What is the title of Tolkien’s 1939 lecture that became a major essay on fantasy?
Answer
On Fairy-Stories
On Fairy-Stories is the title of Tolkien’s 1939 lecture that became a major essay on fantasy. He delivered the Andrew Lang lecture at the University of St Andrews in Scotland on 8 March 1939.
The essay explores what fairy stories are, why people read them, and what kinds of value they can provide. Tolkien discusses escape, recovery, consolation, and what he calls the eucatastrophic turn: a sudden joyful change in a story’s fortunes. These ideas became central to later discussions of fantasy literature.
On Fairy-Stories was published in revised form in 1947 and later collected in the 1964 volume Tree and Leaf. It is frequently read alongside Tolkien’s fiction because it explains principles visible in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The essay is not a novel and should not be confused with his 1936 lecture Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.