What is Epic Fantasy?

There are a lot of topics that people shouldn't try and write a blog post on.

Here is my most recent contribution:

Why does Tolkien get to be classified as higher fantasy?

Disclaimer: if you are not into either Tolkien or the general concept of fandom then you probably won't enjoy this as much as you should. Just find the happiest part of yourself and power through.

I am of the mind that Tolkien is more or less alone in that genre. Why?

He was a linguist. So many people strive to create a world in a book without having a command of the tools that they do it with. His command of language comes through in the way he never once picks a word that makes the reader feel out of place. He is neither to pretentious nor civil. He also invented a framework for four different languages simply so he could create a poetry foreign enough to strike any reader as he intended it to.

Most importantly, no matter how much Tolkien you read you feel as if you are just getting a sliver of Middle Earth. You don't need to be reminded that the Shire is simple but mystical, or that the glory of the high elves is only a remnant of what it was on Earth two ages ago. Every setting gives the reader hints of what the Tolkien universe is, but never so explicitly as to destroy its mystery.

You never have the feeling of linearity, that you just go from place to place in a closed system with a determined ending and beginning. You never see the beginning or the end, and at every turn the characters may be anything they wish.

Also the original trilogy films are done so well half the time I'm reading the books I have little work imagining something that Tolkien would be proud of.

Getting more specific: we see archetypes of thoughts and beings that recur throughout all of human history and mythology.

Go back to the Fellowship and the description of Lorien. Saying that Tolkien there describes what Plato meant by the forms does Tolkien a great injustice and flatters Plato.

Look at the scene where only Legolas and Aragorn can hold the eyes of the lady Galadriel. Gimli is also blameless but he is of a fallen race, just as Tolkein would have seen all men to be as he wrought Catholic tradition into his masterwork.

Or see how all throughout the book, evil seems all powerful and yet the whole time does not even know its own heart; at the same time the forces of good seem helpless but behold the heart and seat of evil's strength. Tolkien would have believed the world to be under the dominion of the Devil in much the same way.

Finally, all the traditional heroes: Legolas, and Gimli, but especially Aragorn, play only a small part in the most crucial aspects of the trilogy. This is a work so great that the hero Middle earth has waited over two ages for only acts as an enabler of true sacrifice and heroism.

Anyway, I don't think anyone including myself was prepared for that discussion, and hopefully I haven't driven any would be Tolkien fans away. Hamlet says about the world: "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

I suppose the easiest way to define Tolkien's genre is to say that his reader believes that same statement to be true in the exact same sense Hamlet intended to Horatio, only about Tolkien's middle earth, not about Hamlet's poor world.