Tolkien’s “On Fairy-Stories” is the essay that radicalizes how many of us think about fantasy: not childish escape, but recovery, consolation, and the making of secondary worlds.

In this Mythic Mind conversation, Dr. Andrew Snyder (professor of philosophy and theology) is joined by John Carswell of The Tolkien Road to walk the essay beside Leaf by Niggle and Mythopoeia as a primer to Tolkien’s literary philosophy, including eucatastrophe and why fantasy is a human need.

Topics include subcreation, the difference between the Flight of the Deserter and the Escape of the Prisoner, and how good fairy-stories reawaken the world’s strangeness.