"Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."
- C.S. Louis
“The land of fairy-story is wide and deep and high, and is filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both sorrow and joy as sharp as swords. In that land a man may (perhaps) count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very riches and strangeness make dumb the traveller who would report it. And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gates shut and the keys be lost. The fairy gold too often turns to withered leaves when it is brought away. All I can ask is that you, knowing these things, will receive my withered leaves, as a token that my hand at least once held a little of the gold.” - J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories
Tolkien - “On Fairy Stories”
"Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted." - J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories
Tolkien defined fairy stories as stories about Faërie, the realm of enchantment. This realm is not merely a setting filled with magical creatures like elves and fairies, but a place that reflects wonder, danger, and the extraordinary.
He emphasized that fairy stories are not about small or whimsical "fairies" as popularly imagined but about a deeper engagement with the "perilous realm" of enchantment and imagination.
three primary functions: Escape
- Fairy stories offer an escape from the mundane, not in a negative sense but as a way to break free from the drudgery and constraints of the modern world.
- He believed that adults needed this escape even more than children, as they are often burdened by societal and material concerns.
"Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?” - J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories
Recovery
- Fairy stories help readers recover a sense of wonder and clarity about the world. Through imaginative storytelling, they allow us to see familiar things—trees, stars, rivers—with renewed appreciation and awe.
- This process restores our ability to perceive the world as beautiful and meaningful.
Consolation
- Fairy stories provide consolation through what Tolkien called "eucatastrophe", a sudden, joyous turn of events. This is the moment of unexpected grace or victory, often tied to hope and redemption.
- Tolkien saw eucatastrophe as essential to fairy stories and linked it to the Christian story of the Resurrection, calling it the ultimate eucatastrophe.
“In interpreting fairy tales as we do here, we try to bring out a new approach or understanding of age-old words which have always been told and understood in some form in their essential wisdom, but not understood in the psychological form in which we understand and interpret them now. I feel, with this clue of Jungian psychology, that it is possible to renew such a story so that it again has the living meaning which people had always formerly felt in it. Nowadays fairy tales are only told to children and regarded from a literary and formal standpoint. Fairy tales, as a whole, have undergone a process of becoming mere poetical words, no one even hoping that any meaning might be conveyed by them which we could understand in an adult way. So it can be said that the Jungian interpretation acts as a renewal of the words of the fairy tale; the same thing can be done with any other representation. It can be renewed if it is linked again with its archetypal substratum, for then it becomes an emotional and feeling and intellectual total experience. One gets again the reaction of “Ah, now I understand it,” with all its vivifying psychological effect. Naturally such a thing is important for myths and fairy tales, or even minor symbolic facts.”
- Marie-Louise von Franz - Individuation in Fairy Tales