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Originally Posted by SpM
I would certainly place LotR (together with The Hobbit) apart from other examples of fantasy literature in terms of its impact on me.
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Originally Posted by davem
I suppose it could be that Tolkien was not writing a 'genre' novel, so he was not bound by the requirements of 'fantasy'.
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I too would certainly place Tolkien outside any notion of 'genre', not just in terms of his impact, but quite literally. His work was not a 'novel'; LotR was just one moment, one extract if you will, from an entire work, a lifetime's work. It is a story frozen at one point, and it is easy to imagine that had he not been asked to write it by a publisher, it would never have been finished.
Also worth considering is that LotR was published in very different times. Today literature is very much 'product' to be consumed and as such needs to be marketed. This is how we have come by such strong notions of genre. They did exist in the past, as an example, the Gothic novels of the 18th/19th century period were perceived as 'genre' fiction. But fantasy fiction came along as a genre after Tolkien. He was the predecessor and as such was able to do exactly as he pleased with no pressure from editors to make his work 'fit'.
LotR was not written as one novel, it was seemingly just one part of a greater whole, a whole that was growing all the time. It was one part of a greater artwork that just happened to be published an in effect 'fixed'. The fact that we can all spend so much time endlessly discussing Tolkien's work shows that there is a lot more to it than just one novel. A comparison is hard to find, the only thing I can think of is a dictionary - which is also constantly changing; the 'edition' we have is just that dictionary as it is at that point.