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Catching up on my blog topic list (and taking a break from the politics|religion axis), I want to come back to something I promised ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) pauljessup (of Lotus Lyceum fame) sometime in ages past. To wit, I have this notion that I can set some pins around the concept of defining the purpose of fantasy. I am confident that the mighty commentariat here on LJ will tear this one apart, but that's kind of the name of the game, innit?
I submit that fantasy is the oldest form of literature. Three of the earliest pieces of narrative which survive for us today are the Bible, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Odyssey. All three are filled with tropes, events and settings which are by modern standards inarguably fantastic. While I can't pretend to understand the original cultural setting of any of those three works, I will grant without argument that both storytellers and their audiences in the ancient world were far less likely to distinguish between the imaginary and the merely unknown than we are in our modern Western frame of reference.
However, I don't think this matters for the purposes of this discussion. Much of the power of those books in the modern world is the scope of that selfsame fantastic imagination. The Homeric vision of wily Odysseus wending his way home amid sirens sweetly singing, the porcine transsubstantiations of Circe, the cyclops and his woolly larder, has a compelling persistence that trumps other work of the Classical and pre-Classical era, including even Homer's Iliad. What is a mere war story when compared to the true adventures of a working-class king, after all?
Now fast forward to the emergence of the novel as a modern form. Don Quixote (1605) is fantastic, as are many works in the Gothic tradition -- that stream of literature which eventually birthed romance, horror, fantasy and science fiction. (We're all double-cousins in this family.) Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown (1798) is one of the first novels written in the United States, and it is a dark fantasy. Manuscript Found in Saragossa (1797-1815) is another favorite of mine, with a textual history as strange as the book itself, and I can reasonably argue that Eugene Sue's The Wandering Jew (1844?) is science fiction, albeit in no wise by authorial intent. Onward to Well at the World's End by William Morris (1896), The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison (1922) and so forth.
All of this before the outbreak of what we think of as fantasy today, in the post-Tolkien tradition. (Not to slight C.S. Lewis, Mervyn Peake or many other fine mid-20th century fantasists.)
So fantasy exists, and persists, from the dawn of literature, at least as seen through a modern lens, and right through to being a best-selling genre in the present day.
Why?
Fantasy is a map of the terrain of our subconscious, a doorway into myth. This is true in a meaningful degree of all story-telling, all literature, but fantasy has a special role in being perhaps the least interpolated of our story-telling forms. (If I were Jung at heart, I could go on about archetypes.) There are other agendas at play in the Iliad, for example, and likewise the works of Herodotus, the satires of Lucan, the plays of Sophocles -- politics and religious messaging and cultural reinforcement that move to the forefront, ahead of the mapping of the dark light within the mind.
Fantasy is phrenology-by-proxy, subsuming and possibly incorporating the (at least nominal) rigors of science fiction, the emotional axes of romance, the time-binding of historicals, the adrenaline of thrillers and so on, in favor of an appeal to the escape of self. Perhaps its closest cousin in the current genre framework is horror, which blends into fantasy through the borderland of dark fantasy.
The purpose of fantasy first and foremost is to be a mirror of the mind, a reflection of the soul, a playing field for the imagination. It is us.
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| tltrent |
| 2006-11-22 05:20 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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All the literary fiction writers are bleeding from their eardrums right now! Hehe...
Well-said, though.
Just don't forget the other half of the world in thinking about the historical roots. Some of our oldest fairytales--Cinderella, for instance--originate there. Many Chinese classics, notably Journey to the West are also what we would consider fantasy. It could even be argued that what we in the West see as fantasy is merely history in Chinese tradition. Talk about mythic truth! It would be very interesting to think about how the global fantastic tradition originated and evolved, I think.
Ahem...sorry...my teacher-self stepped in there for a moment...
Thanks much for thinking through these sorts of things in a public arena. :)
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| juliabk |
| 2006-11-22 05:37 (UTC) |
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If I were Jung at heart,
Fairytales could come true.
(I know, I know, but it had to be said.)
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| goulo |
| 2006-11-22 05:45 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
| watchmen |
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Just to name some more pre-20th century fantasy examples which I've enjoyed:
The Metamorphoses
Beowulf
Orlando Furioso
The Divine Comedy
Gargantua and Pantagruel
various stories about King Arthur
Gulliver's Travels
Dracula
various stuff by Bierce and Poe
and undoubtedly many more I'm not remembering right now. Fantasy is indeed not a new thing.
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| scarlettina |
| 2006-11-22 06:00 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
| Blood love and rhetoric |
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I don't disagree. In fact, I had two (count 'em) college professors who espoused this position as well, and it's a conclusion I came to pretty early on myself. We were here first.
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| juliabk |
| 2006-11-22 06:00 (UTC) |
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Mostly, I think you've pretty much said just about everything.
I thought about what you said about the roots of fantastic literature.
Fantasy is, quite literally, the stuff of dreams. It *is* 'us', as you say. It's wired into our brains. Back in the before time when the only portable communication was human to human, storytelling relied on whatever descriptive abilities the storyteller had and I'm sure that added to the fantastic nature of the tales.
Try to remember back before you could read. I bet the percentage of people reading this who can remember being illiterate would be less than 1%. Personally, I can't even imagine it. Even when I scan writing in a language I don't know, often words will jump out because they have roots common to words I know. I'll manage to maybe decode parts of it. Now, imagine never having seen a photograph or a television or a newspaper. We *know* what a rhino looks like even if we've never been within ten feet of one (and for those of us who live in cities with decent zoos, we probably *have* been that close - even if we've never been to Africa). We tend to share a common visual frame of reference that covers just about the entire globe. (Raise your hand if you grew up watching every National Geographic special that came on - gotta love watching lions gutting zebras over the meatloaf and mashed potatoes ;-) We have eliminated many of our sources of the fantastic because we have eliminated so many unknowns.
I went through a thought exercise for a story I did a number of years ago (a much loved trunk story, I fear ;-) and it was amazingly difficult. I tried to get inside the head of a non-primate proto-sentient critter/person. I apparently didn't do it well enough since it didn't sell, but it was fascinating to dig it out and pour it on the page. What I did find, though, was that I started to appreciate the rich landscape inside my head a little bit more. Before having my apnea treated, I had long, drawn out fantastic dreams that, at least while I was stuck in REM, seemed more vivid and evocative than any fantasy I've ever read or seen.
And now I seem to have lost at least part of the thread of what I was trying to say. I was going to talk about fantasy rising from a melding of our dreams and the unknown, but I seem to be sequeing into a whine about the seeming scarcity of new sources of fantastic ideas. Except of course, the sources are in us.
Pardon me while I turn into a pumpkin now. ;-)
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| mizkit |
| 2006-11-22 09:57 (UTC) |
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I submit that fantasy is the oldest form of literature. Three of the earliest pieces of narrative which survive for us today are the Bible, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Odyssey.
I used exactly that argument (only with the Illiad instead of the Bible, because there's a limit to the arguments one wants to get into when one is speaking to a class in a Catholic country) just last week. ...
...I was going to start quoting things, but then I realized I'd be more or less going through bullet points and saying, "Yeah, me too," so nevermind. :) Well goddamned said, sir!
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| (Anonymous) |
| 2006-11-22 10:29 (UTC) |
| Purpose of fantasy |
If fantasy is a mirror of the mind, would science fiction then be a mirror for the mind?
(I just finished Blindsight. So sue me...;-)
--Jetse
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| (Anonymous) |
| 2006-11-22 20:37 (UTC) |
| Re: Purpose of fantasy |
Well, the defendant states that fantasy might be considered as a way to fictionalise the unknown (or alien) into the known and thus the familiar, while science fiction might be considered as a way to truly understand the alien (or unknown) while accepting it as something quintessentially different.
But the defendant also realises that such a statement is a grand, sweeping generalisation, with plenty of exceptions on both sides of the argument.
So, can we settle out of court?
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| markteppo |
| 2006-11-22 13:40 (UTC) |
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It occurred to me while reading this that, in short-hand, you could call fantasy "backward looking" while science fiction would be "forward looking." While I agree with the idea that fantasy is the playing field of the imagination, I think its "mirror" is more of a reminder of how we can to this place (creation myths, as several of your original examples are, aren't much more than the lessons of "here's how we got here and why we do things the way we do, kids"). Science fiction, on the other hand, while it can certainly claim similar mythic elements (archetypes, structures, what-not) is more suppositional, more of a consideration of what we can become. Fantasy anchors our world; science fiction can crack it open.
I'm generalizing heavily, but the reaction I had to your statement about fantasy turns around this distinction that struck me between fantasy and science fiction. Fantasy is a a "safe" mental playground, a way for me to better understand my human condition via the rigors of the tale, and it ultimately reassures me of who I am. Science fiction, on the other hand, seems like more dangerous territory because it offers me the opportunity to imagine growth and change.
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| markteppo |
| 2006-11-22 14:11 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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A quick follow-up thought. If I sat my three-year old son down and had him watch Lord of the Rings and Star Trek, they would both be equally "fantastic" to him, but I don't think he could make the distinction between one being "fantasy" and one being "science fiction." I think some cultural awareness and a sense of history must be in place, as if the viewer must be sufficiently defined before being able to look forward or backward.
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| jaylake |
| 2006-11-22 14:21 (UTC) |
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Ya, I get you. Still, I think there's something significant in that fact that fantasy is a story-telling form that's as old as language, while science fiction by any formal definition can't be traced back beyond the industrial revolution.
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| ogre_san |
| 2006-11-22 15:02 (UTC) |
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Granted, it's a generalization, but a not uncommon one. I have to take issue with the notion that fantasy is inherently "safe." It can be. Then again, so can science fiction. It's not inherent in the form. Anything that holds up a mirror to our psyches and does so honestly is not going to be safe, nor necessarily reassuring.
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| jaylake |
| 2006-11-22 15:08 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
| jay_selfish-attention-whore |
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At the risk of being horribly self-promotional, I don't think Trial of Flowers is a safe book, and it's undeniably fantasy.
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| juliabk |
| 2006-11-22 15:18 (UTC) |
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Science fiction is a sub-genre of fantasy. The reason, as mentioned, it only appears post-Industrial Revolution is because it deals with the idiom of the Industrial Revolution. I think of it as how we map the new territory on our mental landscapes. SF deals not so much with the natural world or our internal world as with the world as we remake it.
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| markteppo |
| 2006-11-22 16:54 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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Let me clarify my use of "safe" then. Old myths, tales told around the firepit to the rest of the tribe, oral traditions ("fantasy" in the most historically unadorned sense, if you will) are meant to instruct and reassure us of how the world works. They build a framework that allows us to function as a social group, that defines us as a people, if you will. Even if you consider the fairy tales ala Grimm et al, they're still instructive (morality tales, even) and are meant to provide us a means of protection (as in, defining the world about us). That sort of safe.
As for Trial of Flowers, I'm inclined to argue that it is safe because, regardless of how badly you beat the crap out of your characters, it is still a morality tale -- it is a code of instructions and precautions. Now I need to wrap my head around why I think this because there's a connection between "myth" and "safe" that I'm not quite articulately well enough, as well as some assumptions that I am making about a definition of "science fiction."
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Granted, you qualified your thoughts with generalizations (which is the best way, I think, to paint these discussions unless we want to start writing theses at each other), but what about urban fantasy? A great many of my favorite fantasy tales these days are not set in any sort of nostalgic, revisionist-understanding-of-self-and-past kind of way. If science fiction is, as you mentioned, expressing our anxieties/concerns/interests about what could be, then so does urban fantasy. Magic realism, while not strictly "fantasy" by everyone's measure, does the same thing: metaphorizing our concerns/anxieties as the invasion of the fantastic (the improbably technological in science fiction) into the "real."
Not that I'm being original here: I think Robert Scholes calls this sort of projection "sublimation," and though it's stretching a bit, we could probably intone Suvin's "cognitive estrangement" as well.
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| kadath |
| 2006-11-22 15:10 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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If I were Jung at heart...
This post exists just so you could use that pun. Admit it.
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| jaylake |
| 2006-11-22 16:04 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
| funny-samples_photo |
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Well, the "shat on Freud" joke was harder to work in.
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Fantasy is also a medium for teaching. You can address controversial issues as well as simple right and wrong issues in a different world with superheroes so the audience reads/listens without the barrier of their own prejudice (stubborness). They can look at life sideways.
I look at life upside down mostly.
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| jaylake |
| 2006-11-22 16:32 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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Upside down is good. Any which way but straight and narrow, methinks.
Delany takes on fantasy as teaching stories rather explicitly in the Neveryon books, btw.
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| sartorias |
| 2006-11-23 16:01 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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I tend to think of fantasy as The Possible. (And I agree, it goes way back to the cave-dwelling days, with the laborious paintings of fantastical beings among the men and animals.)
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