I agree. Tolkien is literature. I know many libraries/book stores don't have a separate literature section, but, in my mind, that's where Tolkien belongs. The work has lasting value and literary merit. Academics study it and publish articles/books about it. This is one of the things that separate it from fantasy or general fiction. (I don't mean to imply that a work must receive academic/critical attention in order to be good, but it is one of the ways we tend to judge such things.)
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"Art is our way of keeping track of what we know and have known, secretly, from the beginning."--John Gardner
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