[Z in Oregon]

"The Lord of the Rings," despite a notable lack of enthusiasm from Tolkien's colleagues in university literature departments, long has topped reader polls for the 20th Century's best novel.

This has always amazed me. I would suggest that Tolkien's moral absolutes turn off ,orally relativistic English Departments.

[HairOfTheDog]

I think the relative snub from high brow literature circles has less to do with good and evil and more to do with an unwillingness to put Fantasy on the same par with "real human drama". As very real as the human drama in LoTR is, there are people who cannot consider it to be "real" literature because it is a make-believe world.

Most stories are good versus evil at some level. Even morally relativistic people don't look at a story and say "this story has too much of a moral goodness in it". I don't think people don't think that way, do you?

[VOA]

I would suggest that Tolkien's moral absolutes turn off ,orally relativistic English Departments.

No kidding.
I suspect their praise for Tolkien and his work could be turned off by mentioning that
(IIRC) Tolkien was reticent to publish his work.
Until a colleague by the name of C.S. Lewis told him to basically "get on with it".

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

Haha. I hadn't read your post, but it's odd how we thought the same thing.. maybe not.