Steve Walker-The Power of Tolkien's Prose_ Middle-Earth's Magical Style-Palgrave Macmillan (2009).pdf

J. R. R. Tolkien’s creation of an incredibly credible imaginative world
in the Middle-earth of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is a
considerable artistic achievement. But that fantastic realism reflects a
more fundamental literary accomplishment. Tolkien not only creates
realistic fantasy, he stimulates us to create our own: he encourages us
to participate in his subcreation. He schools readers, through the
insight of his narrative, in the art of imaginative perception, training
us to see everywhere implicit meaning, inner life. He invites us so
deeply into his fictive world that it becomes our world, multiplied by
his. Tolkien creates a secondary world vital enough to move beyond
metaphor of the world as we know it into an artistic mirror that can
make our individual worlds metaphors for “things deeper and higher.”
To those who have ventured there with Tolkien, Middle-earth,
through its introspective realism, is more than an intriguing artistic
location, more than a unique narrative experience: Middle-earth
verges on a new dimension of perception.
Shortlisted for the 2011 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies