Tolkien's advantage over most British authors is that he was a philologist, a linguist who knew the English (as well as Germanic and Indo-European language groups) from the inside. He brought his knowledge of language and his personal genius, and personal loves (the Shire, for example), into his favorite genre, myth. What a combination! If he is not the greatest British writer of the 20th century or any century, I would say that he is the greatest writer of myth of the modern era. I would go earlier, but then you're dealing with Snorri Sturrleson and the Beowulf poet, and that is so long ago that it's hard to compare them. The truly awe-inspiring thing about Tolkien is that in an era when myth was considered dead and no better than stories for children, he revived the entire genre singlehandedly and made it respectable; no, he brought it back to its original status as the best genre of literature there is. That's my opinion.
[ March 17, 2002: Message edited by: littlemanpoet ]
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