On Fairy-Stories
Clyde Northrup contends that in the essay, Tolkien argues that "fairy-story" must contain four qualities, namely fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation.
The Andrew Lang Lecture was important as it brought him to clarify his view of fairy stories as a legitimate literary genre, rather than something intended exclusively for children.
The volume of essays was intended to be presented to Williams upon the return of the Oxford University Press staff to London with the ending of the war.
Tolkien argues that there is no essential connection between fairy stories and children, but that this "is an accident of our domestic history", meaning that they have been relegated "to the nursery" because adults no longer wanted them.
He calls this "a rare achievement of Art", and notes that it was important to him as a reader: "It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine."
Second, he defends fairy stories as offering escapist pleasure to the reader, justifying this analogy: a prisoner is not obliged to think of nothing but cells and wardens.
She at once adds that it is much more than that, since it is "a deeply perceptive commentary on the interdependence of language and human consciousness", a useful summary of the study of folklore at that time, and a "cogent" analysis of myth, fairy-story, and "the poet's craft".
[3] It is also, Flieger writes, an essential text for study of "the multivalent myth, epic and fairy tale romance that is The Lord of the Rings.
[10] Carl Phelpstead, also writing in the Companion, notes that the essay attempts to answer three questions, namely what fairy-tales are, their origins, and their value, the last of these related to Tolkien's concept of mythopoeia.
[11] Clyde Northrup argues that through the essay Tolkien creates a framework of four necessary qualities for interpreting "Tolkienian fantasy", or as he called it "fairy-story".
These are fantasy (the contrast of enchantment and ordinariness), recovery (as the reader sees the "magic" of simple things in daily life), escape (from the primary world), and consolation (the "happy ending").
"[13] Shank notes that in the essay, Tolkien states that fantastic language alone, in his words "the green sun", is not enough to create fantasy.
Instead, the green sun will only become believable, Shank writes, when the author, the sub-creator or worldbuilder, "construct[s] the Secondary World to form a coherent and organic whole in which all the parts are harmoniously interrelated—in other words, a structure.
"[13] Shank concludes, however, that Tolkien moves away from structuralism in the essay's epilogue, by likening fairy stories to the Gospel, which (he writes) has a profound effect on the people who hear it, whether they accept or reject it.
