Tolkienists.org

… At the height of Tolkien’s popularity in 1966, he agreed to give a talk as part of a series on ​“Faith and Literature” at Blackfriars, the Dominican house of studies in Oxford. But when he arrived at the event, he read from one of his stories instead, the then-unpublished Smith of Wootton Major. In his opening remarks, he apologized for not speaking on poetry, briefly introduced Smith, and explained that ​“it is not an allegory — properly so-called” (qtd. at C&G 3:1217).¹ If this is all he had ever said about this short tale, fewer critics would have been inclined to read it allegorically.²…