A story that uses imaginary characters or fantastical settings to teach a lesson about a real life situation.
I do think Tolkien tried (mostly successfully) to tell LotR free from allegory. That was important to him since the point was to tell the story of Middle Earth on its own merits as a story. But it definitely isn’t free from ideology, and I don’t think even Tolkien would disagree with that.
Yeah I get it but that’s what disappoints me. Like what I mentioned about Dune and Warhammer. Tolkien achieved something and kick-started a genre, but that genre turned out mostly to be about fantasy races fighting genocidal wars…not celebrating the wonder of mythology and fairy tales, at least in my opinion. At the very least, they could be more meaningful by being symbolic of something. But Tolkien already saw to that from the start
