J.R.R. Tolkien used the term eucatastrophe for a sudden joyful turn in a story after great danger.
Tolkien coined “eucatastrophe” by adding the Greek prefix eu-, meaning “good,” to the idea of catastrophe. He described it in his 1947 essay “On Fairy-Stories” as the sudden happy turn that produces joy rather than ordinary sorrow or disaster.
For Tolkien, eucatastrophe was not simply a convenient surprise ending. He regarded it as a defining possibility of fairy stories: a moment when defeat appears certain but deliverance arrives. He connected this idea with the emotional power of hope and with what he called the “Consolation of the Happy Ending.”
The term is often confused with literary concepts such as peripeteia, a reversal of circumstances, or anagnorisis, a recognition. Those terms come from classical literary theory and do not specifically mean Tolkien’s joyful recovery from catastrophe. Eucatastrophe became influential in later fantasy criticism.