Why Tolkien?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

(As an aside, let me suggest that davem would not be such a reader, given his recent thread where he insisted that historical veracity had to be the ultimate means of assessing Tolkien.)

Not at all - though this is not the place to pick up that particular gauntlet - I was merely asking whether historical veracity (or its absence) is important in a fantasy world, & how much leeway an author of a fantasy novel has.

Of course, it may well be that it is the absence of the gritty nastiness of the real/Primary world that makes Tolkien's creation so attractive - that the 'moral'/ethical (let alone the 'religious') dimension doesn't play any part in what really attracts us to Middle-earth. Its Faery, & Faery exerts a strange pull on many of us. Why that should be I don't know, but it has nothing to do with moral codes & everything to do with a sense of wonder awakened.

"Still round the corner..." & all that