9
Fantasy, An overview
In order to try limit the potential for controversial uses in terminology, it is useful to define how I understand the terms surrounding fantasy. In keeping with Tzvetan Todorov's usage of the word, 'fantastic' is employed to distinguish texts that produce a disruptive presence fluctuating around a narrative that blurs boundaries between the real and the imaginary.[1] In this sense, all of the texts within this course are fantastic as they offer "a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence" (Le Guin 79). 'Fantasy' is used specifically to connote the labeling of the genre as a formulaic structure, and is not to be confused with psychoanalytic fantasy; psychoanalytic fantasy, or 'phantasy' signals an engagement with unconscious fears or desires.[2]
As I hope the individual sections of this course have made clear, it is my contention that varied aspects that make up the foreign, the othered, the marginal and the unreal are significant to the formulation of fantastic topographies. Further, I would argue that although it is common, labelling is a problematic and often a disruptive way of offering representations in texts/fiction. As we will see in the remainder of this overview, however, theories of the fantastic are largely beset with contradictory (and often rigid) definitions of what this genre constitutes and what labels are acceptably or unacceptably attached to individual texts. I do not wish to choose a definitive side in this problematic discussion (although you may wish to), first because labels in themselves are problematic and second because, like Lucie Armitt (2000), I contend that
carving up fantasy and the fantastic and jamming its literature into a series of discrete, neatly labelled boxes kills literature dead. So much ground has been lost in comparison with other fields of literary criticism while critics of fantasy have been futilely squabbling over whether a text is marvellous or fabulous [….] (13)
Thus, my purpose here is to offer you the dominant theories within the genre whilst engaging with their ideas and questioning their relevance. Certainly this Course has and will continue to will intersect with a variety of theoretical frameworks in its analysis and to this end, an introductory theoretical discussion of fantasy and the fantastic is helpful.[3]
Eric Rabkin: Fantastic Worlds
In Fantastic Worlds: Myths, Tales and Stories (1979), Eric Rabkin maintains that all art is fantastic (in some sense) because it offers us a space where not only is there order, but where order prevails (3). Rabkin’s work within the genre is important to genre because he addresses the notion of language and ‘codes’ within literary discourse, a concept we will return to repeatedly in this course, not just in terms of language itself, but also in terms of binary oppositions and the idea of fantasy itself.
Offering a rather bleak view of reality and quoting simple (but often contested), notions such as “indifference” and “meaning” as elements of fantasy, Rabkin notes that some art is more fantastic than others. Not a supporter of rigid structuralist approaches to the genre, Rabkin finds that categorizing fantasy invites dispute. Thus, he sees it as a continual process of development envisioning reality at one end of a metaphorical spectrum and fantasy at the other. While acknowledging that there are many levels of fantasy (including science fiction/fantasy, essay/fantasy, horror/fantasy and fairy tale/fantasy), Rabkin finds that there is one true form of the genre. This true form hinges on a number of criteria, culminating in the reversal of alternative worlds.
Maintaining that fantasy supplies alternative worlds with alternative answers (19), Rabkin notes that these answers are either the myths that cultures live by, folktales to entertain cultures, or fairy tales that act as educational aids for the young. Moreover, these different kinds of fantasy operate successfully through the aid of certain signifiers and the activation of specific literary codes. Thus, phrases such as “Once upon a time” and “a golden haired princess” alert us to the fact that a handsome prince will soon arrive, not a plumber named Sid—which would be too boring and ordinary in Rabkin’s opinion (8, 21). Moreover, through the wider public knowledge of established conventions within the fantastic, fantastic worlds begin to take on a life of their own whereby newer worlds can be constructed as alternatives to older ones. The alternative world offered through fantasy is key to determining how ‘fantastic’ a text is for Rabkin:
[i]t is important to recognize that the fantastic comes not from mere violation of the “real world,” but from offering an alternative to the real world; not from an alternative to some real world of immutable and universal law, but to a real world which our life and education have trained us to project as expectable as the context for a given text; and not to the projected real world in the fullness of its infinite and often conflicting elements, but to the particular real world which conforms to the needs of the world inside of the text itself. Because we believe that wizards “obviously” do not exist, we naively suppose that their occurrence in a story is fantastic. But if that story cries out to be read as the life of a saint who performed miracles, then for believing readers the text is clearly not fantastic. (19-20)
As such, it is not just the notion of alternative worlds that Rabkin pinpoints as the crux of the fantastic, but the continual reversal of operating ground rules within the framework of the alternative world. Thus, while talking dragons, flying carpets, or magical witches cannot occur in the real world, they can exist in fantasy and we accept this. What makes fantasy ‘extremely fantastic’ for Rabkin, however, is when these alternative worlds continually challenge the rules of their own fantasy. For example, in a fictional world where witches can exist, the witch is expected to adhere to the literary codes assigned to her. We can reasonably expect that she will be old and ugly, or deviously young and beautiful; we can assume that she will live deep within a forest or wood, in an abandoned shack of some sort, or a variant of such. If we deviate from these codes, or if we intrude upon these codes with elements that do not belong we are reversing the ground rules. Therefore, stories about witches who live in condos or drive BMW’s or who are fundamentally good, would constitute a fantastic role reversal at a basic level for Rabkin. But what happens when our understanding of what is fantastic is continually challenged? What happens when the ground rules are established at the beginning of a text, but then change within the very framework of the text? What happens when both the characters in a text and the readers of the text grow increasingly unsure of the fantasy itself? An example extraneous to our main discussion will best illustrate my challenge.
For Rabkin this continual role reversal is the heart of fantasy and the defining feature of a true fantastic work. Many texts make a host of reversals all at one moment, opening up a world alternative to our own. But once in the world, fundamental reversals almost never occur (as in most fairy tales). If however, ordinary experience (i.e. everyday experience close to one's own 'real' world experience) is provided in a fantastic world and both reader and character are surprised, the ground rules have been reversed and further fantasy has been created. The true fantasy then, for Rabkin, is that class of works that uses the fantastic exhaustively by recognizing our sensitivity to reversals at the following levels: plot, thematic development, character development and style (22). As we will see throughout this course, sensitivity to role reversal and challenges to existing roles are textual elements that popular culture texts implicitly accomplish.
Todorov, Jackson, Dostoevsky: (Structuralism in Fantasy)
In The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, Tzvetan Todorov (1975) takes a strict structural approach to the fantastic, comparing his theory to a scientific methodology (4). He proceeds by deduction, selecting a few representative texts and producing a hypothesis, claiming that it is not the quantity, but the “logical coherence of a theory that finally matters” (2). Further, he defines what he considers to be the “heart” of the fantastic as the moment of hesitation found within the structure of the text.
In a world which is indeed our world, the one we know, a world without devils, sylphides, or vampires, there occurs an event which cannot be explained by the laws of this same familiar world. The person who experiences the events must opt for one of two possible solutions: wither he is the victim of an illusion of the senses, of a product of the imagination— and laws of the world then remain what they are; or else reality— but then this reality is controlled by laws unknown to us. Either the devil is an illusion, an imaginary being; or else he really exists, precisely like other living beings— with this reservation, that we encounter him frequently. The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. (25)
For Todorov, hesitation experienced by the reader and embedded within the text by an ambiguous narrative is the 'absolute' defining feature of the fantastic text; the very concept of the fantastic is characterized by confusion about what is real and what is imaginary (25). From that moment on we either enter into the realm of the marvelous or the uncanny, the two neighboring genres on which Todorov bases his theory:[4]
Pure Uncanny(curious ghostly tales) / Fantastic Uncanny
(strange events have some subjective origin) / Fantastic Marvelous
(inexplicable events eventually resolved through supernatural origin) / Pure Marvelous
(fairy tales, romance, science fiction)
Todorov sees the fantastic text as one being caught between the marvelous and the uncanny, and in fact places them as transitory sub-genres within the fantastic (44). Ultimately, we always find ourselves within the uncanny, the fantastic-uncanny, the fantastic-marvelous, or the marvelous. The key is the questioning experienced by the implicit reader. Fantastic texts are then obliged to meet three criteria: hesitation on the part of the reader between the natural and the supernatural; the ability of the reader to identify with a main character of the text; a rejection of allegorical and poetic interpretations within the text (33). For Todorov, it is the first and third of these which constitute markers of the genre. If the reader hesitates and discredits allegory, then s/he is within the fantastic literary realm.
Yet the fantastic and fantasy remain equally problematic terms, applied to a great variety of texts that are both diverse and defiant. Not unlike Armit (2000), Peter Hunt (2001) observes that "oceans of ingenious ink has been used to classify fantasy: an activity which goes against the general spirit [of the genre]; [emphasis mine]" (11). Since much fantastic literature rests on the relationship between the real or the imaginary as well as a rejection of normative real-life 'rules' it seems not only impossible, but also impractical, to categorize these texts so scrupulously. Todorov may come close to an acceptable compromise at times, as does Rosemary Jackson (1981) when she suggests that we discuss these texts in terms of literary modes rather than literary genre. Jackson argues that fantasy should be thought of as a mode of writing rather than a genre because the emphasis on desire has made many of its themes and subjects taboo and therefore subversive.[5] Yet, because the body of texts, which could conceivably be termed 'fantasy' are greatly diverse, individual texts can be included or excluded from the genre depending on which theoretical model one applies. For example, Dostoevsky dismisses tales which are ‘too incredible’ to be introduced as ‘real’ stating that they break the convention of uncertainty. The Tin Man without a heart, then, is just nonsense because the concept breaks the limits of possibility and the agreement between reader and author. Thus, for Dostoevsky, true fantastic texts should be “[s]o close to the real that you almost have to believe it” (qtd. In Jackson 27).
Intersections between theorists
The intersecting point on which most theoretical models meet hinges on the experience of the reader: Todorov and Dostoevsky call for absolute hesitation on the part of the reader, while Rabkin insists that true fantasy reverses its own alternative world. Rosemary Jackson points out that “[a]s a literature of ‘unreality,’ fantasy has altered in character over the years in accordance with changing notions of what exactly constitutes ‘reality’” (4). Thus, Jackson rightly addresses issues of perception whilst acknowledging that individual realities differ. Rabkin goes further than that, devoting a significant portion of his theoretical model to reader response. He makes the point that a reader’s reaction to a text depends on several things, among them their own associations with their individual reality: “[f]or any given reader, these associations might seem to be either impersonal and somehow outside him or personal and inside him” (16). Thus, experience, on the part of the reader, is a vital component of the fantastic: “fantastic worlds— perhaps paradoxically— are defined for us and are of interest to us by virtue of their relationship to the real world we imagine to have been thought normal when the story was composed” [italics mine] (4). These various models demand that “surprise” be the essential element of the fantastic text (despite the terms they choose to use), thus embedding reader-response in the structure of the text to ensure some degree of hesitation, surprise or reversal. Yet this is a concept that potentially invites dispute.