What is Fantasy and Where Did It Come From

It is a thought that I have had for many, many years--pretty much ever since I came to realize that the tales told in the Middle Ages weren't precisely identical with the stories that raged through my imagination after reading The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia. The question is: "what exactly is this thing called fantasy that, while entirely (and self-consciously) imaginary, exerts such an immense power over people who hear even mere icons of fantasy such as knights, castles, and dragons.(1)

First, a definition of terms. The majority of "fantasy" books seem to have as little to do with fantasy as possible. Tamora Pierce, for instance, has written a great number of highly-successful stories that take place in a highly-developed world with pretty much all the fantasy tropes: knights, spells, Kings of Thieves, honorable desert nomads, kingdom politics, etc. Yet in the end, each feels more like a combination world-striding spy novel and coming-of-age story. That is, we get to see a multitude of fascinating cultures, watch a successful and long fight against a truly evil and clever villain, and find ourselves absorbed pretty much entirely into the sights and experiences of a likable and interesting protagonist. At the same time, that protagonist (normally a girl with an indomitable passion for hitting people with swords) grows into adulthood, learning the meaning of courage, love, dilligence, etc.

Of course coming of age is a hugely significant thread in the rope of fantasy tales, but it is most certainly not the only thread. Compare the above summary of Tamora Pierce's stories with, to take an example that I was watching when I started this post, The Last Unicorn. Here we have two central protagonists, the unnamed unicorn and the inept magician Schmendrick. They travel through a great variety of locations, face various dangers, and rescue all the unicorns while coming into a much more mature understanding of life. But unlike any of Pierce's protagonists, each step of the story means far more as a story than it means to the characters.

Let me illustrate. If a character in a Pierce novel gets thrown in prison (as is quite plausible to happen at some point), it means simply that someone in the government is against her for some reason, and she must find a way to (a) convince the king she's worth letting go or (b) escape. But the Unicorn is captured by an evil witch who exploits people's need for wonder by providing her with a false horn that is visible to those who can't see her real horn. She is released by an inept wizard because he is pure of heart enough to instantly recognize her true self. (Also, he stole the keys from the stupid guard, but we only know that because of a slight dropped comment allowing us to ignore the effecient cause and get on with the story.)

Both circumstances have an immediate meaning for the reader. In Pierce's book, we will feel the panic of being stuck in a prison, the need to escape and finally the wonder of freedom again, as the protagonist gets her sword and horse back and takes to the open roads. If it's well enough written, we will read it in a frenzy, scared that around any corner there might be enough guards to overcome the protagonist. We might even have an ethical question to muddy up the waters--is the mission important enough for the protagonist to kill an innocent guard in her escape? More likely, the protagonist will see the evil man who imprisoned her, but learn self control as she realizes that she must repress her desire for vengeance and flee in order to accomplish the mission.

The questions presented in The Last Unicorn are much more philosophical, and also much less questions. We may wonder what it is in humanity that desires beauty but prefers things that are "false" even when the slightly harder truth is much more beautiful. We may want to be like the inept wizard, capable of seeing the true beauty of people and courageous enough to destroy whatever cages destroy that beauty. Or we may think of the crowds, and think about the blindness and corruption at the heart of man, how our very desire for beauty and wonder can destroy the things we claim to love. Or we could not think in words at all (which may be the best way of doing things), and just feel our heart clench at the sight of a unicorn behind bars with a second false horn. But the point is, if it moves us at all, fantasy moves us by presenting us a world much more concerned with ideas and ideals than schemes and skills. Beauty transforms the Beast into a Gentleman because of True Love, and the point is really quite lost if we start asking what degree of devotion is required for the love to be True and has Rose really been acting in the cautious and wise way that we want our daughters to act.

Which, now that I think of it, is all in Plato. Or at least, if I want to say that Fantasy is better than all other forms of storytelling (which, in my biased heart, I really really do) my job is simple. "Action" literature concerns itself with Plato's Efficient Cause, that is "how is the bad guy to be defeated." This is true rather the story is a romance novel, a spy novel, or low fantasy. But fantasy transcends the Efficient Cause and goes straight to the Final Cause. We know that a fairy tale doesn't make sense--that's why we call it a fairy tale. Sauron isn't defeated because of Gandalf's wisdom, he is defeated because in all his evil wisdom, he still cannot imagine that someone who has power would seek to throw it away. All the wars and plotting and distractions are just side-games to make us a bit more involved in the story.

So...I haven't yet arrived at a working definition of fantasy, showing that this requires a lot more thought. But I'm on my way there, and this is a blog, so now I hit "save changes."



(1)The Inklings, of course, had something of a solution: "myth," properly speaking, shouldn't be contrasted with reality. Fantasy reflects the crying out of the human heart, a thirst which is itself better than earthly satisfaction, a hunger for something earthly pleasures cannot supply. All of which I think, in the end, to be quite true. But that is somewhat tangential to the question which I may or may not continue to pick at in a number of new posts: in our culture, which is about as far from Medieval as one can imagine, what is it that has worked together to create this absolutely enrapturing field of the imagination that is so recognizable Medieval--even when talking about Jedi guardians of distant galaxies, for instance.