[davem]

I mean that if people think of it as a "true" mythology as opposed to a synthetic one it means that Tolkien's role is forgotten... so successful he disappears.

I suspect he may have wanted that.The art transcends the artist. I'm not sure what we gain by knowing so much about Tolkien's personal history. Doesn't it get in the way? If we read The Passage of the Marshes with thoughts of Tolkien's Somme experiences in our minds we are not fully 'there' with Frodo & Sam & the power of the moment will be lost on us. Same with the 'fact' that there are 'similarities' between the descriptions of Mordor & Dickens description of factory polluted northern towns.

While there may be a good deal of dross to gold, if it means that Tolkien takes his proper place in the literary world rather than being regarded as "unplaceable".

Is that really important? I'm less & less interested in whether Tolkien is accepted into the Literature Hall of Fame. I just want to wander in Middle-earth. That's why I came to love Tolkien's work in the first place. I didn't read LotR or TH for the first time thinking 'Well, I'm shocked that this wasn't in the classics section along with Cervantes & Austen! I must campaign to get this book accepted by the literati!' I just fell in love with world Tolkien had created.

As I say, my complaint is that the scholars don't seem to be saying anything of any great importance anymore. Shippey's Author of the Century is an important work, so is Fliger's Splintered Light, & A Question of Time. But those books are years old. What we are getting now is just more & more about less & less. And none of it has any of the 'magic' that I find in an actual reading of the stories.