The term fantasy was originally created to define a sub-genre of the fantastic genre, therefore one can consider that fantasy -as a word, has a recent philological origin. The term’s roots lie with the French word fantasie, which is etymologically linked to the Greek phantasia, meaning " image, or imagination."
SÉMANTIQUE / Definitions.
An artistic genre of story telling which uses imaginary worlds as a setting, and in which magical or supernatural forces play an important part.
Fantasy can be separated from the fantastic genre, from which it originated, as many consider today that it has achieved an independence of it’s own.
Fantasy took on it’s current form in the beginning of the twentieth century, but the genre’s golden age is set in the 1970’s- early 1980’s although the early twenty first century is witnessing a rebirth of interest in fantasy.
It is also important to distinguish fantasy from science fiction, the latter uses a similar system as fantasy in the creation of an imaginary universe, nevertheless science fiction tends to rationalize these worlds, and justify their existence by portraying them as anticipatory, whereas fantasy is as a rule orientated towards the past.
CORRÉLATS / Collocations
FANTASTIQUE/
Science fiction,
Fantasy was officially born as a genre in the early twentieth century with landmark novels such as Lord Dunsany’s King of the Elflands daughter. Nevertheless, other books which were written in the late nineteenth century by Mc Donald or Haggard can also be considered to be important texts in the creation of fantasy, these authors were certainly influenced by the same renewal in interest for paganism and Celtic culture that inspired later publications. The true origins of fantasy are hard to determine, as the infancy of the genre can be taken back in time to the gothic movement, with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or to the work of Jules Verne. Nevertheless, fantasy on the whole originates from traditional mythological tales, fairy tales and early oral traditions, such as The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Iliad, The Odyssey, as well as various Arthurian and Scandinavian legends. The presence of the Christian bible is equally important in some authors writings.
The early 1930’s saw the word fantasy emerge, it was used to qualify previous works, but also modern publications, and the term was quickly used to qualify an official genre. As the fan base for fantasy grew, it was successfully published under the form of short stories from 1932 in the magazine Weird Tales, which was also used as a base for Howard’s Conan the Barbarian stories, who can be considered to be the father of Heroic Fantasy. Many more magazines followed, such as Amazing Stories. At the same time in England, a circle of friends begins to meet in Oxford to exchange literary ideas, they call themselves The Inklings. Several of these men will become ambassadors of fantasy, Charles Williams, CS Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, but especially professor JRR Tolkien, creator of Middle Earth. When the latter publishes The Lord of the Rings in 1951, the book is an immediate success and opens up fantasy to a wider public. After professor Tolkien’s literary triumph, fantasy explodes as a genre. Other major fantasy authors emerge in the years following this impulse, such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Stephen R. Donaldson, Salvatore, or Margaret Weis. Massive amounts of fantasy are published in the seventies, and the genre begins to take on different forms. An important event is the creation of the company TSR in 1972, which is the first to specialise in fantasy, publishing not only books (such as the popular Dragonlance series) but also magazines, fanzines, card games, and especially role playing games, of these the most famous is without a doubt Dungeons and Dragons, for which one of the most complex fantasy worlds was created : The Forgotten Realms. Up until present day, fantasy has continued producing new generations of talented authors, and the genre has been adopted by media as well as multimedia, with movies, internet sites, video games and even radio broadcasts.
Curiously, fantasy has evolved by maintaining an intimate link with the waves of successive countercultures which have come and gone during the last century. Tolkien’s very nature based Middle Earth appealed to the ecologically aware hippie generations. The 80’s saw Moorcock’s and Salvatore’s wild and clannic universes become popular with the anarchist punks. Nowadays, the tendency can be found with gothic or dark fantasy inspired by Lovecraft’s works which finds an eager goth public. Fantasy has rarely been accepted by the critics, and the fact that this subversive genre has always been actively part of counter cultural movements can not be a coincidence.
These unconventional influences have made fantasy very rich in content but has also transformed it into a literary UFO. Strangely, although genres close to fantasy, such as science fiction have remained globally static, fantasy on both bases of form and content has evolved dramatically. Also, rarely has a genre fragmented so much without developing into a new type of literature. Fantasy has so many sub-genres, such as dark fantasy, light fantasy, high fantasy, low fantasy, medieval fantasy, heroic fantasy, sword and sorcery, to name but a few, that it is presently impossible to write “just fantasy”.
There are only few common attributes to fantasy in general. As a rule, fantasy is built on the principle of the myth. The hero embarks on a long and often initiative journey, during which he overcomes the obstacles set in his path and reaches his goal. Nevertheless fantasy also uses Judaeo-Christian moral with concepts such as good and evil, and the eternal struggle between these powers. The hero is therefore often labeled with messianic virtues, and his quest, which can only come to term through sacrifice, is equal to that of the Christ. Opposing the hero is the villain, who represents the forces of an unjustifiable evil. This character often dabbles in dark magic, is in turn labelled with devilish attributes, and is bent on conquering the world in which the story is set. Fantasy has nevertheless evolved with the moral of the western world, and as agnostic, or atheistic cultures have set in, the genre has grown some less Judaeo-Christian branches, with the return to more pagan roots.
The French theoretician Christian Grenier, is one of the few authors to have ever analysed fantasy as other literary genres have been. He elaborates a theory in his book La science fiction à l’usage de ceux qui ne l’aiment pas, which postulates that Fantasy is based on the principle of “unacceptable irrationality”. In fantasy storylines, either a magical phenomenon erupts into our world, or the reader is directly plunged into an alternate universe, where magical forces rule, both scenarios are inexplicable compared with the reality we know. To read fantasy, Grenier explains that one must allow oneself to drift from “unacceptable irrationality” to “accepted irrationality”, by allowing the virtual existence of the unexplainable or the impossible.
Fantasy does effectively propose an alternative form of literature, although it tends to reproduce conventional codes that allow the creation of a fantasy genre. Fantasy has found a place in society by aiming controversial culture at the right people, which combines elaborately different ideas and conventional mythological story telling, thus allowing a present day view into the past. If correctly interpreted, fantasy can play the role of a modern day myth, by adding a social role to a timeless story.
Patrick Dewdney, étudiant
Université de Limoges
Grenier, Christian.– La science fiction à l’usage de ceux qui ne l’aiment pas.– Paris: Sorbier,2002
Ruaud, André-François.– Une cartographie du merveilleux.– Paris: Folio, 2001
Thomas, Louis-Vincent.– Anthropologie des obsessions.– Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988