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etiam
It would be very interesting to have a corresponding one for elves before (and beyond) Tolkien.
inawarminister
IIRC the Fae are the Celtic/Irish (British) equivalent of Norse elves and they do have the tradition of Changelings, half-Fey half-human children who can choose to be human or Fae when they went into adulthood. So not that much different in outcome from Tolkienish Eldar.
slowmovintarget
I'll take Jim Butcher's fae. Funny enough, in Butcher's fiction, J.R.R. was the mortal champion of the Summer fae (the "nice" ones).
inawarminister
I wouldn't. The worst of Eldars in the Silmarrion is much lesser evil than even the best among the Dresdenverse Fae. For one, the former doesn't try to steal your children because you inadvertently made a deal with them.

But to be honest, as characters the Dresden Fae makes sense. And humans can and do become Fae, if only at the cost of your mortal soul. So not that much separation unlike the Firstborn and the Atani.

(Incidentally, I really like this fanfic about Harry Potter waking up in Dresdenverse and got hitched with Aurora, the Seelie Summer Lady; breaking the canon plot in the process. I don't think a similar relationship can really happen between a Tolkien Elf and a human (or other mortal) without something really special going on. Like Aragorn or, uh, his First Age ancestors.

wayoutthere
This level of analysis on fiction makes me wonder if most organized religions are little more than devoted fandoms whose basis in fiction was lost over time.

I can totally imagine a future civilization taking LotR or ASOIAF as the basis for a religion. Not that it would be a world I'd want to live in, but I can see it. If it can happen for Scientology, anything is possible.

sorokod
I guess they are similar in that both strive to understand the universe more completley.

Motivation may differ though, intellectual curiosity in one case, fear of eternal damnation in another.

zebrafish
At least with LotR, the fiction is intended to parallel Christianity which is an organized religion. Tolkien was C.S. Lewis’s primary introduction to the religion and inspired him to write fiction also based on gospel principles.
krapp
As I understand it, Tolkien strongly objected to the premise that his work was in any way allegorical in the same sense as C.S. Lewis' books.

Writing about moral principles, the struggle between good and evil, how greed can corrupt, etc, isn't the same as writing a "parallel" to Christianity. Those themes are universal to humankind, not specific to a single religion.

kepano
I’ve long thought this about Norse mythology. I don’t think there is much of a difference between being a fan of Thor in the 11th century or the 21st.
joelmichael
The origin of Christianity was the resurrection event of Jesus Christ. It was not regarded as fiction at the time.
Trav5
The parent comments point is that it could have been regarded as fiction at the time, but that was lost over time. If that were the case, we would not know that it was ever considered to be fiction.
seanmcdirmid
“At the time” was a few hundred years after his death. There isn’t even Roman records for him, let alone his crucification. Christianity also underwent several drastic dogma shifts between their early years and what eventually came out a thousand years later, a Christian today would barely recognize an early Christian’s beliefs at all. None of this is unique to Christianity of course, all religions undergo similar evolutions.
joelmichael
Scholars generally accept that the book of Mark was written between 66-70 AD. The idea that the gospels were written "hundreds of years later" is a common myth on the Internet that scholars do not take seriously. It is clear that Jesus's followers believed in his resurrection, they proclaimed it loudly and suffered and died for it, gaining many converts.
parrellel
It might also be useful to think about when various cultures began to make the distinction between fiction and nonfiction - when story was segregated from empirical fact. Without that line things get interesting.
eralps
I really enjoy this thought. Information obviously was not as easily accessed as today. I like to think it was possible to turn a fiction story to real in less than a century.
m4r35n357
Heh, Tolkien thought of everything ;) Seriously though, "Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth" ("The Debate of Finrod and Andreth") is a masterpiece IMO. Starting out as a dry but interesting philosophical debate about how elves and humans see the afterlife, it develops to a truly devastating twist near the end.