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These critics were, throughout the middle part of the last century, almost wholly in accord with one another that the "best" kind of novels were those of the High Moderns (Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad) and their inheritors. They valued experimentation in style (non-linear narrative, mixing genres, shifts in voice/tone/point of view) and an aesthetic that priviledges uncertainty and ambiguity. Tolkien, they felt, offered none of these things: he was writing in a style that was not only not-new, but was in fact very very old
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To paraphrase Reepicheep (who always reminded me of Boromir):
It is, then, my very good fortune not to be a "modern critic." I much prefer the older styles.
It's interesting that conservationism and conservativism are regarded as opposites these days, for Tolkien was both. He brings them into harmony within his own personality and in his writings. He cherished, protected, and championed that which was old, good, honorable, and
vulnerable. Everything from forests to epic prose to gentleness, humility, and self-sacrifice, to honor, responsibility, and just plain "The Good Old Way Of Doing Things"-- as long as it is honorable and high, purged of the gross, beautiful, poetic, he brings us to love Age and the Ancient, and
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faith, belief and absolute notions of good and duty
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