Follow Me, I Want to Teach You Something

Tolkien has created many guidelines that help define what a Faerie story consists of. Tolkien is so specific that you get the feeling that the only books that fit into the guidelines are his own. Of course there are thousands of books and stories that people call Fairy-Tales that don’t fit into everyone of these guidelines, but a new genre hasn’t been created. This fact leaves one wondering; do everyone one of Tolkien’s guidelines need to be achieved for a book to be called a Faerie story? The answer to me is that the situation can not be possible. Now you are left to wonder how many of the guidelines need to be achieved before being placed in the Faerie category. Also, are some of Tolkien’s guidelines more important than the others? These answers are unfortunately way more difficult to come by. The reason for this is that everyone will weight the guidelines in their own way; some of the aspects that Tolkien has laid out are definitely more important to me that they would be to you, and some of the things that Tolkien said have no meaning to me at all. My main question is, do you need some guidelines to tell you what a Fairy-Tale is, or can you decide for yourself?
I would like to bring up an example to help you get a feeling of what I am talking about. The book, “The King of Elfland’s Daughter” written by Lord Dunsany, before Tolkien wrote his guidelines, will serve perfectly. “The King of Elfland’s Daughter” is known today as a classic Faerie story, which even influenced Tolkien himself. Can this book stand up to Tolkien’s guidelines? Does this book meet enough of the guidelines, and are the guidelines that it does meet enough? Can this book be a Fairy-Tale because you believe it to be so? To answer these questions we will first look at some of Tolkien’s guidelines and then see if “The King of Elfland’s Daughter” achieved them.
Tolkien says “Most good ‘fairy-stories’ are about the adventures of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches.” (Tolkien