: But I don't wish to disprove medieval influence. The issue is whether Middle-earth should look like medieval Europe. I can easily show (and often have) that it doesn't look that way. Even many medievalists have conceded that Middle-earth doesn't approach medieval Europe when looks at what defines the cultures of the period.

Ok, I see the distinction you are making and would make the same one myself.

: But Middle-earth still FEELS medieval to many people, and for most (I believe) the reason it feels that way is they have been immersed in a perception which is not true to either Middle-earth or medieval Europe.

Here is one place we disagree. I think it FEELS medieval because there is so much medievalism in it, no not in warfare, or clothes etc, but in the grand themes it deals with as well as a host of small details. And most important LANGUAGE--LoTR tends to use very few Latinate words, Tolkien seemed to have tried to use native English words, and the English words with the longest history in our language, whenever and whereever possible. I think these things are what give it that "feel".

: I am seldom asked what I perceive as "medieval" in Tolkien's world (meaning, what do I feel could only have come from Europe's middle ages).

So consider yourself asked.

Occasionally we do get around to discussing such things. Nor have I ever claimed to know everything that IS medieval about Tolkien. But the aspects of Middle-earth which people most often point to as "proof" of medievalism are NOT medieval: not the armor, not the weapons, not the methods of warfare, not the forms of government, not the clothing -- all these things are "generic".

Most, agreed, are. On that list anyway.

Tolkien described them in vague enough terms that you can find appropriate examples of all of them outside of medieval Europe (in the more ancient past and the more recent past).

But again even in that list of generic things, where is Tolkien most likely to have drawn them from-which part of the cauldron of story? Most likely, though not certainly, he would draw from the languages and literatures with which he is most familiar and reshape them to his uses rather than something with which he is more or less unfamiliar. So they may not be "medieval" from an external vantage point, but may have come to Tolkien by way of medieval literature, language, and history.

: Some things are obviously medieval. Stirrups, for example, are not derived from the classical world (not in western Europe's heritage, at any rate). The parallels people like to draw between "Beowulf" and the approach of Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli to Meduseld have been brought up. Tolkien didn't derive anything straight from "Beowulf", but the similarities between Beowulf's arrival at Heorot and Gandalf's at Meduseld are strong and most likely intentionally so.

Quite good.

: But these subtleties are insufficient to make Middle-earth medieval.

Agreed.

: Europe's history and prehistory are much richer than to be confined to the middle ages. And the northern world of the middle ages owes a great deal to classical world, both northern (prehistorical) and Mediterranean (historical). Tolkien was interested in telling a story, and it's a story quite unlike anything before its time, which nonetheless evokes memories of ancient and medieval stories alike.

And so does the modern....I mean each "age" borrows from the previous ones and uses those borrowings to its own purposes. That is why we see a continual pattern of continuity and discontinuity in history. It does indeed evoke memories of epic especially.