Introduction

Abstract

Introduction C. W. Sullivan III (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Illustration from FROGGIE WENT A-COURTING by Chris Conover. Copyright © 1986 by Chris Conover. Reproduced by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. This special section of the Quarterly suggests that fantasy and fantasy criticism are not only alive and well, but vibrantly alive and well. The writing of fantasy has not, as some had predicted, slowed; in fact, books, movies, and television programs with substantial fantastic components have increased in the past few years. In addition, critical attention to fantasy has increased, as is evidenced by the growth of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, the circulation of Fantasy Review, and a proposal to publish The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. But the diversity of the field—including both children's and adults' fantasy fiction and comprised of fans, publishers, authors, and academics (often all together at the same conference or in the pages of the same magazine or journal)—makes it a difficult field with which to come to terms. Most fans, authors, and academics specialize to some extent, so that one person might read, write, or write about horror fiction, like that of H. P. Lovecraft or Stephen King, while another might prefer the animal fantasies of Kenneth Grahame or Richard Adams. To further complicate matters, the elements of fantasy—magic swords and rings, dragons, dwarfs, elves, talking animals, and the like—have appeared in western literature since Beowulf, The Odyssey, the Icelandic sagas, and the Celtic myths and legends. It is possible to trace some of the materials forward into the medieval Arthurian corpus and from there, with a barren period in the late seventeenth century and through much of the eighteenth century, into our own time. Thus, Lerner and Lowe's Camelot has roots which go back through T. H. White and Thomas Malory (with nods in the directions of Tennyson, Spenser, and Chaucer—among many) to the Welsh Celtic Mabinogion. And J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings recast materials from many European sources. Children's fantasy is no less diverse. Lloyd Alexander's Prydain novels draw directly on a variety of Welsh Celtic sources. C. S. Lewis and George MacDonald use standard folk tale and fairy tale characters, settings, and devices to present essentially Christian fantasies. Grahame and Milne set their fantasies in remembered, recreated, and wishfully-conceived worlds of childhood. Ursula LeGuin, Lewis Carroll, and James Barrie create new worlds—Earthsea, Wonderland, and Never Never Land—for their fantasies. And these are but some of the most famous. There are a host of others, including the fantasies of picture/storybook authors like William Steig, Chris Van Allsburg, Gail Haley, Leo Lionni, and, of course, Maurice Sendak, which could be listed here and which certainly deserve more critical attention as fantasies. The articles in this special section reflect not only the diversity of fantasy, but also the diversity of critical approaches to fantasy. Caroline Hunt and Gary Schmidt examine the form of fantasy, Hunt discussing fantasy in [End Page 6] unusually general terms and Schmidt closely assessing the narrative form of the Dr. Dolittle books. Cordelia Sherman and Dieter Petzold do comparative studies, showing the similarities between Ursula LeGuin and George MacDonald and between Rudyard Kipling and Richard Adams respectively. Peter Hunt takes a closer look at the maps included in many fantasy books and discusses the effect of the ones in some British fantasies which locate the stories in "real" landscapes, And Sara Stohler offers an analysis of the way in which children view the world around them which suggests a metaphysical correspondence between the child's view of the world, the fantasy novel, and the epistemological matrix from which mythology developed. All of this, of course, is but a prologue to talking about defining fantasy. Efforts in that direction, especially recently, have been prodigious; and much too much has been done in just the last fifteen years to be summarized here. But I have found the definition in Kathryn Hume's Fantasy and Mimesis both logical and valuable. Hume argues that all literature is the product of...