Arthur and legends concerning him rarely seem to figure in Tolkien's letters. According to the now (alas) late Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien remarked that the Arthurian tales were "too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive".

They also appear to have been unsatisfactory to him in that they contained explicit references to the Christian religion. In a letter written in 1951 Tolkien described this explicitness as "...fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary "real" world."

The only clear parallel between Tolkien's world and that of Arthur seems to me to be Avalon and Westernesse, the lands in the West. Indeed Tolkien himself once remarked that, "to Bilbo and Frodo the special grace is granted to go with the Elves they loved - an Arthurian ending, in which it is, of course, not made explicit whether this is an "allegory" of death, or a mode of healing and restoration leading to a return".