Welcome to this short talk on how to approach fancy literature.
My name is Stewart Lee. I'm a member of the English faculty at the University of Oxford, and I want
to give you some tips and tricks and various approaches to looking at
this very important and popular genre. Throughout
the lecture, I'm going to use one text as an example to try
and illustrate some of the points I'm making now out of the entire corpus of fancy
literature. Choose one text may seem a bit daft, but I'm going to try
and use one, which I think most people will be familiar with through either the filmed versions
or from reading the books themselves. Hopefully Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
First, let us consider what is it that these texts might have in common?
The Odyssey, Beowulf, Pilgrim's Progress, The Castle of a Trento Frankenstein,
Alice in Wonderland, Winnie the Pooh, Animal Farm, and, of course, the
Lord of the Rings. Well, they are all considered by some critics as works
of what we now call fantasy literature. But how can any single definition
or categorisation attempt to group these texts together,
that there is a grouping of takes under fantasy, as there is under science fiction,
is fairly obvious. If you go into any bookshop on the High Street, you will be able to
go to this section where there is a collection of books under the title Fancy Literature, and
you'll be able to buy various books by various authors the same way you
could buy detective novels or science fiction and so on.
But what is it that brings all these books together? What is it that links them?
Fantasy literature, as I have already mentioned, stands out as a separate
what we would call genre. But it has distinct links with other genres such
as science fiction or horror and supernatural. But what is it that distinguishes
fantasy from science fiction, science fiction from horror, supernatural and horror and supernatural
from fantasy? And similarly, what text might we say overlap
the two or three genres? When you start to answer these questions, that's when
you start to try and get towards a definition of what fantasy is.
It's made slightly more difficult. Fancy literature, because it does feel like the ground underneath it
is moving constantly. Here is a list of just some of the terms that we
here associate it when people talk about fantasy literature, high epic fantasy sword
and sorcery, low heroic fantasy whimsy, magical realism, urban fantasy,
dark fantasy, historical fantasy and so on.
These are what we might call sub genres if the overarching jorah is fantasy.
Examples of, for example, high or epic fantasy where we're usually talking about something
on a very large scale in terms of geographical space, but also time
and indeed entire worlds depend on the outcomes of the actions
of the heroic characters at the centre of the book. A good example of that would be,
of course, the Lord of the Rings sword and sorcery or lower heroic. Fancy's usually focussed
on an individual, usually some form of bigger than life character who
goes on single adventures fighting their way through very action packed
stories. For example, Ari. Conan the Barbarian series
Whimsy might be something where the fantasy is kind of all a bit tongue in cheek. Like Alice in Wonderland.
A magical realism might be like some of the stories that you get from Borges.
But returning to the preliminary list of books, we could group these together, perhaps is all containing
elements of something which simply cannot happen, at least according to our current
knowledge. We have the reanimation of a corpse to the talking teddy bear,
but this in turn can cause problems. Things that Billy people believed in the past
as possible, which we would now generally accept is impossible and vice
versa, may mean that the text moves between genres, between believability
and unbelievability. So from that sense, from realism
to fantasy. For example, we could perhaps
perceive a possible future where technology is so far advanced, where some form of reanimation
is possible. But the idea that by nature, just as a natural
event, a teddy bear, a stuffed teddy bear could stand up, talk and have adventures
is unrealistic, is simply unbelievable. So there that we may have a distinction
there between fantasy and moving, perhaps with Frankenstein to science fiction.
In English literature, the search for Francis's origin can take us quite a weight back, as we shall see.
But let's start with a comment by Dryden in 1712, where he talked
about stories which embody the fairy way of writing. And this seems to suggest something
slightly strange, magical not only in the content, but also in the composition process
or purpose. If we move to more modern scholarship, we will
see terms such as impossible, unreal wonder when people
attempt to define fantasy literature. But there is also a very strong point that
what we get in these types of books is not illogical or inconsistent. In fact, consistency
is one of the key components of a successful Francey novel, as we shall see.
But to come back to our definition, it may be considered as something
which cannot happen. And more importantly, never could.
So how do you start to approach such texts? It is true to say that there
are some vers fantasies and indeed there are some fantasy representations in drama.
But for the most part, what you will come across are short stories or novels.
So a good way to start might be to consider how we would we would say it by a
standard approach. Talk about a novel or a text.
Here we tend to look under four key components, setting narration, plot and characterisation.
The setting is simple. Where am when does the story take place? But in the
case of fantasy, as opposed to mimetic realistic literature,
how do we actually know where and when this is taking place? They often take place
in imaginary worlds. More importantly, do we believe in it? And I'll
come back to this later on when we talk about something called worldbuilding. Narration
and point of view, as elsewhere we would consider, is, for example, the presence of the narrator
is the first person or third person used. Is the narrator ever
present, as in, for example, Tolkien's The Hobbit? This is standard
stuff and in fantasy, because the author is challenged with conveying the unknown and the impossible.
The narrator can be very intrusive. Tolkien himself realised that
the narrator in The Hobbit became a bit of a barrier for people to accept the text
certain his own children. Plot is the succession of events that take
place. How is the plot unfolded? The exposition? What complications are
introduced and when are they turning points in a clear climax? Does it end with resolution,
with exposition? We also consider the structure. Is it linear? Does the narrator flashback or foreshadow
again, all standard stuff? Does the narrator follow the norm
in the Lord of the Rings, for example, as Tom Shippy pointed out, the complex to ing and fro
ing of time in the chapter. The Council of Elrond in the Fellowship. The ring is something
we would tend not to get in a traditional novel. It moves back and forth between millennia.
The Lord of the Rings actually finishes off a story that started thousands of years before,
but we only get glimpses of that throughout the text. Finally, this
characterisation, we've come to expect our characters to be fully human in the modern novel.
That may not be the case in fantasy. We tend to consider
characters as a as either flat to use the enforced his term
one might call an act. And where they are an abstraction or representative or rounded
what we might call an actor, the type one would expect in the modern novel where you get full insights
and they are very realistic in their emotional responses. How do we find out about
these characters? Is it through telling explanatory or do we show? Are we showing the characters
or do we discover them through dramatisation? Again, to return to The Hobbit,
one might say that the dwarves that accompany Bilbo Baggins are not very rounded characters. There's
very little to distinguish each of them, apart from the colour of their cloaks, with the odd
exception, like Thorin. In fantasy, we often confront
the possibility that the character elements are often expressed through race in
the Lord of the Rings again. We do not need to delve much into the inner thoughts of legalese. The ELF
or Gimli the dwarf to understand their take on life because we have known traits already associated
with elves and dwarves. It's worth noting also, for example,
it's quite common in fantasy to come across what we call doubling where two or more characters
are paid to show a contrast again in Lord of the Rings, the valiant
faramir who takes the right path is opposed, of course, to his brother, Borra
mayor who falls to the power of the ring.
But all of this tends to reveal information at the level of the individual text, which
is fine, but it doesn't really help us to get to a macro understanding of the genre fantasy.
To this end, then, critics have tended to adopt two main approaches. The first one is a chronological
approach. The second is one of common elements or devices, mode, structures, tropes,
motifs that bind these texts together. Let's begin by looking
at a chronological approach to fantasy or the long history of fantasy. A good example
might be the Cambridge companion to fantasy literature, as she will see, edited by Edward James
and Fara Mendleson, which opens with a historical section covering fantasy from Dryden to Dun
Seine Gothic and horror fiction American Fantasy, 1820 to 1950.
The Development of Children's Fantasy and concludes with Tulgan Lewis and the explosion
of Jorah fantasy before moving to a thematic study. A similar
approach has also taken by Mendelson and James in their short history fantasy.
In such studies and there are many. You will often be presented with a table at the beginning listing the fantasy publications
in date order through the centuries. But this presents a very interesting question. First, what
would be the starting point? The Cambridge Companion starts with Beowulf, then has the map Enochian
The More Dhafir the fairy queen and so on. Whereas Mendleson endgame short history
begins with the epic of Gilberte Mesh Homer's Odyssey. Virge it was Ed. I goes
back to classical literature. Seven second, if we accept our earlier
premise that fancy literature is about things which we as a reader believe could not happen.
The author themselves shares the same belief. How do we square this with the fact that the audience of Beowulf,
for example, probably did believe in monsters and magic and maybe indeed the poet
did, too, as well. So was it a realistic text at the time of its composition?
And it's only now that we would consider it fantasy or containing
fantastical elements. The chronology
of fantasy literature falls into many categories, and here I just list a few.
A lot of the scholars will, for example, go back to classical and biblical texts and certainly
mediaeval texts. These are often termed as tap root texts because
they are often influence or provide some form of source for later fantasy
writings. If we move into the 16th and 17th century, we can see fantastical elements
in Spencer, Shakespeare, Milton and so on. But it's really with the explosion of
what we might say, folklore, folk tales where people like Perreault in 16
'97 or later on, the Grimm brothers started to collect fairy tales
and folk tales and bring these all together that we start to see the embedding of fantasy
elements in short stories. If you couple this with the thousand and one Arabian
Nights, which first appeared in English translation in 1885, you can see this explosion
of interests and influences in the fantasy genre.
Taking this all together and putting the Arabian Nights aside for a moment, we can
say that one of the things that things like Pierro and the Grim's brothers did was really establish
the idea of a mediaeval setting. Most fantasy stories will have things
like wizards, castles, princesses, kings, dragons and so
on. And it's not surprising, therefore, when we start to see the emergence of adult
fantasy literature in the 19th century with William Morris, George MacDonald and moving into
the 20th century with Lord Done Saini, that we can see mediaeval elements reused
again and again and again. However, as we moved into
the late 19th century, of course, and the age of rationalism, where people were adopting
scientific methodology and constantly seeking scientific explanations,
stories such as fantasy tales seemed to have no place for an adult readership
at least. And we can see that they were gradually moved to the nursery.
We have a series of books written for children and indeed fancy literature for children around the turn
of the century and into the early part of the 20th century was very, very common.
Another area in this very, very brief analysis of the chronology of fancy literature is the
influence of the Gothic. Which, of course, moved into the ghost story or horror story. But this was
picked up in the 20th century, early 20th century, and by writers such
as Algernon Blackwood or Arthur Makan, who were writing what we might call weird fiction.
And one of the most famous exponents of this is H.P. Lovecraft, the American writer writing
in the 20s onwards.
The sea change, or perhaps one of the most important and.
Developments, fantasy literature happened with the publication of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings,
regardless of the opinion of Tolkien, most scholars on particularly those the history of fantasy
literature cite the publication of The Lord of the Rings in 1954 to 1955
as a seminal moment. Some, like Tom Shippey, go as far as to say it created a genre almost
single handedly. But perhaps that's unfair. Of course, fantasy literature was written in
the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, as we've already seen.
And indeed, Tolkan had contemporaries who were also writing forms of what we might call fancy literature.
His friend and colleague, C.S. Lewis, one, Mervyn Peake, T.H. White and so on.
What is John Klute said in his analysis of fantasy literature? It marked
the end of apology, right is now no longer needed to feel ashamed of writing fantasy,
certainly for adults. And it did seem to cement the idea, such as the lengthy
trilogy, although it was actually six books. The motives and tropes of the mediaeval world is already
mentioned, and most importantly, the use of a fully realised, secondary, immersive
world middle earth that Tolkien was clearly not the first writer create a new
world. In fact, that idea had gone back centuries or to look to mediaeval literature of or
as we've already said. But he was the first 20th century writer, perhaps to combine
the two and command a wide readership. Moving to a global readership
in the 1960s and of course, being picked up again and again, particularly with the re-emergence
of the Peter Jackson films. One cannot help but agree with Terry Pratchett when he described
Tolkan is being like Mount Fuji in Japanese prints, ubiquitous background
presence to further things to know about Tolkien first. He taught
as Dave Lewis several of the next wave of British and British fantasy writers such as Susan
Cooper, Diane Wynne Jones, to name but two, and secondly, set a mark in the sand that subsequent
writers either tried to build on, emulate or even reject to take fantasy
in different directions. In terms of our survey,
which is like to draw a line by noting the what we call the Ballantine Adult
Fantasy Series or B a. F. S. Between 1969
and 1974, this public 66 titles in around 68 volumes,
which you could say establish the genre. Indeed, Williamson notes that it was probably this
that really cemented the term fantasy as the description of the genre. We
have writers such as MacDonald, Maurice Carroll, Edison, Howard Tolkien,
Lewis Sprog, De Kamp, Pratt Liber to name, but a few
which were reproduced at this time and then also inspired a new wave of writers that were then to
pick up the mantle in the 70s and beyond.
But in the chronological approach to one side, let us consider how scholars have tried to look at commonalities
across fantasy text to see if this revealed anything about the genre.
One of the common areas to look at is plot structure. And in this, there are similarities,
very much in works such as Bart. Vladimir Propp or Joseph Campbell,
who were studying comparative mythology in the early and mid part of the 20th century
and looking for common plot areas which were replicate it across
many, many titles.
Fahrer Mendelsohn's rhetoric's of fantasy is a very, very good modern
example of this. Mendelson argued that fantasy succeeds
when the literary techniques employed are most appropriate to the reader's expectation of that category of fantasy.
In other words, fantasy is popular because you kind of get what you expect. But in the hands of good writers,
this can be reimagined. She proposed four main structures around which
we could base or consider various fancy texts. The most important
and and obvious one is what's called the Portal Quest fantasy, where the character
leaves a familiar surroundings and passes through a portal into an unknown place. For example, The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe, Stephen Donaldsons Lord Foul's Bane Series. A subversion
of this might be trying to win Jones Howl's Moving Castle. Such tales do not have
to be quests. But the overwhelming majority are, as Mentals noted, and she saw a pattern
in many of these books a reasonably defined journey setting if a moral universe
with moral expectation and the tap roots being the epic, the mediaeval quest
and so on. Immersive fantasy is where the fantasy world
functions on all levels as a complete world. It's an entirely secondary world. And although Mendelson
felt the Lord of the Rings was more a portal quest, Immersive might well be a very good description from
Middle Earth. The positioning of the omniscient narrator, as Mendleson noted,
is crucial. But most importantly, a point where we return to is that the world needs
to be coherent. Mendelsohn's. Third category is that of intrusion fantasy, where more often
than not the setting is the real world or a simulation. The real world that is intruded upon
by fantastical elements. This is perhaps something we would find in writers like Lovecraft
or Stephen King, where the horror elements intrude. In New England, small town.
And finally, there's liminal fantasy where there really are no barriers between really and fantastical elements.
They live side by side, such as Susanna Clarke's, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.
Common devices are used in many of these books
by authors to try and create what we know is world building. That is to make
the world, be it a liminal world or an entirely secondary world that you immerse
yourself into to be entirely believable. And that's paradoxical,
as it may sound to you, because, of course, you are trying to make the fantastic elements, those
which are entirely unbelievable, believable. To do this, writers tend to
employ a variety of methods. Most notably, the text is
often presented as authentic. Think of the number of stories that utilise
that discovered manuscript book idea with the story survives to us. The device is used as
far back as Thomas Moore's Utopia, but more recently in the great Gothic novel The
Castle of a Trenta. And it's actually had The Hobbit and the Lord of the Ring uses its
uses for its framing device, where the story is actually written down Memoirs
of Bilbo Baggins and then picked up by Frodo and Sam.
Consider also the number of books that surround themselves with scholarly apparatus. The most obvious being a map
at the beginning or end. The map not only helps the writer and reader address the spatial
and topographical concerns of the world there, they are proud to be moving in, but
it also gives a sense of authenticity. There are other scholarly apparatus.
We often get with these types of books. We have appendices and genealogies. The Lord of the Rings being a fantastic
example of this. And this all leads us to a sense of depth
which can be engendered by embedding in the text references to a bleak past events. You
will often be reading the story and then some of them will make a reference to something that happened a long time
ago. Very often, or more often than not, you don't get a full explanation of that. You
were just meant to realise that there is more to this story than meets the eye.
Depth can also be engendered through familiarity, drawing on concepts that the readers already know about
Tolkien himself. Note that it's desirable if you can. Necessary if you can use words
that are already in existence, which have a certain sense and are laden with a certain sense.
And therefore, I use dwarves in Middle Earth and elves and so on. You can't have everything. Absolutely
strange at the outride. So for many Western writers, they can be assisted greatly
in terms of making the world seem familiar. That first step to believability by drawing on
known mythologies and to repeat the mediaeval motifs and tropes we've discussed at length earlier.
This is what is familiar in such writers. It's a walk to Scott or indeed in Hollywood. It
engendered in reader a sense of knowing which in turn can assist with immersion.
Perhaps one of the most famous essays on this is tokens on
fairy stories. In this token is at great pains to stress a story
or environment should be presented. Its true. It's divided into various sections
under the section entitled Children Tokin notes that children have what we might term literary belief.
The storyteller or sub creator can bring them into the secondary world, the world of the
fairy tale where they encounter is a listener or reader. What was Conner's secondary
belief? This is more powerful than cold. Reduce a suspension of disbelief.
To achieve this token, I believe that most importantly, fantasy needed an inner consistency of reality.
The secondary world. The author sub creator creates requires labelled and thought.
The author of Fantasy aspires to capture a sensation of enchantment. Were you the reader?
Almost dreamlike. Enter the secondary world for Tokin Fancy was thus a
high art form in achieving the above was no mean feat because it engendered
in reader the satisfaction of certain primordial human desires, namely to survey
the depths of time and space, often on an epic scale. Moreover,
Tolkien argued that by entering the secondary world for fantasy stories, we can achieve what he described
as recovery. By this, he meant regaining a clear review of the real world,
an idea common perhaps we can see in mediaeval dream tales. Most importantly,
fantasy can provide us with consolation as it often tackles the great escape,
namely the great escape from death. Even if this is not explicit in the plot, Tolkien
perceives it is coming through in moments which he termed you catastrophe, the sudden, joyous
term which denies universal final defeat, which all fantasy stories
he believed should or would have. A good example of this in
the Lord of the Rings is, of course, the destruction of the ring. Even at the very end, Frodo
fails almost in his quest, and the quest is only saved by Gollum's intervention.
Suddenly there is when the massed armies of the allies are surrounded by the even
larger armies of sourer on a sudden, joyous turn, the dark lord
falls. Now, you can agree or disagree with told him, but it is perhaps
a partial answer to why fantasy literature is so popular.
Is it, as its detractors say, simply escapism? Does it just allow us to forget about our worldly
woes for a time and immerse ourselves in another world? Or does the epic scale or
endless possibilities afforded to an author freed of the shackles of reality,
allow them to explore real world issues? But on a scale impossible in mimetic literature
or in an environment that does not require a familiarity of experience in the reader.
As Mark Chadbourne, the modern day fantasy writer, said, fantasy is actually about reality.
It's just about taking a longer and bigger view. Fantasy novels
may be set to tap back into emotions we had as children, but long forgot
or the ability to have secondary belief to give you that sensation. We rarely have as adults,
namely wonder as there is the liquid commented, an adult is not a dead child,
but a child that survived. Do these tanks go even further back than that and awaken
in some long lost understanding or desire for stories that give us the legends
of old stirring as Atterberry argued longings that either did not exist
previously or that the reader was not aware of? Or are they just
rollicking good yarns?
So in this brief talk, I've tried to give a quick summary of how we might define the genre of
fantasy and also be aware of the many subgenres that you could use,
traditional approaches such as setting plot, narrator characterisation to look at fantasy novels.
But there are special questions you might want to ask with the fantasy text. I've touched
on the long, but in this case, quite a short history of fantasy. I've considered
how people have looked at common structures, motives and tropes. I've
briefly mentioned immersion and belief through tokens, essay on fairy
stories, and I've touched also on popularity. Why might it be so that these
books sell so well and are indeed dominating popular culture at the moment?
I will leave you with this quote from early LA Gwinn, 1973, where
you hobnob with hobbits and tell tales about little green men are quite used to being dismissed as mere
entertainers or sternly disapproved of its escapists. But I think that perhaps the categories
are changing like the Times. There's a certain sense of defensiveness to look Gwyn's comment
in 1973, as if she was aware that writing or reading or talking
about such texts may seem childish to many academics.
However, that has changed. Fantasy literature is now one of the most important and popular
genres around. It dominates popular culture through the works of Tokin
or the Game of Thrones series. And it deserves considerable study.
Finally, here is just a brief reading list of some of the books you might want to look
at to allow you to develop your study of fantasy literature.