Because of my experiences in studying Old English and Middle-English works such as Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales, I find that one of the interesting things about Tolkien’s novels, mainly The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, are the strong Germanic linguistic and thematic influences. J.R.R. Tolkien was heavily influenced by such Anglo-Saxon literature as Beowulf and the Norse sagas. He spent much of his career writing about and lecturing on early Germanic writings.
Every person today that reads The Lord of the Rings can’t help but ask, “When was this written?” The lexicon is obviously that of the modern era, but the linguistic and thematic influences are not modern day prose. It appears almost as a long epic poem (but with only a few poetic songs), telling of the simplistic journey to save the world. An example of this is the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, Beowulf. This poem was most likely first sung in Old English around 700-750 AD (it was not written down until around 1010 AD). Old English is almost an entire other language, nothing like the English of today.
Basically the plot of the story is Beowulf, a great warrior, saves King Hrothgar and his kingdom from the evil monsters, Grendel and Grendel’s mother, and later on he saves his own kingdom from an awakened dragon. Beowulf was written with the basic monomyth structure where the hero undergoes trials (usually 3) until he reaches the underworld and then returns back to society as a changed man. Tolkien uses this circular quest as well within his trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien also drew much of his linguistic style from these poems and myths. His naming structure used for characters and places were influenced by those found in Anglo-Saxon myths.
These influences effectively molded Tolkien’s fantastic, but not of the norm, writing style.
New Media: Storytelling in Literature, Films, and Games 
I think we see some ancient themes and ideas emerge as we compare romantic works. Georges Polti attacks this idea in The Thirty Six Dramatic Situations. He submits that there are some basic themes that emerge on the human stage — even as that stages projects itself outward from the human imagination.