Week Three - Filip

How does Attebery (1980) define Fantasy? Find at least five definitions.

To give us the essential characteristics of fantasy, Attebery (p.3) cites W. R. Irwin (1976):

‘an overt violation of what is generally accepted as possibility.’

‘Whatever the material, extravagant or seemingly commonplace, a narrative is a fantasy if it presents the persuasive establishment and development of an impossibility, an arbitrary construct of the mind with all under the control of logic and rhetoric.’

Also citing J. R. R. Tolkien (1965):

‘founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact but not a slavery to it.’


Attebery also gives their own insight:

‘Any narrative which includes as a significant part of its make-up some violation of what the author clearly believes to be natural law.’

‘demanding (of) straightforward treatment of impossible characters, objects, or events.’

‘Fantasy, though, needs consistency. Reader and writer are committed to maintaining the illusion for the entire course of the fiction.’



How is science fiction different from fantasy, according to Le Guinn?

Technically, It mostly comes down to the idea of plausibility; what it means to each genre.
‘What constitutes plausibility in fantasy is the coherence of the story, its consistent self-reference.’

Thematically, the setting is usually definitive of this difference. Sci-fi works are typically set in the future, which provides a ‘blank page’ to help plausibility and ‘...win the reader’s consent to the fiction.’



Can you identify any common fantasy meta-narratives from your own reading/viewing?

Star Wars and The Bible are quite common; including several short stories taking place in a single universe with a shared authorship. Star Wars has considerable overlap with Science Fiction, though holds high fantasy in its mystical ‘force’.



What are some archetypes (e.g. common character types) of fantasy fiction?

Though the lines can be blurred between them, here are some common fantasy archetypes.:
Hero, Mentor, Maiden, Trickster, Monster, Villain.



Note while you are reading A Wizard of Earthsea Le Guinn’s depiction of race and gender. Is there anything surprising in this? Why?

Quite bold for the time of the 1960’s; the savages are ‘white-skinned, yellow-haired’. Not the most common portrayal of savages.
There’s a value of female character; the mother’s passing left ‘no one to bring the child up in tenderness’. The mentor is also a witch; the boy’s auntie, with high status coming from her knowledge. An unconventional spin; witches are commonly villainous in fantasy.



In what ways does Tax (2002) suggest Earthsea may still be relevant today?

Discussing the ‘transcendently truthful’ Le Guin’s Earthsea works, Tax (2002) writes
‘they speak to a different kind of truth and satisfy a desire for narrative that is so fundamental it must be in our cells.’

On J. K. Rowling’s success with Harry Potter; ‘It’s a great story, but you can only be a nine days’ wonder once.’
Tax seems to have some resentment toward commercially successful works and ‘the tyranny of contemporary realism in literary fiction.’ Tax makes a divide between fantasy and realism, arguing there is timelessness present in Earthsea and not in Harry Potter.


Here’s an excerpt in which she gives her opinion quite strongly:

‘ Commodified fantasy takes no risks; it invents nothing, but imitates and trivializes. It proceeds by depriving the old stories of their intellectual and ethical complexity, turning their action to violence, their actors to dolls, and their truth-telling to sentimental platitude.
Heroes brandish their swords, lasers, wands as mechanically as combine harvesters, reaping profits.
Profoundly disturbing moral choices are sanitized, made cute, made safe. The passionately conceived ideas of the great story-tellers are copied... advertised, sold, broken, junked, replaceable, interchangeable.’


I felt this was more convincing, though not so much as to make me believe it is the essence of real fantasy alone as much as good storytelling across all genres.