Week 4 - What is fantasy?

During weeks 3 and 4 of the semester, we have been looking at the story "The Wizard of Earthsea" by Ursula K. Le Guin. This story, the first in a trilogy, follows the young wizard Ged as he grows and develops his magic skills in the fictional realm of Earthsea.

With different realms, wizards and even, without giving away too much, shape-shifting, this trilogy is considered to be part of the fantasy genre.

But what is fantasy? Attebery (1980) asks the same question in his article "Locating Fantasy". He writes that perhaps one of the most satisfying ways of finding the answer to this question would be to line up a shelf of books of what you would call fantasy - his picks include the likes of "The Wind in the Willows", "The Princess and the Goblin", and J.R.R Tolkein's "The Lord of the Rings", among others. I would add a couple of my personal favourites: the "Harry Potter" series and "The Chronicles of Narnia"; and of course, let's not forget "Earthsea", the principal fantasy text of study in the Popular Genres paper here at AUT.

Indeed, such a way of looking at this genre is quite satisfying. Not only does it conjure up images of many of the much loved characters from these stories - like the young boy wizard himself, Harry Potter, waving his wand around the halls of Hogwarts; or Frodo Baggins, the smiling, hairy-footed Hobbit who goes on a quest to destroy that bloody ring! - but it allows us to see the common, defining characteristics among this array of titles that represent the 'fantasy' genre. In his research, Attebery (1980), found that one of the definining aspects of fantasy is an "overt violation of what is generally accepted as possibility". (Irwin, n.d., as cited by Attebery, 1980). In other words, something in the story that would not likely exist in the world as we know it. So...an escape into another world filled with magic, strange creatures and maybe some of those childhood nightmares of 'the monster under the bed' that to this day, wake us in a cold sweat in the middle of the night...

The other main defining aspect of fantasy that Attebery (1980) found, was the fact that this genre treats these "overt violations" of what is accepted as possibility, as if they were real. The writer does not bother to try and convince the reader that these "seeming impossibilities are in fact explainable", as is common place in the science fiction genre (Attebery, 1980, p. 1), but rather the reader is asked to simply accept the fact that things just are how they are explained in the text. According to Attebery (1980), J.R.R. Tolkein calls this a "secondary belief". Attebery writes that fantasy is a "game", demanding that one "play whole-heartedly, accepting for the moment all the rules and turns of the game" and the reader will then be rewarded with a sense of "wonder".(Attebery, 1980).

What are your thoughts? Did you enjoy the 'fantasy fortnight'?

Reference:
Attebery, B. (1980). The fantasy tradition in American literature. From Irving to Le Guin, 1-10. Bloomington, Indiana University Press.