LMP wrote:
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but why did he want it 'purged of the gross'? To make it moral? That would be circular reasoning, so there has to be a separate reason outside either of them. Is it, perhaps, to have made LotR 'consciously Catholic in the revision'?
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I do not think that religion is the only viable explanation. Above, Bethberry posited an interesting alternative in philology.
I might propose another alternative, though it's one that certain literary critics wouldn't react well with: the work of art is better that way. Perhaps a less controversial way of putting it would be to say that Tolkien liked it better that way (so do I, as it happens, and I imagine so do a great many others). If Tolkien found certain elements of many fairy-stories distasteful or uninteresting, why shouldn't he write stories purged of such elements? We need not follow the likes of Edwin Muir and Edmund Wilson in claiming that any story that isn't about sex is juvenile.