Originally published: 1947
Author: J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Essay
Country: United Kingdom
Editors: Douglas A. Anderson, Verlyn Flieger
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"The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of
beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is anenchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords. " pg 01
"fairy-tale is recorded since the year 1750, and its leading sense is
said to be (a) a tale about fairies, or generally a fairy legend; with developed senses, (b) an unreal
or incredible story, and (c) a falsehood.
The last two senses would obviously make my topic hopelessly vast. But the first sense is too
narrow. Not too narrow for an essay; it is wide enough for many books, but too narrow to cover
actual usage. " pg 01
" Faerie 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. " 02
"We are therefore
obviously confronted with a variant of the problem that the archaeologist encounters, or the
comparative philologist: with the debate between independent evolution (or rather invention) of
the similar; inheritance from a common ancestry; and diffusion at various times from one or
more centres. " PG 03
" All three things: independent invention, inheritance, and diffusion, have
evidently played their part in producing the intricate web of Story" 03
"Among those who still have enough wisdom not to think fairy-stories pernicious, the common
opinion seems to be that there is a natural connexion between the minds of children and fairystories,
of the same order as the connexion between children's bodies and milk. I think this is an
error; at best an error of false sentiment, and one that is therefore most often made by those who,
for whatever private reason (such as childlessness), tend to think of children as a special kind of
creature, almost a different race, rather than as normal, if immature, members of a particular
family, and of the human family at large. " 04
The human mind is capable of forming mental images of things not actually present. The faculty
of conceiving the images is (or was) naturally called Imagination. But in recent times, in
technical not normal language, Imagination has often been held to be something higher than the
mere image-making, ascribed to the operations of Fancy (a reduced and depreciatory form of the
older word Fantasy); an attempt is thus made to restrict, I should say misapply, Imagination to
“the power of giving to ideal creations
"The mental power of image-making is one thing, or aspect; and it should appropriately be called
Imagination. The perception of the image, the grasp of its implications, and the control, which
are necessary to a successful expression, may vary in vividness and strength: but this is a
difference of degree in Imagination, not a difference in kind. The achievement of the expression,
which gives (or seems to give) “the inner consistency of reality,” is indeed another thing, or
aspect, needing another name: Art, the operative link between Imagination and the final result,
Sub-creation. " pg 05-06
Fantasy (in this sense) is, I think, not a lower but a higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved) the most potent. pg 06
"Drama is naturally hostile to Fantasy. Fantasy,
even of the simplest kind, hardly ever succeeds in Drama, when that is presented as it should be,
visibly and audibly acted. Fantastic forms are not to be counterfeited. Men dressed up as talking
animals may achieve buffoonery or mimicry, but they do not achieve Fantasy. This is, I think,
well illustrated by the failure of the bastard form, pantomime. The nearer it is to “dramatized
fairy-story” the worse it is. It is only tolerable when the plot and its fantasy are reduced to a mere
vestigiary framework for farce, and no “belief” of any kind in any part of the performance is
required or expected of anybody. " pg 07
Thus, if you prefer Drama to Literature (as many
literary critics plainly do), or form your critical theories primarily from dramatic critics, or even
from Drama, you are apt to misunderstand pure story-making, and to constrain it to the
limitations of stage-plays. You are, for instance, likely to prefer characters, even the basest and
dullest, to things. Very little about trees as trees can be got into a play. pg 07
"If you are present at a Faërian drama you yourself are, or think that you are, bodily inside
its Secondary World. The experience may be very similar to Dreaming and has (it would seem)
sometimes (by men) been confounded with it. " 08
in Faërian drama you are in a dream that some
other mind is weaving, and the knowledge of that alarming fact may slip from your grasp. To
experience directly a Secondary World: the potion is too strong, and you give to it Primary
Belief, however marvellous the events. You are deluded— whether that is the intention of the
elves (always or at any time) is another question. They at any rate are not themselves deluded.
This is for them a form of Art, and distinct from Wizardry or Magic, properly so called. They do
not live in it, though they can, perhaps, afford to spend more time at it than human artists can. pg 08
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