One criticism made of Tolkien is that his language is general, unspecific, not evocative of particular images unlike that of D. H. Lawrence, for example. But Tolkien writes in this way on theory and of set purpose. As some scattered remarks make clear, Tolkien distrusts overspecific description in fantasy for the same reason he is wary of pictures in such books: both have the effect of dragooning the imagination, forcing us to see the scene in a certain way. (pp. 40-1)
[Another] accusation is that the language in, for example, the Rings is "derivative," full of echoes of other literature…. Of course, this is a highly relative matter. If you have not read the other literature you will miss the echoes, and if you read The Hobbit before Beowulf, the dragon in Beowulf is likely to remind you of Smaug rather than vice versa. But again there is a principle behind the accusation, the principle that originality is valuable in itself and lack of originality vitiates any other merits a work may have. Yet, prevalent as this assumption is, it seems also to be false. Originality in itself does not make a work good, for a work can be a failure in an entirely new way. Complete originality is impossible; any work has a great deal in common with works that have gone before. Furthermore, originality is a matter of degree; a completely unoriginal work would have to be an exact copy of another work. Traditional material traditionally treated occurs in many admittedly great works of literature. The idea that interesting work can no longer be done in some traditional form is always open to refutation by counter-example.
