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Tolkien stated on numerous occasions that he wasn't 'inventing' but attempting to discover 'what really happened'. I think that's what I feel when I read his writings - that I'm not reading a made up story.
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So you’re saying that it was like he uncovered a piece of History, another link in the chain. That would explain the success. I suppose that it’s like any major discoveries in human history. For example the stories of the Greeks and the Romans are fascinating to a lot of people, LOTR, though it is fantasy, feels the same as these other stories, more human and much more real.
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Now, I don't know that these sorts of comments are always true, but the nearly inevitable mention of Tolkien in fantasy reviews shows the immense impact that he has had upon the expectations of the genre.
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Yes, I’ve seen those types of comments as well.
So Tolkien’s world hangs over all aspiring fantasy authors like a mentor and a student. The bar’s been set, the stakes heightened. How about the rest of the world, because we can argue all day long that writers do or do not influence society but what about what happened to the world?