39,327
edits
Older Than They Think/Literature: Difference between revisions
m
Mass update links
m (Mass update links) |
m (Mass update links) |
||
Line 22:
** An episode of ''QI'' (with Daniel Radcliffe himself guest starring!) showed that several of Rowling's proper names can be traced back to real English words. "Hagrid" comes from "hag-ridden," to have dreams about witches and witchcraft. "Dumbledore" is an Old English word for a bumblebee. And "muggle" was originally jazz slang for marijuana! And it was most certainly not from "The Legend of Rah and the Muggles."
* Some people seem to think that [[Diane Duane]]'s ''[[Young Wizards]]'' books are ripoffs of [[Harry Potter]], when actually Diane Duane began publishing her books in the early '80s. The only thing they have in common is "ordinary kid becomes a wizard and fights evil", but the reprints of the books have often been marketed as "something to read after you've finished Harry Potter." Duane has actually stated on her blog that she avoids reading the Harry Potter books in case anyone accuses her of ripping off Rowling's ideas for her latest books. The same has happened with the works of [[Diana Wynne Jones]], [[Susan Cooper]], and other young adult fantasy authors whose books went out of print for a while but experienced a resurgence in popularity after Harry Potter became a big hit, even though their books existed decades before Rowling began writing.
** One of the most nonsensical plagiarism allegations '''ever''' must surely be [[The Legend of Rah and The Muggles (Literature)|Nancy Stouffer's]] claim that the ''[[Harry Potter (Literature)|Harry Potter]]'' series is ripped off from her ''[[The Legend of Rah and The Muggles (Literature)|The Legend of Rah and The Muggles]]'' because, amongst other things, "both works take place in fantasy settings". Presumably, Stouffer has never heard of ''[[The Hobbit]]'', the entire ''[[Narnia]]'' series, or ''[[
*** Not to mention being unaware that "Muggles" is a character in [[Carol Kendall]]'s [[The Gammage Cup]], from 1959.
** Rowling has also been aaccused by rabid fantasy fans of "stealing" the idea of the Invisibility Cloak from Tolkien's Ring; they're clearly unaware that the idea of a magic ring, cloak, Tarnhelm or whatever is a staple of the folklore of many lands, and that Tolkien didn't ''invent'' this idea any more than Wagner did when he used it about a century before Tolkien.
* Bizarrely, even ''[[Discworld]]'' itself has given us an example of this with the character of Genghis Cohen. Now, obviously, that's a reference to Genghis ''Khan'', but most Pratchett fans don't know that "Genghis Cohen" is also the name of a philatelist in ''The Crying of Lot 49''.
** The character was originally introduced as Cohen the Barbarian, quite possibly a play-on of ''[[Conan the Barbarian]]''.
** Some fans thought that Inigo Skimmer of ''The Fifth Elephant'' was a reference to/parody of Inigo Montoya of ''[[The Princess Bride (Literature)|The Princess Bride]]'', as both are [[Career Killers]]. Pratchett corrected this, pointing out that Inigo is an old name and that if he was thinking of anyone, he probably got the name from [
** Terry also got a bit sarcastic with people commenting on ''[[Discworld (Literature)/The Wee Free Men|The Wee Free Men]]'' who seemed to think the concept of sheepdog trials was invented by the film ''[[Babe]]''.
* Film novelizations have existed [[The Master Mystery|since the 1920s]].
| |||