I have found a direct reference to this topic in Tolkien's Letter 153! Here's what he says:
Quote:
I tried to show allegorically how that [subcreation] might come to be taken up into Creation in some plane in my 'purgatorial' story Leaf by Niggle...
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Three of the themes we've discussed on this thread show up in that quote - allegory (and he admits to it!!
); subcreation, which he names as a theme of the story; and purgatory, showing us that the Workhouse is indeed intended to represent that.
I've been paging through some of the secondary literature to find references as well. In
Tolkien, Man and Myth, Joseph Pearce quotes Paul Kocher from
Master of Middle Earth:
Quote:
In the workhouse on the other side (an updated version of Dante's Purgatorio) Niggle is assigned hard labours aimed at correcting his sins and weaknesses.
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Pearce goes on to say that
Quote:
Priscilla Tolkien believed this story to be the 'most autobiographical' of all her father's work.
...Niggle's 'Tree' is clearly a euphemism for Tolkien's own sub-creation, principally The Lord of the Rings but also The Silmarillion on which he laboured all his life and which, like Niggle's Tree, would ultimately remain uncompleted at his death.
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In his opinion, the story was written to put into practice what Tolkien preached in his essay 'On Fairy Stories'.
In
J. R. R. Tolkien, Author of the Century, Tom Shippey also states that
Quote:
...the 'Workhouse' ... is clearly purgatory.
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and goes on to address the aspect of sub-creative Paradise. He calls it a 'eucatastrophe' that
Quote:
Niggle's reward is to find his picture come true at the end of his journey, his 'sub-creation' accepted by the Creator...
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There's more, but as it concerns the application to JRRT's real life, which we explored on the above-mentioned thread, I won't go into that any further here.