What name did J.R.R. Tolkien give to the life-changing turn in a fairy story?

J.R.R. Tolkien called the life-changing turn in a fairy story a eucatastrophe.

He introduced the term in his 1939 lecture and essay “On Fairy-Stories.” Tolkien formed it from Greek roots meaning “good” and “downturn” or “disaster,” presenting it as the sudden joyful reversal at the end of a story. In his account, this turn should not erase earlier suffering but should transform the reader’s understanding of it.

Tolkien distinguished eucatastrophe from a merely convenient happy ending. He considered it a central feature of fairy-story structure and connected it with the Christian idea of the Incarnation and Resurrection. Other Tolkien terms have different meanings: Faërie concerns the realm or domain of fairy stories, while sub-creation describes the imaginative making of secondary worlds.