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The work of J. R. R. Tolkien has been given new attention by the film versions of The Lord of the Rings. It has thus been brought to the notice of an even wider public than the novels had won for themselves, no doubt increasing the number of Tolkien readers, but with the drawback that many will remain content with having seen the screen adaptations. This has entailed some shifts in the reception of Tolkien, which are sometimes very close to misrepresentation, mostly for lack of better knowledge. Therefore, Tolkien’s literary achievement deserves to be examined in the context of the twentieth-century history of ideas, albeit only to fend off hasty evaluations. It is worth remembering that Tolkien, apart from being a philologist, was also a Roman Catholic author, coming from the cultural background of the Oxford Movement. Many of his ideas would earn him a place among the so-called “right-wing anarchists,” whose works have in common to be eloquently critical of some aspects of modernity.