Quotessence
Home / Books / The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays

The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays

Book by J.R.R. Tolkien · 2 quotes · Writing, Tolkien, Creativity

Filter quotes by topic

AllWritingTolkienCreativityImaginationArchitectureFairy StoriesFairy TalesFairytalesFantasyGrowing UpInspirationalLanguageLinguisticsLiterary CriticismLiteratureMaturationReadingWordsAcademiaAdulthood

The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays Quotes

“If fairy-story as a kind is worth reading at all it is worthy to be written for and read by adults. They will, of course, put more in and get more out than children can. Then, as a branch of a genuine art, children may hope to get fairy-stories fit for them to read and yet within their measure; as they may hope to get suitable introductions to poetry, history, and the sciences. Though it may be better for them to read some things, especially fairy-stories, that are beyond their measure rather than short of it. Their books like their clothes should allow for growth, and their books at any rate should encourage it.”

ReadingLiteratureGrowing UpFairy TalesMaturationChildren S LiteratureFairytalesFairy StoriesChildrens LiteratureJuvenile Fiction
Book:The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
Create image

“Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called 'willing suspension of disbelief'. But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful 'sub-creator'. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.”

WritingArtReadingBeliefCreative ProcessWriting CraftSuspension Of DisbeliefWriting Art
Book:The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
Create image