Dec 24, 2009

Dune | Literary Precedents

One of the reasons reviewers initially disliked Dune was its resemblance to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), which had profoundly influenced popular fiction. Tolkien created an imaginary world called "Middle Earth," replete with its own history, customs, societies, languages, and literature. Dune, too, had these elements, and some reviewers seemed weary of seeing them in imitations of Tolkien's trilogy. One such similarity between The Lord of the Rings and Dune is the use of quotations from imaginary writings to give events the illusion of historical perspective, as...