‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[mark12_30]

A small subset of Letter 89 (davem, note the planes) :

(describing, to his son Christopher, his reaction to a real-life event)

And all of a sudden I realized what it was: the very thing that I have been trying to write about and explain -- in that fairy-story essay that I so much wish you had read that I think I shall send it to you. For it I coined the word 'eucatastrophe': the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief was if a major limb out of joint has suddenly snapped back. It percieves-- if the story has literary 'truth' on the second plane (for which see the essay) - that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made.

Note that he didn't say producing eucatastrophe is the *only* function of fairy stories. If the story didn't entertain, as has been noted already, you wouldnt' stick with it long enough to receive the eucatastrophe.

Note also that he calls the eucatastrophe a sudden *glimpse* of Truth.

Glimpses are:
--easily missed
--easily doubted
--easily dismissed
--and five people catching a small glimpse of the same large thing would probably give differing reports.

(Five nearsighted hobbits approach an oliphaunt...)