“There and Back Again”: Progress in the Discourse of Todorovian, Tolkienian and Mystic Fantasy Theory

Abstract

THE ACT OF LITERARY CRITICISM is always an act of creative fantasy. The critic constructs an internally consistent structure from fragments of texts, observations and (inevitably) personal biases, and this construction begins with what-if proposition. What if literary texts have political implications? Might there be correlation between writer's gender and language available for that writer's expression? Could it be that language itself is indeterminate, and, if so, what impact would this have on Western tradition of liberal humanism? The critic speculates, fabricates an imagined network of logical implications and, in case of publication, presents this fabrication for consideration by scholarly community. The following act of literary criticism is, like all such acts, of critical discourse. To survey history of criticism--as I shall in this paper--is build meta-fantasy, of fantasies of fantasy. That has been dismissed or excluded from of Western literature is commonplace of critical work on genre. This sense of exclusion may be strongest recurring theme across all of criticism, an otherwise highly heterogeneous field. Karen Michalson, for example, introduces her exploration of Victorian by suggesting that certain readers will object my subject matter as well as my approach. Fantasy literature does not enjoy kind of critical attention or prestige that other literary genres, like realistic novel do (i). Michalson then proceeds examine historical, non-literary and non-aesthetic reasons for exclusion of from the traditional literary canon (i) as founded in Victorian England. Although her tone may appear unwarrantedly defensive (and perhaps it is), it resonates with my own initial ambivalence in approaching as scholar. Although I have (and do) read what is often referred as genre-fantasy, this material rarely appears in scholarly milieu (i.e., literature courses). Rather, for many, reading of is often characterized as guilty pleasure or indulgence, carrying an implicit stigma. (1) Whether or not such stigma exists in any universal sense, readers, writers and critics often perceive fantasy as beleaguered and disrespected form of literature, (alleged) perpetrators of this (perceived) stigma characterizing genre as material more appropriate for children than adults or, at best, variety of light or unserious reading. Ursula K. Le Guin names this phenomenon genrefication of fantasy, process by which genre becomes not neutral descriptive term, but rather label applied only those types of literature that are other-than-serious (Spike 18-19). (2) In spite of this apparent stigmatization, serious study of has formed basis of dozens of book-length critical studies since early 1970s. Christine Brooke-Rose, in one of these studies, suggests that late twentieth-century re-emergence of literature may be due a reality crisis (3) in Western culture. She further argues that provides one possible response world in which the very notion of progress has become untenable (7) and the real has become (9). For Brooke-Rose, embodies one mode through which authors may explore implications of this unreal reality, and she thus attempts to account for return of fantastic in all its forms (7). Unlike Brooke-Rose, my project is not account for reappearance of in contemporary Western literature, but rather examine various critical approaches genre that have appeared since early '70s. My methodology echoes Erik Rabkin's approach in The Fantastic in Literature, where he suggests that the study of fantastic provides new tools for analysis of world-view (74). Rabkin develops these tools in terms reminiscent of Kenneth Burke's rhetorical theories, suggesting that a close analysis of metaphor, by attention all language used create fantastic world, . …