"Do You Hate Women?"

[Zigûr]

I would recommend a couple of "modern" takes on Professor Tolkien's work if anyone is interested.

One is "Tolkien and Modernism" by Patchen Mortimer, published in Tolkien Studies volume 2 in 2005, pages 113 to 129.

Another is Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon by Brian Rosebury, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2003.

Rosebury argues "The modernity of Tolkien's work, from the point of view of its content, lies not in coded references to specific contemporary events or phenomena, but in the absorption into the invented world – no doubt a partly unconscious absorption – of experiences and attitudes which Tolkien would scarcely have acquired had he not been a man of the twentieth century."

Neither Mortimer or Rosebury argue that Professor Tolkien is a modernist, mind you, just that his work is "modern" (and has some crossover with modernism).

I also don't mean to dogmatically argue that Professor Tolkien is "modern" in some very hard, specific sense. I'm probably being too binary, and imagining that an argument saying Tolkien is not modern means he must be medieval, which I don't agree with, but which I realise no one is actually proposing. I'm getting ahead of myself.

There are chapters in Stuart D. Lee's 2014 A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien which also discuss modernity in his works, particularly the 24th chapter, "Modernity: Tolkien and his Contemporaries" by Anna Vaninskaya.

I might argue that a useful comparison would be with one of Professor Tolkien's most clear non-medieval influences, William Morris, who drew heavily on medieval ideas and forms, but engaged with modernity through them; Morris's work is much more political and much less "spiritual" than Professor Tolkien's, but operates in a very comparable "modern through the medieval" kind of approach.

Peter Jackson's Hobbit films, of course, are "modern" in a different sense, as they have been produced according to the consumerist concerns of the modern Hollywood film industry with the primary motive of making money, which explains things like the invention of the character Evangeline Lily plays – a character not even used in a very "modern" or progressive way, even, because she largely exists to be a love interest to motivate male characters.