J.R.R. Tolkien: February 2005 Archives

It has been a while since I've posted anything about J. R. R. Tolkien. So here is an excerpt from letter 89 by Tolkien to Christopher Tolkien (pp. 99-100):

"... I coined the word 'eucatastrophe': the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of truth.... It percieves-- if the story has literary 'truth'...--that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest 'eucatastrophe' possible in the greatest fairy story-- and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love..."

--Letter 89

Also, note my new Tolkien link section to the right.