[Tolkien's] doctrine of sub-creation [the idea that man's ability to create worlds in fantasy literature is one of the ways that man demonstrates the image of the Creator of this world] was created to explain certain features of fantasy literature, [but] it is applicable to many other genres as well. Even in the most "realistic" fiction, the writer creates a world, peoples it with characters whose actions give its history significance, and determines the rules of its nature.l And usually . . . the secondary world [created by the author] echoes the primary creation [the real world, which God created] in more ways than one. The hero, at great personal sacrifice, defeats the villain and rescues the damsel in distress, and they ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after: this basic plot we keep coming back to is salvation history writ small, as it were. As Edwards says, literature is "drawn" towards a biblical reading of life. Tolkien explains why: "We make still by the law in which we're made."

Donald T. Williams, "Christian Poetics, Past and Present"