Michael Joseph
Fantasy Genre Lecture
Materials for Young Adults
October 7, 2004
Brian Attebery writes in The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature (1980),
“The best fantasies perform the trick of investing the familiar with enough touches
of the unreal—heightened color, heroic action, unexpected transformations, and
dislocations in time—to evoke an acute sense of longing in the reader, a
nostalgia for the never-was.” Thus, at its best, fantasy creates a nostalgic
sense that the time we live in is to a lesser or greater degree a degraded version
or aspect of a more meaningful, more powerful time, which we have somehow
lost and might someday recover.
Fantasy literature for children and adolescents encompasses many kinds of
works and genres—some of these are legends, ballads, romances, myths,
literary fairy tales, magic realism, animal fantasies, and science fiction. The
wonder tale, which as we have seen bequeaths its structure to the fairy tale, is
one early form of fantasy literature, depicting a world that, as the folklorist Max
Lüthi has pointed out, ultimately embodies order, comfort, and clarity. This
description can be aptly applied to the generally utopian form of children’s
fantasy fiction as well. In fantasy, social hierarchies, taboos, supernatural
creatures, magic, high moral standards, quests, and villains operate in a
world in which chaos is ultimately dispelled and virtue rewarded. But
although it comforts the reader through the orderly structure and ultimate
resolution that can be so unlike the haphazardness and injustice of lived life,
fantasy literature is significantly tied to the “real” world through the attention it
pays to social and political structures, complicated familial and domestic
relationships, and emotional and character development. Whether it describes a
wholly separate world or rather fantastic interventions in a realistic setting,
fantasy literature must conform to rules of internal logic. Thus, domestic
fantasies such as those by E. Nesbit adhere to the conventions of the family
story (a group of children who bicker yet whose allegiance to each other is never
in question), J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books conform to the traditions of the
school story and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937) conform to the conventions
of a quest narrative.
Perhaps more than any other literary genre, fantasy appeals to both adult and
child. Many of the most beloved characters in children’s literature populate works
of fantasy: the Victorian child, Alice, who falls down a rabbit hole into another
world; Pinocchio, the talking puppet-boy (another fairy tale character);
disobedient Peter Rabbit trapped in the garden; Charlotte the literate and literary
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spider; Will and Lyra, the intrepid saviors of Philip Pullman’s multiverse, and
Harry Potter and the Hogwarts gang are all fantasy characters.
Many works of fantasy for children and adolescents, particularly in the classic or
“high” fantasy tradition, confront large themes such as good versus evil, social
justice, and loyalty. However, there is also a strong counter-tradition of nonsense
and satire in children’s fantasy, starting with the work of Lewis Carroll and
continued in the writings of, for example, Norman Juster, Jon Sciezka, and Roald
Dahl. In both Dahl and Sciezka, fantasy enables a robust kind of satire: Dahl’s
fantasies take on and deflate power hungry, abusive adults, while Sciezka’s
ridicule the form and conventions of children’s literature and reading, in the
process seeming to ridicule themselves.
High Fantasy
High fantasy, sometimes called heroic romance, which we have touched upon in
passing while discussing chapbooks, can be compared to the epic. Lynne
Vallone gives us this definition: “in lengthy prose (as opposed to the verse of the
long narrative poem of traditional epics), within an expansive or broad,
panoramic setting, a hero, often with supernatural or magical assistance,
struggles and saves a people or a way of life.” In World’s Within (1988), Sheila
Egoff comments that “Epic [or High] fantasy, like its forebears (myth and legend),
is dominated by high purpose. There are worlds to be won or lost, and the
protagonists engage in a deeply personal and almost religious battle for the
common good.”
Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) typifies the genre, and Frodo is the
prototypical hero of children’s high fantasy.
The complex worlds of high fantasy are often indebted to mythic, heroic or
romantic literature of the distant past. Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles
(1964-68) are inspired by Welsh mythology, as are Alan Garner’s The Owl
Service (1967). Ursula LeGuin’s Gifts (2004) draws upon the Celtic Red Branch
cycle of hero tales. Brian Jacques Redwall Tales (1988) draw on Arthurian
legend.
In works of high fantasy written for children, the hero is generally quite young or
just coming upon adolescence, and the story is often as much about discovering
one’s identity, hidden talents and weaknesses as it is about battles between
good and evil. Thus, like the Adventure genre, high fantasy for children is
consubstantial with the novel of growth, or the Bildungsroman. Rachel Birk tells
us that:
The term Bildungsroman emerged as a description of Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters
Lehrjahre. This [is] the first Bildungsroman, […] published between 1794 and 1796
(Buckley 9). The word "lehrjahre" can be translated as "apprenticeship" (Buckley 10).
"Apprenticeship" has many connotations, most of which deal with education and work. An
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apprentice goes to work for an experienced worker and learns and develops his trade
and also to a greater extent his identity. Similarly, the Bildungsroman is characterized by
the growth, education, and development of a character both in the world and ultimately
within himself.
Sidebar comment: The Bildungsroman also obviously helps to define the
experience of the young reader, perhaps particularly with regard to fantasy,
whose understanding and imaginative engagement with a narrative leads him or
her to experience “growth, education and development” both in relation to the
conceptualized world of the book and in relation to his or her own identity and
perceived place in the world.
In the past, high fantasy tended toward stories of masculine sacrifice, battle, and
admirable deeds in which the mettle of a seemingly insignificant young male—
such as LeGuin’s Ged in the Earthsea trilogy or Alexander’s Taran—is tested.
Through struggles and self-doubts, the hero grows up to become a man of
superior wisdom, skill, and moral authority. Fantasy novels by contemporary
authors, such as Anne McCaffrey, Vonda McIntyre, Robin McKinley, Dianne
Wynne Jones and Jane Yolen, by contrast, focus on the empowerment and
strengths of female characters succeeding in dangerous worlds. This
diversification of the fantasy novel represents a significant development in
fantasy literature for children.
Sidebar comment: Although J.K. Rowling’s hero is in fact a boy named Harry, her
representation of Harry’s emotional dimensions, in particular his infatuation with
Cho Chang, and his close friendship with Hermione Granger, attest to the degree
fantasy has shifted as a result of the literary efforts by earlier female fantasy
authors, and identify one aspect of the nature of the shift.
Works of fantasy traditionally employ anthropomorphic animals as characters.
Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell (1877) uses the conceit of a talking animal within a
realistic, brutal world to deliver a message against cruelty to animals. E.B.
White’s Charlotte’s Web (1952) combines fantastic elements within a real world
possessing a comic flavor. Richard Adams brought the animal fantasy to epic
heights in Watership Down (1972). Although not intended solely for a juvenile
audience, this novel about a threatened community of rabbits was quickly
adopted by young readers. In the His Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman
imagines a society of talking bears within an otherwise realistic world. He also
allots to each human individual a mercurial talking entity he calls daemons, who
shape-shift continuously, mood to mood, assuming a broad range of animal
forms, until, ultimately, settling upon one, when the human to whom they are
spiritually attached attains a kind of Bildung.
Stories about animated toys are also a popular component of fantasy literature
for children and have been since the late eighteenth century in which a spinning
top recites its autobiography. Some popular doll texts include The Raggedy Ann
Stories (1918) by Johnny Gruelle, Rumer Godden’s The Dolls’ House (1947) and
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Mouse and His Child (1967) by Russell Hoban. In Hoban’s novel, the heroic
journey of a pair of wind-up toys encompasses philosophical discussions about
fate, time, and the practical value of hope. Since dolls and their residences are
typically associated with girls and domestic spaces defined by and defining of
women, doll narratives have occasioned interesting critical responses, such as
Frances Armstrong's "The Dollhouse as Ludic Space, 1690-1920," Children's
Literature 24 (1996): 23-54, Susan Stuart’s On Longing: Narratives of the
Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (1993), and Lois R. Kuznets’
“Taking over the doll house: domestic desire and nostalgia in toy narratives,” in
Girls, Boys, Books, Toys, edited by Margaret Higgonet and Beverley Lyon Clark
Time, Magic and the Everyday
In contrast to high fantasies that evoke the feel and appearance of a mythic past,
or alternative universes inhabited by talking dolls or animals, time-slip fantasies
allow child characters from the present-day to enter a precise historical or future
time and place. Through the disruption of the linear flow of time, the child
protagonist goes on a voyage of self-discovery in another time and place. The
time-slip fantasy for children was introduced by E. Nesbit in The Story of the
Amulet (1906), in which the children travel both to the past and future.
Retelling history by way of crossing the thresholds of time and place frees the
individual character (and reader) to experience the past as the here and now. In
Jane Yolen’s first novel about the Holocaust, The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988), the
past becomes lived experience for the angry and confused adolescent Hannah
Stern, who begins to understand the tragedy and the triumph of surviving the
death camps after she is transported back in time to 1942. In Ruth Park’s Playing
Beatie Bow (1980), Abigail Kirk learns patience, forgiveness and forbearance
after she follows a bizarre-looking child up a street in the Rocks, the remains of
Sydney’s original settlement, and enters the tumultuous world of Orkney
immigrants in 1873. Jon Scieszka’s Time Warp Trio books, about a band of three
friends who time travel to places such as ancient Rome, King Arthur’s Camelot
and the American Wild West, combine historical facts with zany and juvenile
humor.
In fantasy novels, the passage of time is often violated in other ways: an
extended stay in the past, future or in an alternative reality, can take place in the
blink of an eye. In C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950),
the Pevensie children grow to be adults and rulers of Narnia, and yet, when they
accidentally find their way back to the lamppost and the wardrobe that had led
them from the Professor’s house into a different world, the Narnian years fall
away; and when they reenter the room as children, only a second has passed. In
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Hermione is able to return an
hour into the past every day so that she can take attend two classes at once.
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Frequently, time or humanity’s existence in temporality becomes the subject of a
character’s philosophical ruminations. Tom Long’s delight, in Philippa Pearce’s
Tom’s Midnight Garden (1958), at entering the past when the clock strikes
thirteen and at playing with a companion within the beautiful, Eden, garden, turns
to deep reflection as he ponders time and how it might be exploited.
Tom thought again: Time no longer—the angel on the grandfather clock had sworn it. But if
Time is ever to end, that means that, here and now, Time itself is only a temporary thing. It
can be dispensed with perhaps; or, rather, it can be dodged. [He] himself might be able to
dodge behind Time’s back and have the Past—that is, Hatty’s Present and the garden—
here, now and forever.
In Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting (1975), the child Winnie falls in love with a
family who cannot die, but she learns that the wheel of time, and the death that
accompanies it, is a blessing and immortality is a curse.
The blend of magic with the quotidian is an aspect of children’s fantasy found in
diverse works. In Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover (1984), Laura, by using her
previously untapped supernatural powers, saves her young brother from the
“incubus” Carmody Bracque after she teams up with an attractive older
schoolmate who is a successful male witch as well as a prefect. In The Nargun
and the Stars (1973), Patricia Wrightson’s contemporary Australian country life is
saturated with the Aboriginal spirits of the land. Diana Wynne Jones’s ongoing
Chrestomanci series (begun in 1977) is set in parallel worlds, some of which
resemble regions of Earth at different historical periods, yet magic exists as part
of the fabric of everyday life. In the world of J.K. Rowling, wizards and witches
co-exist with Muggles, and Harry Potter must confront with equal ingenuity the
dreadful subterfuges of He Who Must Not Be Named and the towering disdain of
his bourgeois Uncle Vernon.
From the mid-twentieth century forward, much of children’s fantasy literature and
media (in English) has been dominated and homogenized by the Walt Disney
Company. But this does not tell the whole story of the vital role played by fantasy
literature in the lives of contemporary children. Writers, critics and psychiatrists
as diverse as Lloyd Alexander, Mircea Eliade, Philip Pullman, Carl Jung, Jane
Yolen, Jack Zipes and Bruno Bettelheim have argued that fantasy narrative holds
impressive healing powers for individual psychological development, communal
social development, or both. Lloyd Alexander argues that “children love [fantasy]
and thrive on it, and I believe they need the experience of fantasy as an essential
part of growing up.” Tamora Pierce contends, “Fantasy is a literature of
empowerment.” And Jane Yolen points out that fantasy is not “Life Actual but it is
Life in Truth.” She continues;
[Life in Truth] tells us of the world as it should be. It holds certain values to
be important. It makes issues clear. It is, if you will, a fiction based on great
opposites, the clashing of opposing forces, question and answer, speech
and echo, yin and yang. The great dance of opposites. And so the fantasy
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tale, the ‘I that is not I,’ becomes a rehearsal for the reader for life as it
should be lived.
The strong presence of fantasy in contemporary children’s culture attests not
only to our wish that the young continue to believe impossible things, or to keep
alive the possibility of recovering a world that never was, but also to the organic
and enduring power of the narratives of wonder to delight, challenge, and affect
young readers.
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