BOYER, Robert; TYMN, Marshal; ZAHORSKI, Kenneth.

Fantasy Literature: a core collection and

reference guide. New Providence, New Jersey: R.R. Bowker Co., 1979.

Fantasy: What Is It? Definition and Classification

“When sitting down to write à work of fantasy, does an author define the genre first, and then
write accordingly?” This was the response given by à student in a recent course in science fiction
and fantasy literature to the question, “Is this book high or low fantasy?” The student's implied
objection was quite correct. It is a reminder that the best definitions come after the fact and are
a way of organizing a body of knowledge (or in this case a particular branch of literature) that
enables readers to more fully appreciate it, discuss it, and make discriminating judgments about
it. An author does not ordinarily begin to compose with a given definition or formula in mind
But an avid reader, a teacher, or a student, having read a number of works of a particular sort,
tends to want to discuss them, to make comparisons, and to seek out more, Thus one is led into
a consideration of definition and distinctions.

Fantasy, as a literary genre, is composed of works in which nonrational phenomena play a

significant part. That is, they are works in which events occur, or places or creatures exist, that
could not occur or exist according to rational standards or scientific explanations. The
nonrational phenomena. of fantasy simply do not fall within human experience or accord with
natural laws as we know them. Thus history as we know it does not record that someone pulled
a sword from a stone, or that someone forged a ring of power to control nine other rings of
lesser power in Middle Earth. If such events or places are recorded, we regard the source not as
history or as realistic fiction, but as fantasy.

The presence of nonrational phenomena, then, is the principal criterion for distinguishing
fantasy from history or from other types of literature, Mainstream literature, of course, deals
with life on this (our) world, and in fact puts a premium on verisimilitude—on the appearance
of reality and the laws that govern it--as it is perceived by the majority of people. Fantasy, on
the other hand, has its own vision of reality and may have its own natural laws, which differ from
the generally accepted ones.
The difference between fantasy and mainstream literature is thus readily apparent; less
apparent is the difference between fantasy and several other nonmainstream types of
literature. Chief among these are dream visions, psychological phantasies, weird tales, lost race
adventures, and science fiction. AI of these types resemble fantasy in that they present
seemingly nonrational phenomena, but in each case there is a rational or scientific ex planation
for, or rationalization of, the phenomena. Fantasy offers no such scientific explanations.

In the case of the dream vision, a favorite type of story in the Middle Ages, the explanation is
simply the nocturnal meanderings of the mind. In psychological phantasies, a concussion
suffered in a plane crash, a traumatic wartime experience (Slaughterhouse Five), or
daydreaming (“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”) explain the unrealities in a fashion that satisfies
the most exacting realist. Weird tales frequently present unexpected but perfectIy logical
explanations for what appear to be nonrational phenomena: A catatonic fit, for instance,
explains how a presumably dead girl can come back to life to haunt her brother in Poes classic
“The Fall of the House of Usher.” (Weird stories do not always supply such logical explanations,
in which case they are fantasy; they will be discussed later as Gothic fantasy.) Lost race
adventures present settings and peoples so exotic that they seem impossible. The premise
underlying many of these works, however, is that some barrier—usually geographical-—has
isolated the lost race so completely that its customs have evolved in à unique way, or have not
evolved at all, Thus H. Rider Haggard depicts a race of people in Africa in an antique and primitive
splendor in The People of the Mist. However exotic, this story contains no magic; and however
improbable, the situation is possible, even today when unexplored territories have become so
few.

Science fiction is the largest of all the nonmainstream categories of literature, and in many ways
it is most closely akin to fantasy. It certainly examines worlds that do not correspond to present
realities, but implies that such brave new worlds are possible some time in the future, given
certain scientific inventions or societal evolutions. Science fantasy, as we shall see later in this
discussion, differs from science fiction in that it is basically fantasy that employs science in
several rather specific ways.
AI of the genres mentioned above are thus related to fantasy in that they describe what seem
to be nonrational phenomena, but these phenomena are nonrational in appearance only; the
genres are really quite distinct from fantasy. It should be mentioned, however, that in some
instances the rational premises of certain works are inconsequential, or are, as C. S. Lewis has
said, simply “a sop for the intellect”; such works may readily be classified as fantasy despite a
technicality. Thus, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is rightly considered a fantasy despite the
“Wake up, Alice dear!” that comes near its conclusion.

The significant use of nonrational phenomena not only enables us to distinguish between
fantasy and the various other branches of literature, but also serves as one of the two principal
criteria — the other is setting — that guide us in dividing the genre into its two major
classifications: high fantasy and low fantasy. These two criteria are interrelated, since setting in
fantasy refers to the type of world described, and nonrational phenomena are governed by the
laws that prevail in this world. The worlds of high fantasy are secondary worlds, such as the
Forest Sauvage, Middle Earth, or Prydai and they manifest a consistent order that is explainable
in terms of the supernatural (ie., deities) or in terms of the less definable (but still recognizable)
magical powers of faérie (e.g., wizards and enchantresses). Hence, The Once and Future King (T.
H. White) and The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien) and The Black Cauldron (Lloyd Alexander)
are high fantasy.

On the other hand, the world of low fantasy is the primary world — this real world we live in. It
too demonstrates a consistent order, but its order is explainable in terms of natural law (which
excludes the supernatural and the magical-—for the most part). The gods and faeries no longer,
alas, walk here, Consequently, when something nonrational occurs, as it does in low fantasies
such as Peter S. Beagle's Lila the Werewolf and Oscar Wilde's Portrait of Dorian Gray, there are
no explanations, rational or nonrational. The causes simply are not forthcoming; they are
inexplicable. In a high fantasy secondary world, the metamorphosis of a young lady into a wolf
or the aging of the portrait of Dorian Gray would be explained by some magical or supernatural
agency that would be accepted in that world.

The secondary world, wherein nonrational causality operates, is clearly central to an

understanding of high fantasy and its distinctness from low fantasy. Writers of high fantasy have
dealt with the secondary world as related to the primary world in three different ways. Some
simply ignore the primary world completely, introducing readers to the other world from the
first page. Thus, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea has no connection with our world; there is no portal
through which one may pass from one to the othe: The primary world does not exist—physically
or geographically, that i Spiritually, certainly, the two worlds are related, since Le Guin lives in
the primary world and writes, as do all authors, from her human imagination and experience.
Other writers find it useful to set their secondary worlds in some sort of more direct relationship
to the primary world, enabling them to further define their secondary worlds by comparison
with this one. Lord Dunsany does this in The King of Elfland's Daughter, and readers discover
such contrasts as the radically different pace at which time progresses in the secondary world,
where a few moments may be equal to years in this world. C. S. Lewis achieves the same effect
in his Chronicles of Narnia.

One of the fascinating aspects of the relationship of secondary to primary worlds is, as in Lewis's
books, the nature and variety of portals through which one passes to and fro, portals quite unlike
the spaceships that transport people to other worlds in science fiction, but no less complex and
much more mysterious. In some fantasies— Jane Langton's Diamond in the Window is a good
example—the portal becomes the focus for the entire work. Some recent writers, such as Joyce
Gregorian in The Broken Citadel and Ruth Nichols in The Marrow of the World, have introduced
the startling device of a story that starts out in this world with a character who is actually from
the other world, but who doesn't realize her true origin and identity until she passes through
the portal to that other world. It is apparent that the rich possibilities stemming from the
juxtaposition of the two worlds are many.

Finally, there are the writers who use the world-within-a-world technique. There are no portals;
the secondary world is simply a particular location within the primary world. It is usually marked
off by physical boundaries within which events transpire that do not occur elsewhere, that is,
within which a different set of laws pertains. This may be a secret garden like the medieval
gardens of love, or it might be a portion of consecrated ground sacred to some divinity, as in
John Buchan's “The Grove of Ashtaroth.” One of the best examples of this type is Peter S.
Beagle's A Fine and Private Place, where the walls of the Yorkchester Cemetery mark it offas a
secondary world surrounded by New York City. Inside these walls, if you are like Jonathan Rebek,
you can commune with ghosts, or, if you are a ghost, you can think yourself anywhere-except
beyond the gates of the cemetery where your body lies. In the case of Beagle's novel, two ghosts
circumvent this law by having their bodies exhumed and transferred to another place. In all
three cases, whether the authors appear to ignore the primary world, or create a portal between
it and the secondary world, or place the secondary world within the primary, they have their
eyes on the primary world and offer readers fresh perspectives on it

(?)

The secondary world, then, with its discernible though nonrational causality, is what
characterizes high fantasy. Low fantasy, on the contrary, features nonrational happenings that
are without causality or explanation because they occur in the rational world where such things
are not supposed to occur. This aspect of low fantasy is what accounts for its ability to shock or
surprise the reader into horror or laughter. Weird tales of the low fantasy. variety, like Wilde's
Portrait of Dorian Gray, are so chilling because what happens in them is very far out of the
ordinary, yet very nearby, in an otherwise ordinary world. Farces, such as those written by the
young Aldous Huxley or John Collier or Max Beerbohm, are so bizarre because their events
intrude upon and violate the norms of the workaday world. And beast fables, such as Aesop
wrote, or as George Orwell has more recently written in “Animal Farm, draw our attention to
their lessons-—not because the lessons. are themselves so different from what we are used to
hearing, but because we are surprised and charmed by animals that can talk in our world. This
charm, as well as the spell of a well-told tale, is what has made Richard Adams's low fantasy
Watership Down so popular. (Watership Down is a special case, since two of its chapters contain
myth-based stories. The rest of the book, however, features no nonrational causality or
secondary world setting)

(?)

However entertaining weird tales, farces, or animal fables may be, we are not concerned in this
volume with the horrors or laughter or learning of low fantasy; rather, we are intent upon
experiencing the “awe and wonder” (Tolkien's terms) afforded by high fantasy. And it is the
secondary world with its supernatural (myth fantasy) or magical (faery-tale fantasy) causality
that chiefly evokes this sense of “awe and wonder.” Chiefly—but not solely, by any means. The
setting and causality are reinforced in this task by three other closely related characteristics of
high fantasy: noble characters, archetypes, and elevated style.

High fantasy characters are diverse, yet similar in that they are of an elevated stature. So diverse
and numerous are they that they defy any but the most general classification, the principal
groups being gods, faeries, and humans. The gods and goddesses dwell apart in their empyrean
homes, Wyddfa or Norgaard or Olympus, but they have their favorite places in our world where
they frequent]y visit to commune with humans. Faery is the generic term for an inhabitant, other
than human, of the realm of faérie, and this includes everyone and everything from dragons to
dwarfs. Humans are sometimes natives of the other world, or they sometimes wander into it—
or are summoned thither—from the primary world. Despite their diversity, a generous
percentage of creature: h fantasy are of elevated stature. Gods and goddesses surely are. And
most faeries—dragons especially, frequently symbols of royalty in our world—seem to trace
their lineage almost endiessiy. They are mostly regal folk. Humans in high fantasy are generally
lower in the hierarchy than gods or faeries, being far “younger than these creatures, but they
are most often also of high or noble Estate. Epics and romances, two of the older kinds of high
fantasy, confined themselves exclusively to humans of noble birth. Happily, modern writers,
with whom we are concerned here, have made a place sometimes a prominent one—for us
common folk.

The hero in high fantasy is usually a human or humanlike being and is almost always a
representative type, an Everyman character. We read in Evangeline Walton's Prince of Annwn
of Arawn, the Grey Prince of the dead, and of Rhiannon, a goddess of love and life, and we are
fascinated; it is, nonetheless, the human Pwyll who most firmly gains our sympathies and our
allegiance. Or we are held spellbound by Beagle's description of the regal unicorn in The Last
Unicorn, but ultimately we are more concerned with the fate of the inept magician Schmendrick,
even though — or perhaps because — he is such a dolt. Both Pwyll and Schmendrick are
Everyman types, recognizable characters who represent all of us on our journeys. Their conflicts,
their quests, their flaws, and their virtues are those we all share, and these universal aspects
take precedence over their individual personality traits
(?)

Before leaving the hero, mention should be made of two types of heroes that have made their
appearance in modern high fantasy, the commonerhero and the morally ambivalent hero (we
will deal with the barbarian hero in a later section on sword and sorcery). The commoner-hero
has been with us ever since George MacDonald's Curdie, the son of a miner, saved the princess
from the goblins. And J. R. R. Tolkien has the wise Elvenking Elrond comment at the Great Council
in Rivendell that it is the time of the halílings to come to the fore as heroes--so Frodo and his
gardener Samwise become the ringbearers. More recently still, Ursula K. Le Guin details Ged's
rise from shepherd to the exalted position of Archmage of Earthsea. And Carol Kendall makes a
special point of showing us that minnipins can be heroes when they must. In all of these cases,
the hero is reluctant, but once the task is undertaken, the commoner-hero discovers hitherto
unsuspected qualities of nobility: courage, generosity, loyalty to the right.

The appearance of the morally ambivalent hero should better be termed reappearance. Robin
Hood is, of course, the prototype. Two modern writers who make extensive use of this type of
hero are E. R. Eddison and Fritz Leiber. Eddison's Lord Groh in The Worm Ouroboros, though not
the protagonist, steals our attention because his complex motives cause him to change sides
more than once; his changing of sides even throws some mild doubt on which side is good and
which evil. Leiber's two roguish heroes, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, also offer interesting studies
and similarly challenge the traditional good-versus-evil motif of high fantasy. Though basically
good, their commitment is not to the good but to their own independence - But, whether à
commoner-hero or a morally ambivalent one, or even the more traditional noble sort, the hero
of high fantasy remains an Everyman.

The Everyman character of the hero is an example of the next aspect of high fantasy to be
considered, the archetype. Archetypes are important in all types of literature in varying degrees,
but nowhere are they as plentiful or as prominent as in the myth-based tales or faery tales of
high fantasy. These types of fantasy draw directly from the most ancient well of stories, the very
source of archetypes; while mainstream literature, even when it draws from the same well,
adulterates the pure water with so many new and particularizing details that it becomes murky.
It is not our purpose here to delve into the psychological or literary complexities of the
archetype. C. G. Jung, and later his pupil Maud Bodkin, as well as many others, have devoted
volumes to the study. Suffice it to say that high fantasy presents the archetypal characters,
situations, settings, language, and themes in bold relief to readers to elicit from them
recognition and deep instinctual responses, whether of wonderment and joy or of fear and
repulsion. Thus, in Tolkien's Hobbit, readers recognize and shudder at the utter isolation and
negativism of hell when they discover Gollum peering with pale eyes from his island habitat
deep underneath the mountain, surrounded by dank water and impenetrable darkness. Readers
respond with joy rather than repugnance, however, when they read in Kenneth Morris's Book
of the Three Dragons of the death and rebirth of Pwyll in the life-giving Cauldron of Ceridwen
and of the successful achievement of his long quest for immortality. Finally, few readers can
remain unmoved by the sensuous beauty and the nobility of the Green Lady, the Eve of her
world, in C. S. Lewis's Perelandra. In these examples, we recognize (whether we label them as
such or not) the outcast (Gollum), the hero (Pwyll), and the mother (Green Lady) archetypes.
These characters are furthermore reinforced by additional archetypes—underground darkness,
the pattern of death and rebirth, the life-color green.

The elevated stature of the characters, the Everyman quality of the heroes, and the evocative
archetypes blend nicely with the supernatural or magical causality and the secondary world of
high fantasy. But the final ingredient, and perhaps the greatest challenge to the writer, is a style
that can support these elements and clothe them in appropriate language. The dialogue must
befit the stature of the speakers; descriptive passages must be in an elevated style that
necessarily works through imagery and comparison to create the imaginary worlds,

(?)

Few, if any, critics have considered the style of description found in high fantasy in general, but
Ursula K. Le Guin has written an excellent essay on dialogue, and we can do no better than to
refer here to her From Elfland to Poughkeepsie (Portland, OR: Pendragon Press, 1973): “The
Lords of Elfland are true lords, the only true lords, the kind that do not exist on this earth; their
lordship is the outward sign or symbol of real inward greatness. And greatness of soul shows
when a man speaks” (p. 11). When high fantasy characters speak, their accents should be those
of Elfland, not of Poughkeepsie. Le Guin then quotes from three master stylists of the genre—E.
R. Edison, Kenneth Morris, and J. R. R. Tolkien—to illustrate dialogue that is authentic Elfland,
but with differences, showing that there is no absolute formula. Eddison uses the archaic speech
of the sixteenth century, Morris a high comic mode, and Tolkien a style characterized by
dignified simplicity. To these masters and to others who Le Guin mentions, such as Lord
Dunsany, Evangeline Walton, and James Branch Cabell, one might add Le Guin's own name, as
well as that of Peter S. Beagle. In The Last Unicorn Beagle uses the low and high styles of speech
to show the change of Prince Lir from an ordinary person to a Lord of Elfland. When Lir first
meets the Lady Amalthea, he says, “Hi. .. . Glad to meet you.” After his spirit is refined under the
influence of this noble lady, Lir greets her at day's end with “Give you good evening, my lady.”
The first statement sounds like Poughkeepsie, this world of ours, the second like Elfland, clearly
elsewhere.

To illustrate the appropriate descriptive style of high fantasy we need once again simply to
examine some of the masters and observe their technique. Lord Dunsany is rightly regarded as
one of the matchless stylists of modern fantasy—or of modern literature for that matter, which
explains why the many attempts to imitate him have for the most part been failures. Here is a
fairly typical sample of his descriptive prose, taken from The King of Elfland's Daughter (New
York: Ballantine Books, 1973) No sooner had Lirazel read the rune on the scroll than fancies from
Elfland to pour over the border. Some came that would make a clerk in the City to-day leave his
desk at once to dance on the sea-shore; and some would have driven all the men in a bank to
leave doors and coffers open and wander away til they came to green open land and heathery
hill; and some would have made a poet of a man, all of a sudden as he sat at his business. (pp.
61-62)

What one immediately notices is the highly stylized, poetic nature of the second sentence. It is
a long, rolling sentence with the rhythm of successive ocean waves moving onto the beach. The
careful parallelism of the successive clauses, their balanced length, and the felt but unobtrusive
alliteration contribute to the spell-casting effect of the passage—and this is precisely what the
scroll does to Lirazel, the King of Elfland's daughter.

While Dunsany operates primarily through his highly stylized and sonorous sentences, C. S. Lewis
finds the simile most helpful to describe the marvelous settings of his Outer Space trilogy. In the
following passage, Ransom, the hero, gets his first view of the Isle of Meldilorn in Out of the
Silent Planet (New York: Macmillan, 1973):

Amidst the lake there rose like a low and gently sloping pyramid, or like a woman's breast, an
island of pale red, smooth to the summit, and on the summit a grove of such trees as man had
never seen. Their smooth columns had the gentle swell of the noblest becch-trees; but these
were taller than a cathedral spire on carth, and at their tops, they broke rather into flower than
foliage; into golden flower bright as tulip, still as rock, and huge as summer cloud. (p. 105)

Notice also the rich, sensuous visual and tactile imagery of the passage. A third master stylist,
one largely forgotten until people like Ursula K. Le Guin discovered his books on dust-covered
shelves, is Kenneth Morris. Morris's descriptive style makes one wish to have been raised in
Wales. His prose, which at first seems elaborate and ornamental, is actually a prose of

eloquent simplicity. In the excerpt presented here, Pwyll (now Manawyddan)

has arrived at the home of the enchantress Ewinwen in Book of the Three

Dragons (New York: Arno Press, 1978):

(?)

dt was a garden in a valley, the loveliest in the world; and a population bluebellslender, daffodil-
beautiful, wandering in it, and at their games and diversions. They came about him when he
appeared, all graceful, gracious and friendly; and grected him with birdlike voices... (p. 58)

This is a prose that one somehow expects from an ancient Welsh tale, a folk-prose of common
words and numerous but simple descriptive adjectives. Note that the only two similes are
compressed into the compound adjectives “bluebell-slender” and “daffodil-beautiful” Such
compounds, a favorite device of Morris', evoke the antique nature of his source, the Mabinogion
The passages presented here should make it clear why Dunsany, Lewis, and Morris are so often
praised (Lewis not so much as the others) for their style. The style of each is unique and quite
distinct from the others; all, however, are elevated and appropriate to their subjects and, taken
together, exhibit many of the most prominent stylístic techniques of high fantasy.

When it comes to verbal humor, another important technique in fantasy, George MacDonald is
the model, and his “Light Princess” is his masterpiece. The princess is “light” because she has
been deprived of her “gravity” by a witch. MacDonald has a good deal of fun playing with these
two terms, and others as well, throughout his story, and he does so—here is the challenge of
using humor in high fantasy — without diminishing the beauty and gravity of his faery tale.

In concluding this discussion of style, it is fitting to comment on the most important selection of
words an author makes in a work, the choice of names. There is, in the traditional faery tale,
magic in names; in giving their real mames, characters show complete trust by revealing their
true identities. Ursula K. Le Guin describes this nicely in her Earthsea-related short story “The
Rule of Names.” In this story, a wizard rashly judges that he has obtained power over another
by discovering his foe's real name. Indeed, he has required his foe to reveal himself by giving his
name; unfortunately for the rash wizard, however, when he utters the name, his foe takes his
true shape—that of the dragon Yevaud! Proper names, properly chosen, express the nature of
the character, which is why many heroes do not use, or even receive, their names until they
have proved their worth.

Place names and generic names have much the same effect of suggesting the real nature of the
place or thing named. One of the chief defects, for instance, of E. R. Eddison's The Worm
Ouroboros is the author's selection of names for the princely countries of his secondary world.
Pixyland, Witchland, and Demoniand are not apt names for places inhabited by such heroes as
his. On the other hand, Tolkien, recognizing that as a “Sub-creator” (his term) his first task is the
selection of appropriate names, makes meticulous and unerring selection of the nomenclature
of his Middle Earth. One need but page through Tolkien's books to recognize the expressiveness.
of his names. On one hand, the reader encounters Morgoth, Mordor, Nazgul, and Mirkwood; on
the other he is introduced to Elrond, Rivendell, Dunedain, and Lorien. Even out of context these
titles bespeak the allegiance in the good-evil conflict of those named. In all of Tolkien's works,
the name that is perhaps the most mellifluous and describes one of the most noble of his
characters is Lúthien Tinúviel. Fittingly, Tolkien made a gift of this name to his wife.

As mentioned at the outset of this brief discussion of style, the style must support the other
elements of high fantasy, but if it is not equal to the task, the entire work will collapse. As Le
Guin puts it, “The style, of course, is the book” (From Elfland to Poughkeepsie, p. 25). Poor style
is the surest giveaway of a second-rate fantasy, justas an effective style is the first indicator of
authentic fantasy.