The Fantasy Story

Today I’d like to tell you about fantasy literature. It is very hard to tell all about it but I’ll try to do it as good as possible and not being boring.

First fantasy motifs were shown in romanticism. We all know the mystical and unreal characters: ghosts, phantoms etc. Authors for building the special mood and charm of that epoch used that figures.

But fantasy is something more than romantic ways of showing nature or inner experiences of the main character in the novel. It’s also not an attempt of explaining the unreal and difficult to understand visions or event. In the course of time it began to live it’s own life more and more the writers started to use these motifs. And what had happened? They created fairy-tales completely different from the basic kinds of literature, they invented fantasy.

So how did it all start? Well, there are lots of ideas about that. I’m the one who agrees with theory that the very beginning was “Alice in Wonderland” written by Lewis Carroll in 1865. We may laugh that it is on the same bookshelf as “Winnie the Pooh” or “Peter Pan” and many more. It’s a fact that these works were written for children but they had this thing, some kind of new idea, concept that distinguished them, made it different from many others.

That is the origin of fantasy literature. Now I would like to focus on the definition of this sort. Being honest, there is a problem cause there is really no good definition. There are many of them, but each other denies another. One way of solving this is creating many under kinds of fantasy which wonderfully started to suit the novels, e.g.:”Lord of the Rings” became epic fantasy, “Conan” by Robert E. Howard was heroic fantasy and so on. But this is not a good, objective way. My favourite definition is one made by Andrzej Sapkowski. He said: ”Fantasy is all that have a sign with caption ‘Fantasy’. If on the back of a book right under publishers name we can see the inscription ‘fantasy’, that book is included to fantasy kind”. That definition is unpretentious but not faultless. Why? Just because many publishers simply don’t know what to write, they don’t do any captions or do it accidentally. But that is not in our concern.

After trying to define fantasy I’ll introduce possible kinds of it, with the examples.

The first one is called “behind the closed door”. The whole idea of it is that behind our, “normal”, real world, the one we live in, exist other dimensions, parallel worlds, lands of fantasy. To that other world usually is leading some door, secret entrance. They can be opened but not everyone can do it, it has to be “The Chosen One”.

The most know example of this kind is “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” by C. S. Lewis. Lewis from his early childhood had in mind a vision of a faun wandering in a forest covered by snow. That picture developed to stories about the fantasyland called Narnia. When Lewis was a child, he played with his brother hiding in a big oaken wardrobe telling stories. One time he created a land he called Animaland, where animals just like people wore clothes.

In stories about Narnia the realness mixes with fantastic elements. Narnia was a land of magic, where lived incredible creatures: the great king lion Aslan(archetype of Deus artifex which is God the creator), walking trees and nymphs, fauns or satyrs, dwarves and giants, gods and centaurs; they all were talking with human voice. An accident caused that four brothers and sisters entered that strange world. Whilst playing they discovered entrance in the title wardrobe. They were dragged into a battle between the evil White Witch (very familiar to Andersen’s Queen of Snow) and noble Aslan – king and creator of Narnia. Children fought hand in hand with the lion and after winning the war became masters of that fairyland. As kings and queens they ruled wise and with justice. It seemed that the human world was just a dream. But one day, after many happy years on the throne, they got lost in a forest. While walking the trees became coats and they suddenly fell out of the closet. Long years in Narnia were just few minutes in the human world. Children have big imagination so crossing the line between fantasies and real is not a problem, but it is a big challenge for readers. Lewis created the magic land and as he once said:”even if all of that is imagined – trees, grass, sun, moon, stars and Aslan, there is no doubt: this imagined world is much better then the real one”.

The next kinds, beloved by fantasy fans are “never-lands”. They are perfectly defined by one of first never-lands creators Lord Dunsany. He named it as places “beyond the fields we know”. And we are really crossing the line of human perception. Authors don’t blink their eye, don’t pretend like in the Venice carnival. Not everything is from the beginning land of fantasy. Tolkien made never-lands legal, gave them autonomy and independence, full rights in authors imagination. He said that artistic imagination has no borders and cannot be restricted by what is real. We can see what we want to see, also the land of never. Never-lands can use the cultural heritage of our world, but it all depends on the author. Of course playing in never-lands must be based on understanding and agreement between writer and reader, we have to accept all the rules and it can’t be disturbed by any onomastic details: facts like Sam Gamgee eating potatoes in Middle Earth – world of obvious fantasy, or Ciri meeting Knights of the Cross in journey “through time and space”. Fantasy of this kind is also known as high fantasy or the epic fantasy. Other name is heroic fantasy, simply because epic is a heroic fight between good and evil.

“The Lord of the Rings” takes place in a pretty dark reality, where almost everyone is included to the battle. Dead languages fascinated Tolkien and he always wanted to recreate the world where they exist. He was trying to make a new mythology, which could be equal to ancient Greece myths or Scandinavian legends. That’s one of the reasons why Tolkien stopped using hobbits humor (it was the main element of “Hobbit – there and back again”, novel written before “The Lord…”). Trilogy maintains in serious atmosphere, maybe even sublime I would say.

Time and place