On Fairy-Stories

The key thrust of Tolkien’s essay is to present the “Fairy-story” as a literary genre worthy of serious consideration by the academic world. His academic background as a philologist informs his rhetorical method, enabling him to provide credible definitions and trace the origins of the fairy story. The founder of philology, Jacob Grimm, was himself a collector of tales, and a key method in philological study was the tracing of linguistic development through the stories that are recorded and passed down within a particular group. Although Tolkien positions himself in this essay as one who has not studied the fairy story academically, he does employ the typical methods of his branch of academia to form his argument. Tolkien must refute the dominant assumption at the time, namely that the fairy-story was a subordinate form of evidence, useful only in more established academic pursuits such as myth, history, and folklore. To accomplish this, Tolkien’s rhetorical strategy unfolds in two distinct phases: defining fairy story through both positive and negative characteristics (i.e., what it is and what it is not) and then engaging with key figures and texts to position the fairy-story as a separate academic category.

Tolkien writes that “fairy-stories are about the adventures of men in the Perilous Realm [Faerie]” (113).