A Thought of Light

"The keener and the clearer is the reason,
the better fantasy will it make" (27).
J. R. R. Tolkien's "On Fairy-Tales" (1938, 1947)



Points for Reflection

J. R. R. Tolkien's "On Fairy-Tales" (1938, 1947)

  1. What might Tolkien mean by the claim that fairies are more “natural” than humans?
  2. Why does Tolkien identify Arthurian legends as exemplars of true “fairy-story,” and dismiss stories about tiny fairies?
  3. What synonym does Tolkien prefer using for the word “fairy” (when discussing creatures, not places)?
  4. What alternative does Tolkien offer for “Faërie” when discussing its inexplicable nature?
  5. What key ingredients help make a “fairy-story” a good one?
  6. Why does Tolkien disqualify the Langs’ Blue Fairy Book tale of “A Voyage to Lilliput” from the category of fairy-story, a disqualification also applied to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels?
  7. Does Tolkien think a story can be a “fairy-story” if it doesn’t contain magic?
  8. Why does Tolkien also dismiss stories in which all the fantastic elements appear inside a dream?
  9. Why does Tolkien suggest Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories are not proper fairy-stories?
  10. Why disqualify beast-fables?
  11. What does a cultural anthropologist have to set aside in order to perform her analysis?
  12. Is Tolkien unsympathetic to the social scientist’s attempt to trace tales back to their narrative antecedents?
  13. Does Tolkien appear to believe that all stories can be traced back to a single narrative source?
  14. What grammatical part of speech does Tolkien think magical?
  15. To what ends does Tolkien put the words “sub-creator,” and how does he distinguish it from matters of representation and symbolism?
  16. Which does Tolkien believe came first in the evolution of the Norse god Thórr, a nature-allegory about personalized thunder in the mountains, or stories about a strong but foolish red-bearded farmer?  Does it matter to him how much actual history informed stories about King Arthur of Beowulf’s King Hrothgar?
  17. Which of the “three faces” of a fairy-story does Tolkien identify as capable of pointing to “Mystery”?  What do you think he means by “Mystery”?
  18. What did the Brothers Grimm tale The Juniper Tree engender within a young Tolkien which, he believes, is utterly lost when neutered versions of the tale-- bereft of its grosser horror elements--are disseminated to children?
  19. Tolkien holds that one can remove many of the variable minutiae of a tale without its losing its “mythical significance,” a phrase he applies to what impulse within humankind?
  20. Does Tolkien encourage editors, educators, and parents to provide altered versions of fairy tales to children from which the disgusting, potentially shocking elements have been removed?
  21. Why does Tolkien believe fairytales do not belong first to children, then to adults?
  22. Does Tolkien maintain that belief in and appetite for the marvelous found in fairytales are the one and same thing?
  23. What does Tolkien proffer as an alternative to Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” when describing a reader’s entry into fantasy?
  24. Does Tolkien believe that children must believe a story to be true to enjoy it?
  25. To what roots does Tolkien’s trace his own love of fairytales?
  26. Do you agree with G. K. Chesterton’s observation, quoted by Tolkien, that children “are innocent and love justice[,] while most of us [adults] are wicked and naturally prefer mercy” (21)?
  27. Why does Tolkien suggest that a “fair fight” might be just as “cruel,” to use Andrew Lang’s term, as “fair judgement” (20)?
  28. What does Tolkien mean by “it is certainly not better to travel hopefully than to arrive” (21), and does this idea counter the Stormlight Archives adage of “journey before destination”?
  29. What reasons does Tolkien provide for so many people actively disliking fantasy?
  30. Why does Tolkien think fantasy should be relegated to literature, disparaging its expression in painting and stage drama?
  31. Which does Tolkien think more effective at expressing wonder about things (e.g. trees), drama or literature?
  32. Does Tolkien appear to believe that elves actually exist?
  33. What distinction does Tolkien make between enchantment and magic?
  34. Tolkien holds that the desire for a “living, realized sub-creative art” is “[i]n this world unsatisfiable, and so imperishable,” a desire that “does not seek delusion nor bewitchment and domination,” but “shared enrichment, partners in making and delight, not slaves” (26). He then quotes from “Mythopoeia,” a poem written years earlier to C. S. Lewis (still an atheist at the time) in which Tolkien held that humans, as “sub-creators,” radiate a “refracted Light” from “a single White.” “[W]e make still by the law in which we’re made” (26-27).  What is Tolkien implying about the nature and source of human creativity when manifest in the production of fantasy?
  35. Does Tolkien believe one must suspend one’s logical faculty of reason in order to thoroughly enjoy creative fantasy?
  36. The original version of this essay appeared one year after The Hobbit’s initial publication.  When Tolkien writes that “The seed of the tree [of fairy-stories] can be replanted in almost any soil, even in one so smoke-ridden (as Lang said) as that of England” (27), he is in part referring to his own attempt to create a narrative fantasy for England. What other fantasies can you identify that seem particularly English?
  37. When Tolkien suggests that fantasy can help provide “recovery,” he speaks of recovering what exactly?
  38. Though appreciative of “Chestertonian Fantasy,” or Mooreeffoc, Tolkien finds what limitations in it compared with creative fantasy?
  39. What array of reasons does Tolkien collect for why some disparage fantasy as “escapist”?
  40. How might the reading of fantasy improve the design of a railway (31)?
  41. What elements of reality does Tolkien believe “serious” literature too often seeks to elude?
  42. What reasons does Tolkien give for enjoying the old and “archaic” independent of fantasy?
  43. What does Tolkien mean by the technically untrue claim that “the maddest castle” in a “wild Gaelic story”. Is “more real” than a modern factory (31)?
  44. Does Tolkien find in science fiction a palpable optimism about the future state of human nature?
  45. What additional effect does finding evil in the ugliness in modern technology (factories, bombs, etc.) apparently have on our understanding of beauty?
  46. Tolkien holds that fantasy can help us escape, not from, but back into what very old desires we haven’t quite shaken in the modern era?
  47. According to Tolkien, what was the point of tales about the frog king/prince?
  48. Why does Tolkien not believe tragedy a fitting ending for a fairy-story, though he thinks it eminently appropriate in a stage drama?
  49. What quality, when present in a fairytale, presumably ensures that a fairytale is not an utter failure?
  50. When Tolkien speaks of joy or desire which “for a moment passes outside the frame” and “lets a gleam come through,” to what is he alluding?
  51. Can we reconcile Tolkien’s calling the incarnation of Christ a “fairy-story” with, moments later, declaring that this narrative is “supreme” and “true”?
  52. Why might even sceptics wish, as Tolkien assets, the Christian “eucatastrophe” to be true (35)?
  53. What grand purpose does Tolkien assign to fantasy literature?


abstract image of sun in distant, its rays penetrating a bluish landscape in the foreground
original illustration
J. R. R. Tolkien

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu