What is J.R.R. Tolkien’s invented word for a sudden joyful turn in a tragic story?

Eucatastrophe is J.R.R. Tolkien’s invented word for a sudden joyful turn in a tragic story. He introduced the term in his 1947 essay “On Fairy-Stories,” describing it as the opposite of catastrophe and as a sudden good change in a narrative’s fortunes.

Tolkien connected eucatastrophe with the emotional power of fairy stories. In his account, the best fantasy can produce a feeling of joy when disaster is unexpectedly reversed, without erasing the seriousness of the danger that came before it. He also discussed the Christian Gospel as the supreme example of this kind of narrative turn.

Eucatastrophe is not simply a synonym for a happy ending. Tolkien’s concept emphasizes surprise, peril, and the sudden arrival of hope. It is also different from mythopoeia, his term for the making of myths, and sub-creation, his idea that writers build internally coherent secondary worlds. The word has since entered broader literary criticism.