Tolkien on Fairy Tales

Prof. Waller Hastings
Northern State University
Aberdeen, SD 57401

J.R.R. Tolkien on Fairy Tales

. . . fairy-stories are not in normal English usage stories about fairies or elves, but stories about Fairy, that is Faërie, the realm or state in which fairies have their being. - J.R.R. Tolkien, "On Fairy Stories"

In Tolkien's discussion of the fairy story, he posits “rules” for the tale, which depend not on the use to which the story is put, but on the way the world of Faërie is presented: “one thing must not be made fun of, the magic itself. That must in that story be taken seriously, neither laughed at nor explained away.” Thus, he excludes from this category stories in which the adventure turns out to be a dream (e.g., Alice in Wonderland, or the film version of The Wizard of Oz), along with travellers’ tales such as Gulliver's Travels (and I would presume "Sindbad" as well) and the beast fable (because the world of Faërie must fundamentally be concerned with human beings, not animals dressed up as human).
According to Tolkien, all true fairy tales have four characteristics:

Fantasy - imagining unreal things but endowing them with "the inner consistency of reality"; both the quality of strangeness and wonder at the unreal and the “sub-creation” of an internally consistent secondary world are necessary. Fantasy involves “freedom from the domination of observed ‘fact’.”
Recovery - the ability to see things more clearly after experiencing the fantasy; this is a “regaining of a clear view,” which implies that we had it once and have lost it. Tolkien says recovery is “seeing things as we are meant to see them,” as things apart from ourselves. This can be fairly trite stuff, as when seeing something from a slightly different angle causes us to find it fresh again. But it is something more with creative fantasy - it can be dangerous, causing us to lose all of the cherished objects we have found in the ordinary view.
Escape - i.e., the fairy tale does not treat what is "real" as inevitable; it suggests alternatives, even (especially?) if the alternatives are genuinely impossible.
Consolation - the happy ending, or eucatastrophe (Tolkien's term); this is the moment of joy at deliverance from evil. Tolkien connects his concept of fairy tales to Christian theology (Tolkien was a deeply religious Catholic) by stating that the greatest eucatastrophe is the resurrection.

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