Do most fantasy novel nowadays have traceable elements of Tolkienism in them?

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by jallanite

For example, there is Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland's Daughter or William Morris’ A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark which in different ways may seem Tolkienish, but any influence in these books might have inspired Tolkien, not the reverse.

I was going to mention Morris and his prose romances myself; in fact I've been meaning to start a "Morris and Tolkien" thread for some time. Morris' The Roots of the Mountains and The Glittering Plain are also very Tolkienesque, but in fact came first, and in Letter 226 the Professor attests Wolfings and Roots as influences. Given that these were meant to evoke Norse sagas and such Tolkien is very much the mediator between the traditional Romance and the modern fantasy novel. It puts me in two minds about how much Tolkien influence there really is in modern fantasy. The detailed, functioning imaginary worlds with invented histories and cultures, spiritual crises (good people vs a dark lord or diabolus-figure) etc. are the more superficial fantasy elements which have definitely been extracted largely, I would argue, from Tolkien, but in terms of tone and style I think they tend much more towards the storytelling methods which are in a conventional novelistic vein which Tolkien eschews.