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Janet Brennan Croft is Head of Access Services at the University of Oklahoma libraries. She is the author of War and the Works of J. RR Tolkien (winner of the Mythopoeic Society Award for Inklings Studies), has published articles on Tolkien, Rowling, and Pratchett in numerous journals, and edited two collections of essays: Tolkien on Film: Essays on Peter Jackson 's Lord of the Rings and Tolkien and Shakespeare: Essays on Shared Themes and Language. She has also written on library issues for a number of professional journals, and is the author of Legal Solutions in Electronic Reserves and the Electronic Delivery of Inter library Loan. She is currently the Editor of Mythlore and book review Editor of Oklahoma Librarian, and serves on the board of the Mythopoeic Press.
Faktorovich: What separates these three writers from the other classical or current fantasy writers?
Croft: The Inklings came together and influenced each other at a watershed moment in modern fantasy. They were all practicing Christians, and all heavily influenced by both Edwardian fantasy and adventure and children's literature - The Wind in the Willows, Peter Pan, Rudyard Kipling, H. Rider Haggard, and so on - and a love for mythology. Yet they were also very much a product of World War I, Tolkien and Lewis both being veterans, and of the difficult relationship many post-war writers had with modernity. Post-Inklings fantasy is almost entirely different from what came before; as Terry Pratchett has said, fantasists may try to deny the influence of Tolkien in particular on their works, but he's always there in the background like Mt. Fuji - and when you can't see him, it's because they're standing on his shoulders. The Inklings are also increasingly seen as an example of the collaborative process of writing and how writers influence each other. For readers interested in learning more, I highly recommend Diana Pavlac Glyer's The Company They Keep and Jared Lobdell's The Rise of Tolkienian Fantasy.
Faktorovich: Can you explain the difference, from your research and classifications in the journal, between the genre of "myth" and the genre of "fantasy?" Are the two concepts interchangeable? Do any fantasies lack mythic elements? Are some myth non-fantastic? On your website you define the name of your society,...