Well, well, well...Long time no post!
This thread certainly took an interesting turn! For some time I've been rather ignorant of Tolkien, being absorbed in my last year of high-school. I'm about half way through now (yay) and I've just started rediscovering Tolkien, as it were. By chance I stumbled upon this thread (I had quite forgotten about it) and was most pleased to see it had been rather popular.
I've also been returning to many of the ideas, thoughts and insecurities I felt back then.
I guess I am still trying to sort all these issues out-to catagorise and explain Tolkien's rather unusual work in my own mind. To kick of the discussion again, here is a radio broadcast on Tolkien and his imagination:
http://gnosis.org/tolkien/lecture2/index.html 