Jump to content

References and Homages


Ran
 Share

Recommended Posts

[*] Lord Titus Peake: A reference to Mervyn Peake and his seminal work of fantasy,

the Gormenghast trilogy, starting with Titus Groan.

I aslo wonder if "Ghaston Grey" is based on Gormemghast - both are dreary old places, although the former must be relatively small since it is in the middle of the Sea of Dorne, and the latter is vast.

Aratan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

couple potentially nifty ones here:

SPOILER: the one
compare-- "The Cinnamon Wind was a swan ship out of Tall Trees Town on the Summer Isles, where men were black, women were wanton, and even the gods were strange" (penultimate Samwell chapter)

with-- "I have crossed many mountains and many rivers, and trodden many plains, even into the far countries of Rhun and Harad where the stars are strange" (aragorn in LotR)

curious. swan ships from the teleri, too? at least tolkien's casual racism doesn't seem to exist in martin, though strange things tend to be afoot when we're talking about some black folks in all these books.

SPOILER: the other
brienne's early companion shadrich, the mad mouse, is roughly the same type of unsavory hireling evident in mieville's shadrach of PSS, though the physical descriptions differ, and it would be more apt to associate that character with moths than with mouses. heh. perhaps tolkien's shadrach, of the tower of cirirth ungol is better? I know not. or is it more likely that all three draw on the similarly named character from the book of daniel? no idea. will have to wait until the martin character develops further, especially vis-a-vis furnaces.

Edited by sologdin
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do Hedge Knight references count?

SPOILER: AFFC
Brienne asks the shield-painter to replicate the design of Dunk's shield. "...the sight of it took her back through the long years, to the cool dark of her father's armory. She remembered how she'd run her fingertips across the cracked and fading paint, over the green leaves of the tree, and along the path of the falling star." p140, US edition.

Maester Aemon also drops a few references to Dunk and Egg here and there, but I don't have the page numbers for those.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the passage describing how Tywin ruled the realm, but Joanna ruled Tywin owes something to I, Claudius by Robert Graves:

"Augustus ruled the world, but Livia [Augustus' wife] ruled Augustus."

(Claudius himself seems to be a big influence in terms of the creation of Tyrion).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was browsing the used record store earlier and came across a band called Marillion--at first I was excited because they might have been a ref. to GRRM, but some of their records were copyrighted 1988. Anyone heard this band, or know if GRRM might be referencing them in the name of his singer? (I was too cheap to buy any.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...