JRR Tolkien - On Fairy Stories

JRR Tolkien - On Fairy Stories

The human mind is capable of forming mental images of things not actually present. The faculty
of conceiving the images is (or was) naturally called Imagination. But in recent times, in technical
not normal language, Imagination has often been held to be something higher than the mere imagemaking,
ascribed to the operations of Fancy (a reduced and depreciatory form of the older word
Fantasy); an attempt is thus made to restrict, I should say misapply, Imagination to “the power of
giving to ideal creations the inner consistency of reality.”

Ridiculous though it may be for one so ill-instructed to have an opinion on this critical matter, I
venture to think the verbal distinction philologically inappropriate, and the analysis inaccurate. The
mental power of image-making is one thing, or aspect; and it should appropriately be called
Imagination. The perception of the image, the grasp of its implications, and the control, which are
necessary to a successful expression, may vary in vividness and strength: but this is a difference of
degree in Imagination, not a difference in kind. The achievement of the expression, which gives
(or seems to give) “the inner consistency of reality,” is indeed another thing, or aspect, needing
another name: Art, the operative link between Imagination and the final result, Sub-creation. For
my present purpose I require a word which shall embrace both the Sub-creative Art in itself and a
quality of strangeness and wonder in the Expression, derived from the Image: a quality essential to
fairy-story. I propose, therefore, to arrogate to myself the powers of Humpty-Dumpty, and to use
Fantasy for this purpose: in a sense, that is, which combines with its older and higher use as an
equivalent of Imagination the derived notions of “unreality” (that is, of unlikeness to the Primary
World), of freedom from the domination of observed “fact,” in short of the fantastic. I am thus
not only aware but glad of the etymological and semantic connexions of fantasy with fantastic: with
images of things that are not only “not actually present,” but which are indeed not to be found in
our primary world at all, or are generally believed not to be found there. But while admitting that,
I do not assent to the depreciative tone. That the images are of things not in the primary world (if
that indeed is possible) is a virtue, not a vice. Fantasy (in this sense) is, I think, not a lower but a
higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved) the most potent....