| Obviously the list is arbitrary, but it's one individual whose job is to analyze literature, and who wrote a book on the subject, in which he explains his choices, and got a major publisher to publish it, so it's not just "one individual's personal choices." And his decision as to the definition of a novel is not "nonsensical" - it is perfectly coherent, and corresponds to the way many literary critics discuss the novel. It is certainly a debatable definition - I would agree with you that Lord of the Rings and Dune are novels - but it's not "nonsensical". I also don't understand why you'd expect English professors to like Tolkien more than the general public. Tolkien was himself an English professor, obviously, but he is not widely read. There aren't really any "Tolkien scholars" in universities, like there are, to name some famous near-contemporaries, Faulkner scholars or Joyce scholars. |
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