Regan Flieg: A Modern Fairy-Story

            When reading Tolkien’s “On Fairy-Stories” several weeks ago, a snippet right at the beginning of the essay struck me: “In that land [of the fairy-story] a man may (perhaps) count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its richness and strangeness make dumb the traveller who would report it.  And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions” (38).  What fascinated me so much about  this sentiment of Tolkien’s was its relevance to a recent book series I’ve enjoyed.  The series, Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood, currently includes two novels, The Hazel Wood and The Night Country, as well as the short story “The Boy Who Didn’t Come Home” with Tales from the Hinterland scheduled for release next year and it largely stems from ideas about the nature of fairy tales and this danger that Tolkien describes.  

            The Night Country, which I read over the summer, features a human boy named Finch wandering through the worlds of stories and fairy-tales and the danger of his curiosity there in such a way that when I read Tolkien’s essay, I had to wonder if Albert had read it too.  The novel latches onto what makes fairy tale characters different from us and how we still relate to them and learn from them in a way harmonious — at least to me — with Lewis’s observation  in “Myth Became Fact” that myth is more real than reality (66).  As Finch literally wanders through the world of fairy tales, the reader observes an artistic representation of the wandering Tolkien describes in “On Fairy-Stories.”  What’s most fascinating about this to me is that in this way perhaps Albert’s novel could be considered as a myth about myth: by allowing Finch to wander through fantastical worlds she makes Tolkien’s abstract observation about fairy-stories concrete in the way Lewis claimed myth is able to in “Myth Became Fact.”  I thought it was interesting to see Albert’s books as modern fairy-stories, but in the context of this class, it was even more appealing to engage with her writing as a sort of myth that speaks to what myths are and do.

Albert, Mleissa. The Night Country.  Flatiron Books, 2020.

Lewis, C. S. “Myth Became Fact.” God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, edited by Walter Hooper, Eerdmans, 1970, pp. 63-67.  

Tolkien, J. R. R. “On Fairy-Stories.” Essays Presented to Charles Williams, edited by C. S. Lewis, Oxford             University Press, 1947, pp. 38-89.