Fantasy Literature: Theories of Fantasy

Fantasy Literature
Theories of Fantastic
Ahmet Mesut Ateş
249566

Supervisor: Asst. Prof. Dr. Mustafa Zeki Çıraklı
January 02, 2014
KTU Department of English Language and Literature

Outline of the Presentation
• What is «fantasy» in literature?
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–
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Traditional Fantasy
Fantasy as a literary genre
Fantasy in Modern and Postmodern literature

• Fantastic Theories of Literature
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J.R.R. Tolkien’s Theories of Fantasy
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•
•
•

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Theory of Sub-Creation
The Cauldron of Story
On Fairy Tales
Elements of Fantasy

Tzvetan Todorov’s Theory of Fantastic
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•
•

Fantastic Theory of Literature
Todorov’s Classification of Fantasy
Elements of Fantasy

• Conclusion
• Works Cited
Ahmet Mesut Ateş, KTU Department of English Language and Literature, Turkey

Considering Tolkien’s debated idea that in
human art Fantasy is a thing best left to true
literature, this study aims
• to focus on «fantasy» as discussed in theories
of Tolkien and Todorov and
• to pave the way for a critical analysis of
Tolkien’s the Hobbit

Fantasy Literature: Theories of Fantastic

What is «fantasy» in literature?

Fantastic derives from Latin phantasticus meaning
visionary and unreal. With this definition all imaginary
activity is fantastic which follows all literary works are
fantasies (Jackson 14).
Fantasy in literature is an enormous and seductive
subject and with the utilisation of magic, mythology
and other supernatural elements, it has always been
regarded as a peculiar genre.



Its association with imagination and desire makes the
fantasy a difficult subject to articulate (Jackson 1).
Therefore fantasy as a genre has been overlooked for
centuries.

Fantasy, in literature, employs supernatural,
unreal and imaginary elements to create a
secondary world consistent both with work and
within itself.



Geoffrey Chaucer, the first writer known to us who
worked in a language recognizably akin to modern
English, uses the word fantasye to refer to strange and
bizarre notions that have no basis in every-day
experience, and this is the sense in which it is usually
used today when one speaks of “fantasy literature.”
(Stableford, XXXVII)



Traditional Fantasy
Eastern Fantasy

Western Fantasy

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•
•
•

•
•
•
•

Primordial Fantasy
Indian Fantasy
Persian and Arabian Fantasy
East Asian Fantasy

Classical Fantasy
Medieval Fantasy
Renaissance Fantasy
Fantasy of the Enlightenment Era

Earlier forms of fantasy employed folklore, legends and myth
intricately. Regrettably, this interwoven relationship
precluded the commendation of the genre which is why still
today the border between fantasy and myth is not
completely clarified.



Traditional Fantasy

Modern Fantasy starts in 18th century with George Mac
Donald whom Tolkien was mostly influenced by.
Outstanding works of early modern period: Alice’s
Adventure in Wonderland; Dracula; The Wonderful
Wizard of OZ and Peter Pan.
Before 1969, the description “fantasy,” with respect to
literary works, was usually only applied to a variety of
children’s fiction.



Literary criticism has been notoriously reluctant towards
the fantasy genre. Before Tolkien and Todorov, fantasy
literature was evaluated according to Alexander
Baumgarten ideas (18th century) whose main concern was
aesthetics rather than fantasy itself (Stableford, XLV).
But the lack of adequate theory was not the only obstacle.
Fantastic works have come to be associated with children’s
tales and consequently the scope and reach of the authors
were limited.


J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft and T.H. White
popularized the genre and pushed literary critics to
acknowledge the genre.
Aftermath of World Wars brought attention on escapist
literature and fantasy genre was one of the first to reclaim
superiority. Hereafter, critics started to take the fantastic
works more seriously and Fantasy attained its status as a
literary genre.
Characteristics of the fantasy genre are still under
investigation.


Fantasy in Modern and Postmodern literature
Modern definition: fantasy is the narrative that results
from our construction of a world alternate to this one, a
"secondary world" which is composed of elements of the
"primary world" (Aichele 323, Tolkien 60).
Postmodern definition: fantasy expresses a fragmentation
of self-identical referent offering a power of transformation
and the ability to conquer the primary world, through
secondary world, and to explore and affect the possible
aspects of human life (Aichele 324-25).


Fantastic Theories of Literature
Two chief theoreticians of modern fantasy:
• J.R.R. Tolkien (1939)
• Tzvetan Todorov (1970)
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)
He was a graduate of and a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. He translated
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and many other Medieval texts. His main
interest was Nordic mythology and languages. He published his theories of
Cauldron of Story and Sub-creation in his essay On Fairy Tales in 1939.

Tzvetan Todorov (1939-)
He had his university education in Bulgaria. Later he went to Paris and met his
mentor Roland Barthes. Todorov defines himself: a historian and essayist. He
published his theory on fantasy in Introduction à la littérature fantastique
(1970) in French – it was translated into English in 1973 by Richard Howard.



There are a few men who are privileged to travel
abroad a little; others must be content with
traveler’s tales.
J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Tales




On Fairy Tales
The essay was firstly delivered as a lecture in University of St. Andrews in
1938 and later published in 1947 by Oxford University Press.
The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with
many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there;
shoreless seas and stars un-counted; beauty that is an enchantment,
and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as
swords.(Tolkien, 3)
For Tolkien, definitions attributed to fairy stories hitherto fall short with their
insistence on a childish notion and judgement of the literary value of the
genre.




On Fairy Tales
Tolkien tries to define terms such as Fairy, Faërie, Fantasy and repudiates
stereotype attitudes towards fantastic characters such as Elves, Dwarves and
his own creations.
I will not attempt to define that [Faerie], nor to describe it directly. It
cannot be done. Faerie cannot be caught in a net of words; for it is
one of its qualities to be indescribable, though not imperceptible (...)
I will say only this: a "fairy-story" is one which touches on or uses
Faerie, whatever its own main purpose may be: satire, adventure,
morality, fantasy. (Tolkien 10)
Dream “cheats deliberately the primal desire at the heart of Faerie: the
realization, independent of the conceiving mind, of imagined wonder”
(Tolkien 11) and he excludes dreams from the realm of Faerie and fantasy.


On Fairy Tales
Tolkien states that:
the primal "desires" that lie near the heart of Faerie : the desire of
men to hold communion with other living things. But the speech of
beasts in a beast-fable, as developed into a separate branch, has little
reference to that desire, and often wholly forgets it. Themagical
understanding by men of the proper languages of birds and beasts
and trees, that is much nearer to the true purposes of Faerie.
(Tolkien 15)
Tolkien alludes to the origins of the faerie stories and concludes that:
Fairy-stories ( in wider or in narrower sense) are very ancient indeed.
Related things appear in very early records; and they are found
universally, wherever there is language (...) The history of fairy-stories
is probably more complex than the physical history of the human
race, and as complex as the history of human language. (Tolkien 20)



Tolkien had an acute belief in the “generalization and the abstraction” power
of the language. He suggests that the most enabling feature of both Faerie
and fantasy is the adjectives:
The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also
conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and able to
fly... (Tolkien 22)
An author becomes a sub-creator:
We may cause woods to spring with silver leaves and rams to wear
fleeces of gold, and put hot fire into the belly of the cold worm. But
in such "fantasy," as it is called, new form is made; Faerie begins;
Man becomes a sub-creator. (...) An essential power of Faerie is thus
the power of making immediately effective by the will the visions of
"fantasy." (Tolkien 22)



Tolkien argues that creative aspect of humanity and language prompts us to
create. He argues earlier forms of fantasy are considered as myth whereas it
should be the exact opposite. Because mythological gods could have derived
their likeness from the elements of nature “but it was Man who obtained
these for them, (...) their personality they get direct from him; (...) they
receive through him from the invisible world, the Supernatural ” (Tolkien 24).
Tolkien accounts fantasy to much earlier dates from the earlier myths.
Because “fantasy, the making or glimpsing of Other-worlds, was the heart of
the desire of Faerie” (Tolkien 42).




For Tolkien all authors are sub-creators. They construct a primary
world which should effectuate a secondary belief in the reader. The
moment the reader’s faith starts to fade fantasy dissolves. Tolkien
accepts that this creation is a complex process and he agrees at that
point with those critics who claim that there is no fantasy genre but
moments of fantastic in literary works.
Nevertheless, he claims his belief in the power of language and human
creation and adds that:
Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and
in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only
made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker. (Tolkien
55)



Tolkien asserts that Myth, legends, folklore and the characters of
these stories have all become entangled with each other – how
much they are related and which will dominate the tale this only
the storyteller can decide (Tolkien, 26).
Tolkien believed that all the literary devices and other means of
a story exist in the Cauldron of Story. A storyteller thus chooses
his ingredients from this cauldron which in return he adds new
patterns, events, and characters. Tolkien’s approach corresponds
to Henry Fielding’s ideas who claimed that his characters are
“universally familiar characters” rather than being alive.



But if we speak of a Cauldron, we must not wholly forget
the Cooks. There are many things in the Cauldron, but
the Cooks do not dip in the ladle quite blindly (Tolkien
30).
Tolkien implies that before an event or character is taken from
the Cauldron, it should boill “a long time” with other elements.
Only after then they can be utilised afresh in a story. Tolkien also
reminds the eminent care an author should take when he picks
from the Cauldron.


Elements of Fantasy
Tolkien follows elements of fairy stories as follows:
• Fantasy
• Recovery
• Escape
• Consolation
Fantasy: derived notions of unreality, images of things that are not actually
present or believed to be not to be present in primary world. Fantasy is “a
higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved)
the most potent” (Tolkien 47).
Tolkien defines fantasy as the “Sub-creative art” but while doing this it does
not contradict with Reason because it is natural human activity (Tolkien 48).
Tolkien agrees that few attempts to fantasy because it is a kid of elvish craft.



Elements of Fantasy
Recovery: seeing the things we are used to in a way that we can not
only appreciate the thing but also its parts, things that make it a
whole. Tolkien defines recovery as “seeing things as we are ( or were )
meant to see them” (Tolkien 57).
Escape: one of the main functions of fairy stories. Escape is not from
the reality or the primary world but rather more serious things such as
“hunger, thirst, poverty, pain, sorrow, injustice, death” and the reader
reaches profound desires – flying or conversing with the beasts and
understanding their speech. The greatest escape of the fairy stories is
the escape from the Death – a search for the immortality (Tolkien 667).




Elements of Fantasy
Consolation: a sudden and unpredictable turn of events. It is the
joyous turn of events at the end of the tale. All fairy stories should
have consolation.
It can give to child or man that hears it, when the "turn"
comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart,
near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that
given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality.
(Tolkien 68-9)
If tragedy is the true form of the drama, the true form or the highest
form of the fairy story is Eucatastrophe.




The literature of fantastic leaves us with two
notions – reality and literature – each one as
unsatisfactory as the other.
Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic



The Fantastic is mostly concerned with the interrelationship between
the elements of the fantasy rather than the genre itself. Todorov
excludes drama from the discussion. He defines fantastic as:
those works in which events occur that cannot be
explained by rational laws, and in which the reader
hesitates to the very end as to whether these events
have rational explanations or are the product of
rational forces operating in everyday reality. (Reeder 187)
According to Todorov:
psychoanalysis has replaced the literature of the fantastic,
for it deals with the same themes in undisguised term.
(Reeder 188)



Todorov and Tolkien agree on the idea of a “secondary world.”
However Todorov differentiates in two aspects:
Tolkien perceives secondary belief as an essential for the fantasy but
Todorov claims that “fantasy lies in the indecision between the
uncanny and the marvellous, (...) it requires "near belief," which is
either belief nor disbelief” (Aichele 326).

Tolkien rejects the concept of “truth” in the fantasy literature while
Todorov states “the fantastic remains bound to the metaphysical
binarism of real and unreal, and thus he keeps one foot on modernist
ground” (Aichele 326).



Classification of Fantasy
Todorov observes fantastic in two categories:
• The Marvellous
• The Uncanny
The Marvellous: reader is aware that there are no rational
explanations to the events taking place in the work. Todorov
include fairy tales and science fiction to this category.
The Uncanny: bizarre and weird occurrences, but a natural
explanation such as dream, intoxication or madness can be
given. Gogol’s Diary of a Madman and Dostoevskij's The Double
fall into this category because the explanation is madness



Classification of Fantasy
•
•
•
•

Pure Marvellous
Fantastic Marvellous
Pure Uncanny
Fantastic Uncanny

Pure Marvelolus: Events are supernatural, superhuman and magical. There is
no rational explanation.
Fantastic Marvellous: Supernatural event are eventually to be accepted as
supernatural. Fear is turned to wonder.
Pure Uncanny: Events are strange, horrific or incredible because of the
deceiving mind of the pratogonist, but not supernatural.
Fantastic Uncanny: Supernatural events are eventually given a natural
explanation. Reader’s hesitation is resolved that there really is no
explanation.



Elements of Fantasy
Todorov postulates three requirements for Pure fantastic:
1) The work should sustain the reader’s hesitation between natural
and supernatural to the end.
2) The characters should share the hesitation and enable the reader
to identify himself with the character
3) The reader should be aware that the work is a fantastic one and
should not attempt to read it as an allegory.
Todorov suggests the first and the third rule constitute the genre but
the second rule, as well, is mostly fulfilled. Both the second and the
third rule depend on the first rule: reader’s hesitation.

To conclude,
Tolkien’s idea that in human art Fantasy is a
thing best left to true literature is of
consideration.
This study therefore will apply Tolkien and
Todorov’s terminologies to Tolkien’s the Hobbit
and reveal the significance of fantasy in
literature.



Works Cited
Aichele, G. "Literary Fantasy And Postmodern Theology." Journal Of The American Academy Of
Religion 59.2 (1991): 323-337. Scopus®. Web. 27 Dec. 2013.
Brooke-Rose, Christine. "Historical Genres/Theoretical Genres: A Discussion Of Todorov On The
Fantastic." New Literary History 1 (1976): 145. JSTOR Arts & Sciences III. Web. 27 Dec.
2013.
Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy: the literature of subversion. Routledge, 2002.PDF.
Lem, Stainslaw. "Todorov's Fantastic Theory Of Literature." Science Fiction Studies 1.4 (1974):
227-237. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 27 Dec. 2013.
Perkins, J. "Finding Todorov In Russian Literary Criticism: The Struggle To Define The Fantastic."
Forum For Modern Language Studies 44.4 (2008): 363-378. British Library Document
Supply Centre Inside Serials & Conference Proceedings. Web. 27 Dec. 2013.
Reeder , Roberta . “The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genreby Tzvetan Todorov;
Richard Howard.” The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Summer,
1976), pp. 186-189.Jstor.Web. 27 Dec. 2013.



Works Cited
Ross, Smith. "Tolkien The Storyteller." English Today 22.1 (2006): 45-50. Education Research
Complete. Web. 27 Dec. 2013.
Stableford, Brian. The A to Z of fantasy literature. Vol. 46. Scarecrow Press, 2009.PDF.
Todorov, Tzvetan, and John Lyons. "What Is Literature For?." New Literary History 1 (2007): 13.
JSTOR Arts & Sciences III. Web. 27 Dec. 2013.

Todorov, Tzvetan. The fantastic: A structural approach to a literary genre. Cornell University Press,
1975.PDF.
Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel. "On fairy-stories." Tree and leaf (1964): 11-70.PDF.
Wood, Ralph C. "Following The Many Roads Of Recent Tolkien Scholarship." Christianity &
Literature 54.4 (2005): 587-608. Religion and Philosophy Collection. Web. 27 Dec.
2013.
Yaggi, Miranda Maney. "Harry Potter's Heritage: Tolkien As Rowling's Patronus Against The
Critics." Topic: The Washington & Jefferson College Review 54.(2004): 33-45.
Humanities International Complete. Web. 27 Dec. 2013.



Works Cited
Web Sources
“History_of_Fantasy” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopaedia. 29 October 2006. Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc. 22 Nov. 2013.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_fantasy&oldid=131554146
Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature. November 13, 2001. Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight. Created by Anniina Jokinen on. November 22, 2013.
http://luminarium.org/medlit/gawain.htm
Okyay, Sevin. J.R.R. Tolkien’in Fantastik Dünyası. Virgül Aylık Kitap ve Eleştiri Dergisi. 12-13 Aralık
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