Tolkien - Consolation

The final aspect that Tolkien reckoned to be vital to good fantasy is Consolation which embraces the aspect of joy. It's really the endlessly satisfying theme of the happy ending, or better - those moments in a fantasy story when it takes a sudden and unexpected joyous turn at a moment of the most desperate circumstances in the story. Tolkien invented a new word for this - eucatastophe. The word catastophe comes form the Greek kata which means down or against and strophe - which comes form the verb 'turn' i.e a down turn - a sudden calamity. Adding the eu (meaning 'good') to the beginning of catastophe reverses its sense in that it is a sudden good, joyous turn of events. But I'd best let Tolkien speak for himself because he regarded this aspect of fantasy as critially important (for fairy tale read fantasy in the following)

"Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite—I will call it Eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function. The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially “escapist,” nor “fugitive.” In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium (gospel, good news), giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief."


"It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the “turn” comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality."


"This ”joy” which I have selected as the mark of the true fairy-story (or romance), or as the seal upon it, merits more consideration.


Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: “inner consistency of reality,” it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the ”joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a “consolation” for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, “Is it true?” The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): “If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.” That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist). But in the “eucatastrophe” we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world. The use of this word gives a hint of my epilogue. It is a serious and dangerous matter.

My final post on this subject will look at the epilogue that Tolkien refers to here

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