[This is my Introduction to an in-process book of essays on Tolkien.]
INTRODUCTION
There has been a lot of ink spilled or scribbled & lovingly inscribed over JRR Tolkien and his magnum opus, the cycle of the Lord of the Rings and its legendarium. Of late, there has even been a revival in Tolkien studies and an upsurge of interest in the Inklings. It might seem, therefore, presumptuous for an author to offer up yet another manuscript to this pyramid of paper, which accumulates over us like a leaning tower of Pisa, marking the spiritual spot where Christian fantasy renewed itself.
I can only plead as an excuse, the dearth of writing about LOTR's explicit alchemical aspects, incorporated by Tolkien in his work, and the one-sided nature of much Tolkien criticism. I hope to make explicit what and where these have failed, and to show Tolkien in the best possible light, so far. In this, I will be climbing a hill that others have built. If I succeed, I will have proved of him what Matthew Arnold spoke of Sophocles:
...But be his
My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole;
The mellow glory of the Attic stage,
Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.Matthew Arnold, To a Friend
To see something steadily, and to see it whole. Substitute, for Arnold's somewhat secular "Life", the phrase Agni, the Secret Fire, or the Flame Imperishable, and we are close. It is this closeness to Christian Revelation which I wish to draw forth and defend in his ouevre, as both a subject and an object, pleading as excuse, that most of what is written so far, sees him unsteadily and only partially. To see Tolkien steadily and whole is to no longer be impartial to his worth. Those few who have gotten closest still tend to emphasize one of Tolkien's many facets at the expense of the others.
Now it may seem odd to plead "wholeness" and "steadiness" for an escapist and a fantasist (as he has been derogated). Many would say he sees Life not at all, but only his own artifact. This, at least, is their claim. The irony, here, is that it is precisely on the issue of artifacts that Tolkien is deceptively vulnerable, but actually invincible. He seems to be merely doing fantasy, and therefore, is weak on Life, on realism, on the burning issues of things that matter. He appears to be a tempting target. Yet the accusations against him easily translate into his own language, and come back as questions to the accuser, perhaps too easily for the liking of those hurling them. And they come back bearing a mysterious message about "sub-Creation".
The stubborn critic may persist. Does Tolkien's work constitute an Arkenstone, a Silmaril, or a Ring of Doom? Did he create a Lothlorien or a Rivendell, or an Isengard? The alert reader may wish to warn the critic that we have, in asking the question this way, already bound ourselves into Tolkien's vision. Yet why is it that we instantly understand the analogy? Why do attacks so readily bring LOTR analogies to the mind? Tolkien is deceptively challenging, in this way. You can take him or leave him, but once you begin to grapple mentally with him, it becomes difficult to emerge unscathed. It might be safer not to read him, and to stick to Critical Theory, as theory only. Yet then, you are left standing very far off, and perhaps too far off to be an effective critic. This is, I fear, Michael Moorcock's situation in his Epic Poo essay, which although brilliantly literate, is pathetically appalling in being so frankly hostile to Tolkien at the superficial level.
For the very difficulty in properly approaching Tolkien is to grasp this difference (he makes much of) between artifact and artefact - that is, between something that is merely man-made (and therefore both replicates and amplifies the bias and error of the maker) and something that has a divine origin or blessing. I have chosen to contrast the two spellings of the same word (American and British) and give them different meanings, in order to elucidate Tolkien's distinction. For it is the difficulty of making or not seeing this distinction that separates those who appreciate Tolkien, and those who dislike him. If you understand ("stand under") that distinction, you are lead to posit Tolkien as the one thinker and storyteller who first and most clearly grasped this, and portrayed it powerfully in his art. Thus, in order to "take on" Tolkien, one would have to begin by being indebted to him. Put another way, in any other context, this is recognized (or used to be) as the true "mark" of a classic. One could not make war on War and Peace, or make your peace and part ways with it, without first grappling with the living soul conveyed in the art form. This wrestling with the angel would not leave the critic unchanged, but powerfully "moved", regardless of their other conclusions.
For the "making" of criticism, as much or more so, than the making of stories, involves "Ring-making". And so does reading. Is myth merely mythical? Is it restricted to pre-history and fairy tales? Do artifacts enslave man, and can artefacts free him? The Holy Grail, or Excalibur, or the Golden Fleece - these are artefacts not entirely made with human hands, if we allow Tolkien to convince with his power. Tolkien does not argue - instead, he reproduces such. He will even tell you (more or less, in his letters) in both theory and art, how the trick is done. He does not attempt to have you suspend disbelief, but rather, transforms it. He then teaches you how to do the same thing. That this might frighten, baffle, or disgust some modern critics, comes as no surprise. It is hardly shocking that a loss of faith in the spiritual "real I" (H/T C. Salvo, Gornahoor) goes along with a loss of Faith in the Creator. And one does not want to be reminded of the deep alienation of one with one's deepest self.
To denigrate this potential sub-Creation teaching in Tolkien, one must also (and this is the genius of Tolkien's vision) accuse all his artifices of being mere "artifacts". That is, they are wish-fulfillment, opiates for the masses, and superstitions that enslave and distract, or apologize for a status quo. This is the route that Fuerbach, Marx, and countless other moderns take in attacking holy icons, and it has been applied in our day to literary theory on a mass scale. There have been reams of post-structural, post-colonial, and post-modern critical studies that are all exercises in "Ring making". Harold Bloom terms them "schools of Resentment", and I believe he is accurate in categorizing them this way.
In the universities, the most surprising and reprehensible development came some twenty years ago, around 1968, and has had a very long-range effect, one that is still percolating. Suddenly all sorts of people, faculty members at the universities, graduate and undergraduate students, began to blame the universities not just for their own palpable ills and malfeasances, but for all the ills of history and society. They were blamed, and to some extent still are, by the budding school of resentment and its precursors, as though they were not only representative of these ills but, weirdly enough, as though they had somehow helped cause these ills and, even more weirdly, quite surrealistically, as though they were somehow capable of ameliorating these ills. It’s still going on—this attempt to ascribe both culpability and apocalyptic potential to the universities. It’s really asking the universities to take the place that was once occupied by religion, philosophy, and science. These are our conceptual modes. They have all failed us. The entire history of Western culture, from Alexandrian days until now, shows that when a society’s conceptual modes fail it, then willy-nilly it becomes a literary culture. This is probably neither good nor bad, but just the way things become. And we can’t really ask literature or the representatives of a literary culture, in or out of the university, to save society. Literature is not an instrument of social change or an instrument of social reform. It is more a mode of human sensations and impressions, which do not reduce very well to societal rules or forms.
Yet this attack on the literary canon has finally met its match.The attack, in Tolkien's case, must precisely admit (by its performance) the very thing that a hostile critic cannot (but must somehow) ignore in Tolkien - man's ability to sub-create artifacts which lead to his doom. It is this point that Tolkien critics are skewered upon - to interrogate Tolkien, effectively, one has to engage in the mimetic and performative art of sub-creation present in the LOTR. This is either through ideological critical theory, an obvious "Ring" of artifice, or through refusal to confront the poetic power of Tolkien's artistic mirror, to render one's self oblivious to the temptation and promise of sub-creation. In neither case do these critics see Tolkien "steadily or whole". And the manner in which Tolkien presents this teaching and executes the artifice, makes it difficult to excuse. I do not argue that one has to "like" Tolkien or his work, or indeed, read him ever at all. What I do deny is that someone like Michael Moorcock can really claim to have understood Tolkien or his work, or to do it any justice. It may be that a "greater than Tolkien" will come, or once was, or is already here. It may be that there are many, many other classics ahead of him, in the long line of spiritual art. But it is impossible to consign him to the midden heap of juvenile wish fulfiment or generic fantasy. And it is precisely this that his detractors have attempted to do, over and over again - Tolkien is a lightning rod. He keeps coming back from the dead.
This is because Tolkien's appreciation of man's basic spiritual dilemma, bringing it to the fore of his legendarium, makes him a dangerous and difficult opponent. In order to duel with him, one first has to admit, on a much more than tentative basis, the danger of making artifacts (whether one does this one's self, or accuses him of so doing). One might, for instance, attack Sir Walter Scott's fiction as barely readable or believable, the mere propaganda of a Scottish Squirearchy, but Sir Walter Scott never had the chance to defend himself from modern detractors. Sir Walter Scott wrote Ivanhoe, and assumed a sympathetic audience. He felt no need (for instance) to argue that chivalry was a pellucidly self-justifying code of conduct, since his audience still lived in Chivalry's nachtenschein. He did not lay bare or dramatize its spiritual roots, or make them self-consciously live, but rather entered into the pageantry of the exploits. He is an easier target for the wrath of the Enlightenment critic. The honest critic of Tolkien can maintain that he failed, but not that the attempt was not heroic, or the end justified, or the goal proper, or the standard unfitting. All of these are dangerous admissions for a modern critic, because Tolkien knows something they do not. He knows that they are sub-creating in participating with him; he knows that to criticize Middle Earth is to enter into it. Tolkien, unlike his critics, was aware that Middle Earth was in some important, mysterious sense, real. And this is precisely what the average reader becomes aware of, if their mind is not poisoned by critical theory, as well.
The failure of the modern assassination comes about because Tolkien fully anticipates the modern turn or attack. In fact, one might say, Tolkien is fully modern, himself, in this regard. Tolkien knew that the scale of values was under sustained assault, at its root, and that bare conservative "return to the past" would not suffice. It is fascinating that many of his detractors try to put him into this camp, as a "restorer of the village green" and defender of the pastoral Squirearchy. In this, they show some sense, because any serious assault on his fiction would have to come to grips with the doctrine of sub-Creation, and in doing so, make contact with Tolkien's metaphysics. This, they cannot afford by any means, to do or to allow.
Like Chesterton, and other orthodox Christian writers who substituted faith for artistic rigour he sees the petit bourgeoisie, the honest artisans and peasants, as the bulwark against Chaos. These people are always sentimentalized in such fiction because traditionally, they are always the last to complain about any deficiencies in the social status quo. They are a type familiar to anyone who ever watched an English film of the thirties and forties, particularly a war-film, where they represented solid good sense opposed to a perverted intellectualism. In many ways The Lord of the Rings is, if not exactly anti-romantic, an anti-romance...He claimed that his work was primarily linguistic in its original conception, that there were no symbols or allegories to be found in it, but his beliefs permeate the book as thoroughly as they do the books of Charles Williams and C. S. Lewis, who, consciously or unconsciously, promoted their orthodox Toryism in everything they wrote. While there is an argument for the reactionary nature of the books, they are certainly deeply conservative and strongly anti-urban, which is what leads some to associate them with a kind of Wagnerish hitlerism. I don't think these books are 'fascist', but they certainly don't exactly argue with the 18th century enlightened Toryism with which the English comfort themselves so frequently in these upsetting times. They don't ask any questions of white men in grey clothing who somehow have a handle on what's best for us. I suppose I respond so antipathetically to Lewis and Tolkien because I find this sort of consolatory orthodoxy as distasteful as any other self-serving misanthropic doctrine...The Lord of the Rings is a pernicious confirmation of the values of a declining nation with a morally bankrupt class whose cowardly self-protection is primarily responsible for the problems England answered with the ruthless logic of Thatcherism. Humanity was derided and marginalised. Sentimentality became the acceptable subsitute. So few people seem to be able to tell the difference.
Has Michael Moorcock never perused Tolkien's letters? Or read the Silmarillion? Has he even read the LOTR? There is not one mention of sub-Creation in Moorcock's essay.
A critique of Tolkien cannot seriously proceed without addressing the deepest thread woven into his work, and yet to his peril, he perforce must treat it on a shallow basis. Which is the greater peril? To ignore it, or to engage it? By grappling with sub-Creation, they would be forced to admit a great portion of Tolkien's integral argument. To shoot serious arrows at LOTR, is to draw attention to its deepest themes. Even worse, like Roko's Basilik, to even know about the doctrine of sub-Creation, is to be drawn into its power. More terrible (for them), Tolkien makes Middle Earth itself a living sub-Creation, and so does not have to dogmatize. To really steer clear of Tolkien, you have to see the danger of this. But to see this danger, you probably will have to read LOTR, or an equivalent (is there one?). And that means it is too late - you have wandered too far down the road, beyond safe bounds. You cannot, once you understand what Tolkien means by "true myth" or "subcreation", entirely "unsee" this. And you see it in his very art, itself, without knowing that you see it, at first. The critic himself (or herself) is instantly confronted (albeit perhaps subconsciously) with their own artifactual and artefactual myth-making power of sub-Creation, with its attendant theological and metaphysical dimensions. The mirror of Galadriel is held before their eyes. They can turn quickly away, but it must be swift. And even then, perhaps, it is too late.
For all these reasons and more, Tolkien can neither be safely ignored or attacked. And this alternate ignoring and blindly attacking is precisely what we see unfolding so far in the history of Tolkien criticism. To classically or clinically dissect LOTR, with whatever scalpel is chosen, is to come into contact with the living stories out of which he wove the narrative, and to be induced, by the power of myth, and to be initiated, into that very doctrine of sub-Creation lurking and soaring and galloping through every page of his work, depending upon the internal being and nature of the reader. It is very difficult, for instance, to make the case that the invisible powers behind the Ents, or Tom Bombadil, Lothlorien, or the Caves of Aglaround, represent a mere affirmation of Tory values or Christian Orthodoxy. After all, the "magic" in Tolkien is equally hated by many Christians who claim to apppreciate literature, and understand their own faith. And how does one explain that, exactly, without agreeing with Tolkien about sub-Creation? The critics seem to share, in common, from all sides, a kind of vulgar aversion to the "true Myth". Why, cry some well meaning Christians, does Tolkien rely on all this "magic" to make his point?
When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures. - Flannery O'Connor
Tolkien's colleague, Owen Barfield, might add that the Gospel is so-named because it is "God's Spell", as well as "Good News". And if this seems odd etymology or a misleading non sequitur, perhaps this is for the same reason one rejects Tolkien's "magic". That one is in need of the very Enchantment you despise, cannot be welcome news to people who take themselves seriously.
Tolkien, in short, has become a magnificent Tar Baby for the modern critic. For those too stupid or too intelligent to ignore him, they sense in his art something that both challenges and answers questions which their fear or ignorance cannot even frame. They are thus confronted with the spiritual stature of this man, and the confrontation is not an equal nor a safe one. As salt in the wounds of these critics, precisely because the power of myth is attached to other, perhaps more personal, biases of Tolkien (eg., his preference for the West Midlands accent, or Roman Catholic devotion, etc.), even Tolkien's weaknesses are given new legitimacy and life. Michael Moorcock may dearly hope that LOTR is the very last agrarian idyll ever penned, but that is a vain hope. It is far more likely that just as the Aeneid inspired the Middle Ages over a millenium, LOTR may inspire centuries ahead of us. We are looking at, in short, a work close to the level of The Divine Comedy. And it is "fully modern". We are living through the cosmogony, the birth in time and space, of an immortal classic that will be discussed 2000 years from now, when Elric Stormbringer is no more. Tolkien will be seen as part of the Odyssey-Aeneid-Divine Comedy progression.
Since the doctrine of sub-Creation creates legitimate possibilites within a moral universe (and even more, according to Tolkien, constitutes the being of the moral universe itself), to join the fray against him transports one immediately inside the moral universe of the LOTR. This moral universe is more comprehensive, that is, more Steady and more Whole, than the modern one. The critic becomes judged and trapped by the very thing one had hoped to avoid. This is the very definition of the power of sub-Creation, which is for good or evil. It is a doom, in the older sense of the word, or a reckoning. To judge Tolkien, is to be transported into the participation of what it means to "judge", to "participate", or to "sub-create". This point is much clearer, in our world, thanks to JRR Tolkien, himself. It is something he has "added", legitimately, to the Western Tradition. He has elucidated one of the facets of God's manifestation, for us.
Tolkien's adeptness at creating something with mass appeal, and yet fully self-conscious excellency, forces the fight back upon his spiritual adversaries. To contest him, you are confessing that it is, indeed, a very bad thing indeed to construct false human artifacts with the power of your sub-creating faculties. Just look at the mess this Tolkien has created, with his power of sub-creation! But, joined as this doctrine is with Art, it leaves you, ultimately, in a battle of books or rhetoric or word-smithery with Tolkien himself. In deciding whether it truly is possibly that something like a Holy Grail might exist, this becomes a contest of Beauty, and a precarious fight against a talented foe. Tolkien's strategy shifts the fight to one of aesthetics. It is not a modern aesthetics, denuded of metaphysics, but one integrally linked with the reality and power of the genuine Artefact. The question of aesthetics is lifted from the realm of modernity, and placed (like Ganymede born aloft to Zeus) in the Olympian world of divine drama and action. Poiesis (or "making") becomes a theological act. To be precise, it is cosmogony, or co-Creation.
All of the foregoing should be obviously true to the loyal and attentive reader of Tolkien. This self-conscious task Tolkien took up was designed to transform evil, first (and perhaps most of all) in the individual or the reader. Tolkien's most potent insight was his realization that this could happen through the most ordinary, enduring, and enjoyable activities of the smallest of Earth's inhabitants, through the common place virtues (and even vices) of a folk who were sane, normal, and healthy. In Tolkien's legendarium, Evil is finally defeated not by shock of overwhelming magnificent Great Ones (the Valar), but by the whimsical, self-interested, persevering good nature of its smallest and most humble folk, symbolized par excellence in the race of the Hobbits. This is why Michael Moorcock hates the hobbits so much. For in Tolkien's vision, an ordinary act (provided it is sane, healthy, and natural), can be consecrated, regardless of "outcome", to an endpoint in God's economy that corresponds to that act, and justifies it. This natural goodness is so powerful, no matter how humble, that it can induce Eucatastrophe. This is Tolkien's term for the moment that Providence acts spectacularly, but through ordinary means, with conclusive results.
It is strange that a work with such a seemingly off-putting task as spiritual improvement through the transfiguration of what is ordinary, could have such enduring and mass appeal, as well as an elite following. It might not be too much to say that Tolkien manages the coincidence of opposites, and unites the Common Man with the Aristocrat, in his vision. But this does seem to be, actually, the case. In a way, one can even agree (in part) with his critics - Tolkien is often portrayed as a bourgeois Tory apologist for jolly old Christian England, and treated with the appropriate self-righteous disdain. Every objection I have encountered for Tolkien runs along those same lines : that he is cartoonish when dealing with "Evil", and is defending an idyllic and ultimately ridiculous vision, which is (if possible) even more of a Cartoon. Yes, Tolkien is all of these things, in a sense. He is "racist" (in their sense), "xenophobic" (again in their sense), "warmongering" (in their meaning), and hopelessly "backward" (in their eyes). He is "condescending", because he teaches theology, although it's hard to see how they have cause to complain, since it is done purely indirectly. But who really cares? For in order to indict him of all these things, one enters into the details of the prime myth. These details are the "bait" over a divine "hook". And this is no accident, since Tolkien's gift was to work out both the application of Revelation to fantasy, and the implications of fantasy (also) for Theology. He did this simultaneously, and (seemingly) without effort. St. Gregory of Nyssa might have understood:
… [I]t was not in the nature of the opposing power to come in contact with the undiluted presence of God, and to undergo His unclouded manifestation, therefore, in order to secure that the ransom in our behalf might be easily accepted by him who required it, the Deity was hidden under the veil of our nature, that so, as with ravenous fish, the hook of the Deity might be gulped down along with the bait of flesh, and thus, life being introduced into the house of death, and light shining in darkness, that which is diametrically opposed to light and life might vanish; for it is not in the nature of darkness to remain when light is present, or of death to exist when life is active. (Great Catechism 24) Gregory of Nyssa ca. 335-395
Is it possible that Tolkien deliberately did this? With his strategy? Or did it purely come "naturally" to him? Or, ask it this way - is it even possible, especially as he completed the work, that he did not know? I find it difficult to believe that he did not sense something of the sublime and unique import of his doctrine of sub-Creation. Within that prime myth, even just grappling with it, he demonstrates that those very things (he is despised for), are transfigured in the numinous power of the true Myth. They become, in a strange way, what they were certainly always meant to be - a mythology for modern England. Or, at least, a modern England that is redeemed in the struggle for Middle Earth, whether that happens in time and space just now, or not. Tolkien, surely, would have known that his comfortable, homely, and yet profound Christian outlook (which is very English, after all) was coming in for hatred and scorn and revulsion. He created a mythology for himself, and then also went on to offer it to England, if not the entire earth. But it was a mythology soaked in the redemptive cosmogony of the Faith.
I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels ... and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. JRR Tolkien, On Fairy Stories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Fairy-Stories
Critics may obsess about "racism" or other "Isms" in Tolkien, if they wish, it hardly matters. It is their business, as adults, how they use their power of sub-creation, and spend their spiritual talents. But the cow is out of the barn. Even if Tolkien was (justly) indicted on all the great modern heresies, and burned in effigy as a stuffy, snotty English don, and all of his books were burned in a gigantic fiery tumulus, his work would endure. Many moons from now, it would be recovery, and resurrection, more powerful for the death it underwent, than it ever was in its first spring. Like Robin Hood, he would emerge out of the Shadows, to live forever, as the seneschal of sub-Creation, which is the Gospel set to fantasy.
So regardless of the numerous flocks of buzzards which have picked and pecked at Tolkien's literary corpse, my notations and denotations cannot be helped. His fiction tends to produce a long term ferment in the unbiased reader - quite possibly, even, a manuscript. It is my hope that this open acknowledgement of the inherent depth of Tolkien's project will produce a growing awareness of the meditative complexity and richness inherent in his superficially simple doctrine of sub-Creation.
Since I do not have scholarly credentials as such, I chose the essay form for presenting these ideas, several of which are integral keys that unlock hidden aspects in LOTR, showing us what Tolkien can mean, and do, for us. In rough outline, the first chapter is an essay on the concept of "Ages", the second essay is one upon "Archetypes", and the fourth chapter focuses upon "Agni", the Secret Fire. A fifth chapter deals with the realm of Arda, and his theory of creation and sub-creation. The sixth chapter is called Apology, and is aimed in more detail at his detractors. Along the way, it has been my intention to untangle Tolkien from various accusations, by dealing with them squarely, and to restore exuberance of confidence in both his power & his real authority and credibility, as a first rank fantasist.
A classical author will inevitably have many detractors. I am fully aware that in the long run, it is not my apologia or defense of Tolkien that matters, but the evident charm, appeal, and latent power present in his work, which will form his enduring legacy. I can, however, hope to "shape" or beautify, or expedite, some part of that inevitable process. It may aid in the cultural recovery of his texts. Yet if all human learning and writing perished, Tolkien's LOTR and the related works would be one of the few texts capable of fairly close and accurate reconstruction, along with the Bible and works like the Bhagavad Gita, Lao Tzu's The Tao, and perhaps old classics like the Aeneid or the Odyssey. These works are committed to oral memory, and to mental remembrance. And they would therefore survive, almost in toto, since the will to preserve them as such exists in abundance. It is this that constitutes the true "justification" of Tolkien's ouevre, not the commentary which I will put forth in these pages. Tolkien lives on, not merely in the hearts and minds of generations of those who discover and re-discover him, but in the depths of their souls, for the "beauties that burn like hot iron" (WH Auden's felicitous phrase) find a home there.
Like goes to like, and deep calls unto deep. Tolkien wrote, not merely for his beloved race of English-like "hobbits", but for the angels, and for the ages, and most of all, for the God He adored. Some cannot get past this, to understand, that he also wrote for Everyman, and all the more so, since he appeals to the innate powers of simple man.
In keeping with his "Everyman" manifestation, Tolkien doesn't use "God-talk" (in fact he seemingly literally leaves his Creator God, Eru Iluvatar, utterly out of it). He does however aim to talk like God, fashioning Middle Earth as closely as he can in the image of a sub-Creation. Tolkien may have been the first human artist to self-consciously work upon his freely generated world "as if" (als ob) it would assume ontic reality, some day, and to believe that he bore therefore a moral and aesthetic responsibility for it. In his philosophy, the "as if" equates, literally, with the "therefore": The Once Upon a Time becomes an Ecce! and an Ergo! Except he did not just believe this, or hold it as "philosophy" - he knew that it was so, and wrote the LOTR (in part) as a demonstrative proof. He then "entered in", and invited us to enter with him. If we are lucky, we do so. We enter into it, as Tolkien wrote it, not merely because it is authentic Sub-Creation, but because (and just as much) it is a good story, or yarn. The Hobbit may be the only work of English with an ending anywhere near this surprising:
'Thank goodness! ' said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco jar.
It seems fitting to end this introduction in Tolkien's own explicit words. In them is contained Tolkien's whole argument or "proof" that we are made in God's image, and destined (doomed) to struggle to regain God's likeness, whether by the dark road, or the bright.
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.JRR Tolkien, Mythopoeia (poem)
I really like your thoughts here. As an academic myself who has written and presented on Tolkien, I think your idea about Tolkien's power is spot on. As far as Moorcock, he write decent pulp stuff, but he's also kind of an idiot. His anti-Tolkien essay is pure envy. Smarter fantasy writers, like Gaiman, fully understand Tolkien's power.
As far as academics go, most in Lit Departments either ignore or hate Tolkien. I've spoken to Tom Shippey about this a few times (have you read him?) and we agree that this hate comes from basically being called out. You see, there is this whole postmodern thrust and all the academics are the cool kids on that bus, and then there is Tolkien, who not only was a better scholar than they could ever hope to be, but also just throws out the whole postmodern idea. He basically dismisses them. And since they have no center in the divine, they can't understand him.
I loved your remark about using Tolkien references when discussing Tolkien. Because my fellow academics are basically Melkor when he was tearing down all the other works of the Valar, because he wanted to be the only one who made things. Moorcock and many academics are just jealous.
But there are definitely some very good academics too, many who I am friends with. Asides from Tom Shippey, there is Micheal Drout, Pia Skogemmmann, and Ralph Wood. While I have some disagreements with Tom about Tolkien's ideas on evil, he is 100% in love with Tolkien, I can assure you.