Midcult? Populärer Realismus und Tolkiens Mittelerde

In his widely read and much discussed book "Populärer Realismus. Vom International Style des gegenwärtigen Erzählens" (Munich: Beck 2022), Moritz Baßler distinguishes formally challenging literature from a popular literature that makes no formal demands but at best pretends to. This literature, called Midcult, comes into its own in Fantasy: "In Fantasy, Popular Realism arrives at itself." The article will reconstruct what Baßler means by realism, popular realism, and midcult, and will explore the question of whether J.R.R. Tolkien's work is an exemplary case of Midcult.