I would put it another way rather Robler. Tolkeen virtually single handedly created what is now modern fantasy, ie, books with really human characters in completely fantastical worlds.
Before tolkeen, the closest thing to fantasy were stories like Conan the Barbarian. Good fun, lots of blood and guts and slaying, but no real characterization or information about the world they come from. Essentially, before Tolkeen fantasy was about larger than life heroes mightly hacking their way mightily across the world, ---- indeed, in one of lord Gadolfin's books from the early 20th century, the ending is that the hero brings the villain back from the dead because his life is very boring without evil things to slay.
Also, this stuff was, ---- well there is no real point denying, racist to the points of natziism, talking about the noble white man slaying the evil black cannibals (yes, this is true).
not to say it isn't worth reading, some of the original Conan stuff is actually quite cool for fun, you can find lots of it at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Robert_E._Howard (text only I'm afraid).
However, it is really limited in what it can do.
tolkeen was firstly interested in creating his own world and language, and the legends told in it, ---- the books which later became the Silmarillion. however, when it came to the hobbit (which started as a children's book), and then Lord of the rings, Tolkeen was interested in showing the sort of thing he'd seen himself during the first world war, very ordinary characters doing very extraordinary things.
that's why lotr is told almost exclusively from the hobbit's perspective, and the large set of myths and legends which Tolkeen created for his language are seen by very normal people.
Without tolkeen, i don't think we'd have! a fantasy genre today.
this was also as you might guess,why I was a litle narked at the way the films concentrated so much on Aragorn hack butcher slaying his way to kingship, rather than on the hobbits who were either light relief or, ---- in the case of Frodo, completely pathetic! indeed, I really! dislike the way Frodo comes across in the film as a complete wimp.
Anyway, as you'll guess I'm a tolkeen fanatic, in fact I even wear a direct copy of the ring complete with engraving in the black speech of Mordor, ---- which i got several years before there was! a film.
Oh, and for interests' sake, Peter jaxon is now working on two films based on the Hobbit, which I believe are due for release either next year or in 2012, which should be interesting.
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)