On Fairy-Stories - by J. R. R. Tolkien

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

Chances are that the creator of the site has already read this piece, but for the enjoyment of everyone else (and with no offense intended towards our generous host), I present, in full, J. R. R. Tolkien's dissertation on the importance and resonance of "fairy-stories" - in effect, fantasy in general. I believe this is one of the earliest defenses for fantasy in its current form, but I may be wrong.

Like Ursula K. Le Guin's "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie", this is a valuable piece to both aspiring writers and students of fantasy theory, as it lays bare Tolkien's thought process for what went into his works, why fantasy is important as well as relevant, the disassociation from what's perceived as children's stories, and the relation to the Christian faith. It's a piece that ought to be seriously studied by anyone who considers themselves Tolkien buffs, let alone critical lovers of fantasy..

NOTE: Due to its length and the possibility of formatting errors duplicating it in full on the site itself, I have chosen to provide a link to a decent presentation of the essay in digital format. There's an option to zoom in and out on this PDF which I would highly recommend using, as the text is rather small. This is the best that I could get that contains both the text of the essay itself as well as supplementary notes for further clarification.

http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien.pdf

[Raven]

Tolkien's essay is a classic. I believe this is the essay (I haven't read it in a while) where Tolkien makes the prism analogy, describing God's creativity as pure white light, which contains all colors, and ourselves as prisms, which refract light into various hues. Amazing analogy. I think that is from this essay. Anyway, that analogy has stuck with me for years.