This goes back to Monday's class discussion where someone brought up Tolkien's elves and how they differ from other fairy stories. I actually read something about that in my biography of Tolkien by John Garth. Garth mentions that Tolkien in his poetry and short stories actually started out with the elves being these tiny, little beings. Fragile and small like in most other fairy stories. But this all changed when he was inspired to write a short story called "The Fall of Gondolin" where the elves actually have to defend the city they built from Melkor and his Orcs. In order for the elves to accomplish that--Tolkien logically changed their size to roughly the same as humans. After this he became quite fond of the idea that elves were actually larger beings than the other fairy stories said they were and kept them human sized for the rest of his creative works.

I hope that was interesting for some of you who had wondered about that progression in Tolkien's thought.