Eucatastrophe
This week in one of my classes we were looking at J.R.R. Tolkien's theories regarding fantasy and its purpose. In his famous essay "On Fairy-Stories," Tolkien suggests fantasy is a process of recovery, escape, and consolation. The recovery stage is a re-gaining, a clearing of vision, a recovery of magicness in the world, a process of defamiliarization with the every day and mundane and a recapture of mountains and monsters. The second stage is escape and while it is often criticized as escapism, Tolkien argues is not inherently a bad thing and that it may even be heroic. Escape allows one to imagine or enter a better world or to convey one's disgust at the real world through the invention of another. Tolkien also makes the distinction between the "Escape of the Prisoner" and the "Flight of the Deserter." Finally, the stage of consolation is the consolation of an ending. Tolkien describes this ending as a eucatastrophe meaning a sudden, joyous turn ...
