkien

Tolkien had little use for the diminutive elven prettiness and whimsy found in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and in various Victorian fairy tales. He conceived a race of beings similar to humans but fairer and wiser, with greater spiritual powers, keener senses, and a closer empathy with nature. They are great smiths and fierce warriors on the side of good. Tolkien's Elves of Middle-earth should be seen as a representation of what human beings might have become, had they not committed the original sin, and they are very much human, if unfallen and immortal; and although they can be killed by injury, and they do age, according to Tolkien's Letters, a slain elf simply returns to life after an indefinite period of time.

Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954-1958) became astoundingly popular and was much 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 (RPGs). Tolkien's elves were enemies of goblins (orcs) and had a longstanding quarrel with the dwarves -- these motifs also often reappear in Tolkien-inspired works. Tolkien is also responsible for reviving the older and less-used terms elven and elvish rather than Edmund Spenser's invented elfin and elfish. He probably preferred the word elf over fairy because elf is of Anglo-Saxon origin while fairy entered English from French.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Elves of Tolkien", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki