On Fairy-Stories

Tolkien posits that fantasy, the fairy-story, is an extension of the natural human desire and right to create, as he argues story-tellers are made by a Maker. In Tolkien’s framework, this is the Christian God and Tolkien’s language is framed by the patriarchal norms of his day: he sees both the divine creator and the human creator as male by default. What sets fantasy apart from other works—what makes its writer a sub-creator—is the “inner consistency of reality” (138). For fantasy to be effective, Tolkien argues, there must be a deep logic to the events and characteristics of the fantasy world. Tolkien uses the example of the phrase the green sun: “Anyone inheriting the fantastic device of human language can say the green sun […] to make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill” (140). The ability to construct a Secondary World that behaves according to its own internal logic, though it is filled with fantastical, strange elements, through the power of language alone is an ability Tolkien argues reflects the Primary Creator and His ability to create the Primary World through language; i.e., “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3).

Tolkien directly cites critics who would argue that, because this creative act is secondary, it is therefore built on falsehoods and is in opposition to reason. To the critic who referred to fairy-stories as “Breathing a lie through Silver,” Tolkien responds that, “though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seeds of dragons—’twas our right” (144). Here, Tolkien argues that faith and reason are not enemies of each other, or of fantasy, but rather they complement one another. For fairy-stories to maintain their inner cohesion, they must recognize logic and there must be a reason for things to be as they are within a fantasy. Men are drawn to fantasy because it provides a rich ground to exercise their divine right to sub-create, that is, to make Secondary Worlds as a reflection of their own making by the hand of a Primary Creator.

Tolkien concludes his argument for Humans as Sub-creator, and therefore fantasy as the ultimate sub-creation, in the Epilogue, where he identifies the Gospel as the archetypal fairy-story. The Gospel story, to Tolkien, maintains the essential internal logic, concerns itself with core human desires, contains fantastical elements (e.g., God, devils, angels, and miracles), and holds the pinnacle eucatastrophic moment, the joyous final turn that “can give to child or man that hears it…a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart” (154). Rather than use faith or reason to negate one another, or to make literature seem inconsequential through either lens, Tolkien ultimately argues that in fantasy, the spiritual right of humans to create and the physical truth of the world as a space governed by logic are brought together: “Art has been verified […] God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves […] Legend and History have met and fused” (156).

Tolkien explores four key functions of fairy-story—Fantasy, Recovery, Escape, and Consolation—to establish the value of fairy-story for his audience, many of whom would not consider fairy tales as serious literature for adult readers. In describing the value of fantasy, Tolkien relies on his training as a philologist and bases the logic of his arguments on the definitions of the following terms: Art, Imagination, Fantastic, and Sub-creation. He first distinguishes Imagination, the cognitive ability to produce and interpret mental images, from Art, “the achievement of the expression which gives (or seems to give) the ‘inner consistency of reality’” (139). Art, then, is the vehicle by which the Imagination is made material and becomes Sub-creation, that is, something physical that others can interact with on its own. Tolkien refers to this sub-creation as the Secondary World and the ability to engage with the sub-creation as Secondary Belief, as opposed to the more common phrase, “the suspension of disbelief.” The Fantastic is the quality of “‘unreality’ (that is, of unlikeness to the Primary World)” that is an inherent quality of the Secondary World (139). Thus, Tolkien provides semantic support for Fantasy as another term for fairy-story, and Fantasy as a virtue of the literature.

A common critique of fairy-story (as a sub-set of folklore or fairy tale) was that, due to its archetypical nature, the stories were repetitive, unimaginative, or rote. Tolkien turns this critique into a virtuous function: Recovery. Through fantasy, where stories are woven from imagination (those images inspired by the natural world), readers can recover a sense of wonder about their everyday surroundings. Great paintings, Tolkien explains by way of analogy, are essentially made of the same three “primary” colors, and yet no one ceases to paint because the colors are unoriginal.

Before concluding with his remarks on Escape and Consolation, Tolkien takes a moment to address the negative connotation of “escapist” literature that was common at the time, and in many ways still continues to this day. Tolkien argues that critics have confused “the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter” (Tolkien, J. R. R. “On Fairy-stories.” The monsters and the Critics, and other essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, Houghton Mifflin, 1983, p. 148), ultimately ascribing shame to a sincere desire to escape the harsh conditions of one’s surroundings, whether physically or mentally. He uses two contemporary references to illustrate the more insidious nature of this confusion: political resistance and technology. Tolkien argues that, claiming any desire to escape, or to change circumstances, is a desertion, it would follow that political revolt (e.g., boycotts, strikes, anti-war efforts) are inherently treacherous. He also rebuts the idea that any literature that does not include modern technological elements such as electric light, motor cars, and train stations are expressive of a resistance to progress. Fantasy, he counters, provides not only an escape in the sense of imagining a change of circumstance, but escape from larger cosmic threats like Death. Tolkien proposes that the ultimate circumstance readers and writers of fantasy wish to escape is the Fall, the separation of humanity from communion with God and nature. Here, he argues that Fantasy can provide Consolation, that is, the momentary experience of all things being unified as they ought to be. This Consolation, what Tolkien calls “eucatastrophe,” joy or the Happy Ending, is both an escape and a practice of hope.