Video and Podcast Resources on J.R.R. Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories"

11 lectures in podcast and video formats on this seminal essay about narrative, sub-creation, fantasy, and worldbuilding

J.R.R. Tolkien is best known for the saga of Middle Earth, found principally within The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Silmarillion. Those emerged not just from his fertile imagination, or the worldbuilding he engaged in for decades, nor his literary discussion sessions with his fellow Inklings, but also from his study and musing upon narratives.

The fruits of those are reflected in the essay that emerged from his Andrew Lang lecture given in 1939, which he then expanded and revised. It is called “On Fairy Stories” and it became a particularly important work for understanding fantasy and arguably speculative fiction more broadly, turning into a key reference point for later authors thinking about their own craft.

The essay is probably most often brought up in relation to two ideas that Tolkien articulated and gave a name to, namely those of “sub-creation” and “secondary worlds”, but it is quite rich, and full of a number of other interesting suggestions as well, for example his conception of “eucatastrophe” or his metaphor of the cauldron containing a long-stewing soup of story.

Some time back, I decided that it would be a piece useful for me to shoot a set of videos on, covering all the key ideas, distinctions, arguments, and analogies, in my Speculative Fiction Studies series. Later on down the line, I took those videos and converted them into Sadler’s Lectures podcast episodes that people could listen to or download.

Eleven lectures comprise the entire set, available in both video and podcast formats. You can find the text itself anthologized in a number of places, for instance Tree and Leaf or in the Tolkien Reader. You can also find it online as well, for example here.

So here is the full set of the lectures:

• What Is A Fairy Story? | watch video | listen to podcast

• Origins Of Fairy Stories | watch video | listen to podcast

• Are Fairy Stories For Children? | watch video | listen to podcast

• Three Faces Of Fairy Stories | watch video | listen to podcast

• The Cauldron Of Story | watch video | listen to podcast

• Fantasy And The Arts | watch video | listen to podcast

• Sub-Creators And Secondary Worlds | watch video | listen to podcast

• Recovery, Loss, And Fairy Stories | watch video | listen to podcast

• Escape's Legitimacy | watch video | listen to podcast

• Escapes And Desires | watch video | listen to podcast

• Eucatastrophe, Evangelium, And Joy | watch video | listen to podcast

I hope that you find them useful and that, if you haven’t yet devoted the time to reading Tolkien’s essay, that they perhaps lead you to doing so!