Romances
With increases in learning in the middle of the medieval European
era, there appeared beside earlier myths and legends, also literary
fiction. Among the first to appear was the genre of
romance.
This genre embraced fantasy, and not only simply followed traditional
myths and fables, but, in its final form, boldly created new marvels
from the whole cloth.
[2]
Romance at first dealt with traditional themes, above all three
thematic cycles of tales, assembled in imagination at a late date as the
Matter of Rome (actually centered on the life and deeds of Alexander the Great), the
Matter of France (Charlemagne and Roland, his principal paladin) and the
Matter of Britain
(the lives and deeds of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,
within which was incorporated the quest for the Holy Grail), although a
number of "non-cyclical" romances also achieved a great deal of
popularity.
[3]
The romances themselves were not entirely believed, but such tales as
Valentine and Orson,
Guillaume de Palerme, and
Queste del Saint Graal were only the beginning of the fantasy genre, not fully removed from belief.
During
Renaissance, romance continued to be popular. The trend was to more fantastic fiction. The English
Le Morte d'Arthur by
Sir Thomas Malory
(c.1408–1471), was written in prose; this work dominates the Arthurian
literature, often being regarded as the canonical form of the legend.
[4]
Arthurian motifs have appeared steadily in literature from its
publication, though the works have been a mix of fantasy and non-fantasy
works.
[5] At the time, it and the Spanish
Amadis de Gaula
(1508), (also prose) spawned many imitators, and the genre was
popularly well-received, producing such masterpiece of Renaissance
poetry as Ludovico Ariosto's
Orlando furioso and Torquato Tasso's
Gerusalemme Liberata.
Ariosto's tale, with its endlessly wandering characters, many marvels,
and adventures, was a source text for many fantasies of adventure.
[6] With such works as
Amadis of Gaul and
Palmerin of England, the genre of fantasy was clearly inaugurated, as the marvels are deployed to amaze and surprise readers.
[1]
Portrait of Isabella Saltonstall as Una, a character from
The Faerie Queene, by
George Stubbs.
One English romance is
The Faerie Queene of
Edmund Spenser. The poem is deeply
allegorical
and allusive. Leaving allegory aside, however, the action is that of a
typical knightly romance, involving knightly duels, and combats against
giants and sorcerers. That is probably the first work in which most of
the characters are not men, but
elves (although the difference seems to be rather little). There are mentioned also the wars between
goblins and elf, which were destined to have a great future in fantastic fiction.
The tale of
Don Quixote
deeply satirized the conventions of the romance, and helped bring about
the end of this time of romance, although assisted by other historical
trends in fiction.
[7]
Nevertheless, large subgenres of the field of fantasy have sprung from
the romance genre, either directly or through their imitation by latter
fantasy writer
William Morris.
[8]
The Enlightenment
Literary
fairy tales, such as were written by
Charles Perrault, and
Madame d'Aulnoy,
became very popular, early in this era. Many of Perrault's tales became
fairy tale staples, and influenced latter fantasy as such. Indeed, when
Madame d'Aulnoy termed her works
contes de fée (fairy tales),
she invented the term that is now generally used for the genre, thus
distinguishing such tales from those involving no marvels.
[9] This would influence later writers, who took up the folk fairy tales in the same manner, in the Romantic era.
[7]
Several fantasies aimed at an adult readership were also published in 18th century France, including
Voltaire's "
contes philosophique" "The Princess of Babylon" (1768) and "The White Bull" (1774), and
Jacques Cazotte's Faustian novel
The Devil in Love.
[10]
This era, however, was notably hostile to fantasy. Writers of the new
types of fiction such as Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding were realistic
in style, and many early realistic works were critical of fantasical
elements in fiction.
[11] Aside from a few tales of witchcraft and ghost stories, very little fantasy was written during this time.
[7] Even children's literature saw little fantasy; it aimed at edifying and deplored fairy tales as lies.
[12]
In one respect, this was an essential stage in the development of fantasy as a
genre. The development of a realistic genre ensured that fantasy could be defined as a distinct type, in contrast.
Romanticism
In reaction to
Enlightenment's cult of Reason,
Romanticism
highly prized the supernatural, tradition and imagination, together
with the age in which they were supposed to rule - Middle Ages. These
traits readily borrowed traditional elements of the fantastic. The
Romantics invoked the medieval romance as justification for the works
they wanted to produce, in distinction from the realistic pressure of
the Enlightenment; these were not always fantastic, sometimes being
merely unlikely to happen, but the justification was used even from
fantasy.
[13]
One of the first literary results of this fascinations was
Gothic novel, a literary genre that began in Britain with
The Castle of Otranto (
1764) by
Horace Walpole. It is the predecessor to both modern fantasy and modern
horror fiction and, above all, has led to the common definition of "gothic" as being connected to the dark and horrific.
[7]
Prominent features of gothic novels included terror, mystery, the
supernatural, ghosts, haunted buildings, castles, trapdoors, doom,
death, decay, madness, hereditary curses, and so on. The fantastic,
dream-like atmosphere pervaded the genre at this point.
[14]
Gothic tales permitted, but did not require, an element of the
supernatural. Some stories appeared to contain such elements and then
explained them away. The genre straddled the border between fantasy and
non-fantasy, but many elements from it, particularly the houses of
particular import, being ancient, owned by nobles, and often endowed
with legends, were incorporated in modern fantasy.
[15]
Of particular importance to the development of the genre was that the
Gothic writers used novelistic techniques and love, such as Defoe was
using, rather than the literary style of the romance, and also began to
use the landscape for purposes of expressing the characters' moods.
[16]
On the other hand, the Gothic still held back the pure fantasy. In
The Castle of Otranto,
Walpole presented the work as a translation; the fictitious original
author is therefore responsible for its fantasical elements, which
Walpole distances himself from.
[17] One noted Gothic novel which also contains a large amount of fantasy elements (derived from the "Arabian Nights") is
Vathek by
William Thomas Beckford.
[18]
The Romantic interest in medievalism also resulted in a revival of interest in the literary
fairy tale. The tradition begun with
Giovanni Francesco Straparola and
Giambattista Basile and developed by the
Charles Perrault and the French
précieuses, was taken up by the
German Romantic movement.
Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué created medieval-set stories such as
Undine (1811)
[19] and
Sintram and his Companions (1815) which would later inspire British writers such as MacDonald and Morris.
[20][21] E. T. A. Hoffmann's tales, such as "
The Golden Pot" (1814) and "
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (1816) were notable additions to the canon of German fantasy.
[22] Ludwig Tieck's collection
Phantasus (1812-1817) contained several short fairy tales, including "The Elves".
[23]
In France, the main writers of Romantic-era fantasy were
Charles Nodier, with
Smarra (1821) and
Trilby (1822)
[24][25] and
Théophile Gautier in stories such as "Omphale" (1834) and "One of Cleopatra's Nights" (1838), and the later novel
Spirite (1866).
[26][27]
In Britain,
Sara Coleridge also wrote a fantasy novel,
Phantasmion (1837), described as
""the first fairytale novel written in English".
[28][29]
Modern fantasy
The modern fantasy genre first took root during the 18th century with
the increased popularity of fictional travelers' tales, influencing and
being influenced by other early forms of speculative fiction along the
way, finally unfurling in the 19th century from a literary tapestry of
fantastic stories and gaining recognition as a distinct genre (mainly
due to the nigh-ubiquitous recession of fantastic elements from
"mainstream" fiction) in the late 19th century.
Early modern fantasy
In the early Victorian era, stories continued to be told using fantastic elements, less believed in.
Charles Dickens wrote
A Christmas Carol, using novelistic characterization to make his ghost story plausible;
[30]
Scrooge at first doubts the reality of the ghosts, suspecting them his
own imagination, an explanation that is never conclusively refuted.
[30]
The fairy-tale tradition continued in the hands of such authors as
William Makepeace Thackeray, but
The Rose and the Ring showed many elements of parody.
[31] Hans Christian Andersen, however, initiated a new style of fairy tales, original tales told in seriousness.
[31] From this origin,
John Ruskin wrote
The King of the Golden River,
a fairy tale that uses new levels of characterization, creating in the
South-West Wind an irascible but kindly character similar to the later
Gandalf.
[31]
It was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that modern fantasy
genre first truly began to take shape. The history of modern fantasy
literature begins with
George MacDonald, the Scottish author of such novels as
The Princess and the Goblin and
Phantastes
the latter of which is widely considered to be the first fantasy novel
ever written for adults. MacDonald also wrote one of the first critical
essays about the fantasy genre, "The Fantastic Imagination", in his book
A Dish of Orts (1893).
[32][33] MacDonald was a major influence on both
J. R. R. Tolkien and
C. S. Lewis.
[34]
"The Funeral of a Viking" by
Frank Bernard Dicksee: the influence of Romanticism and traditional stories on Victorian fantasy meant it was an influence on fantasy as a genre.
The other major fantasy author of this era was
William Morris,
a socialist, an admirer of Middle Ages, a reviver of British handcrafts
and a poet, who wrote several fantastic romances and novels in the
latter part of the century, of which the most famous was
The Well at the World's End. He was deeply inspired by the medieval romances and sagas; his style was deliberately archaic, based on medieval romances.
[35]
In many respects, Morris was an important milestone in the history of
fantasy, because, while other writers wrote of foreign lands, or of
dream worlds, Morris's works were the first to be set in an entirely invented world: a
fantasy world.
[36]
These fantasy worlds were part of a general trend. This era began a
general trend toward more self-consistent and substantive fantasy
worlds.
[37]
Earlier works often feature a solitary individual whose adventures in
the fantasy world are of personal significiance, and where the world
clearly exists to give scope to these adventures, and later works more
often feature characters in a social web, where their actions are to
save the world and those in it from peril. In
Phantastes, for
instance, George MacDonald has a mentor-figure explain to the hero that
the moral laws are the same in the world he is about to enter as in the
world he came from; this lends weight and importance to his actions in
this world, however fantastical it is.
[38]
Authors such as
Edgar Allan Poe and
Oscar Wilde (in
The Picture of Dorian Gray) also developed fantasy, in the telling of horror tales,
[39] a separate branch of fantasy that was to have great influence on
H. P. Lovecraft and other writers of
dark fantasy.
Despite MacDonald's future influence, and Morris' popularity at the
time, it was not until around the start of the 20th century that fantasy
fiction began to reach a large audience, with authors such as
Lord Dunsany who, following Morris's example, wrote fantasy novels, but also in the short story form.
[35] He was particularly noted for his vivid and evocative style.
[35] His style greatly influenced many writers, not always happily;
Ursula K. Le Guin,
in her essay on style in fantasy "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie", wryly
referred to Lord Dunsany as the "First Terrible Fate that Awaiteth
Unwary Beginners in Fantasy", alluding to young writers attempting to
write in Lord Dunsany's style.
[40]
H. Rider Haggard developed the conventions of the
Lost World sub-genre, which sometime included fantasy works as in Haggard's own
She.
[41] With Africa still largely unknown to European writers, it offered scope to this type.
[41] Other writers, including
Edgar Rice Burroughs and
Abraham Merritt, built on the convention.
Illustration from first edition of
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Several classic
children's fantasies such as
Lewis Carroll's
Alice in Wonderland,
[42] J. M. Barrie's
Peter Pan,
L. Frank Baum's
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, as well as the work of
E. Nesbit and
Frank R. Stockton were also published around this time.
[43] Indeed,
C. S. Lewis
noted that in the earlier part of the 20th century, fantasy was more
accepted in juvenile literature, and therefore a writer interested in
fantasy often wrote in it to find an audience, despite concepts that
could form an adult work.
[44]
At this time, the terminology for the genre was not settled. Many fantasies in this era were termed
fairy tales, including
Max Beerbohm's
The Happy Hypocrite and MacDonald's
Phantastes.
[45] The name "fantasy" was not developed until later; as late as J.R.R. Tolkien's
The Hobbit, the term "fairy tale" was still being used.
Modern fantasy
A important factor in the development of the fantasy genre was the
arrival of magazines devoted to fantasy fiction. The first such
publication was the German magazine
Der Orchideengarten which ran from 1919-1921.
[46] In 1923, the first English-language fantasy fiction magazine,
Weird Tales, was created.
[47] Many other similar magazines eventually followed, most noticeably
Unknown (AKA
Unknown Worlds)
[48] and
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction [49]
The pulp magazine format was at the height of its popularity at this
time and was instrumental in bringing fantasy fiction to a wide audience
in both the U.S. and Britain. Such magazines also played a large role
in the rise of
science fiction and it was at this time the two genres began to be associated with each other.
Weird Tales published works by such authors as Robert E Howard
Several of the genre's most prominent authors began their careers in these magazines including
Clark Ashton Smith,
Fritz Leiber,
Ray Bradbury and most noticeably
H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft was deeply influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and to a somewhat lesser extent, by Lord Dunsany; with his
Cthulhu Mythos stories, he became one of the most influential writers of fantasy and horror in the 20th century.
[50] The early works of many
sword and sorcery authors such as
Robert E. Howard also began at this time.
[51] By 1950, sword and sorcery had begun to find a wide audience, with the success of Howard's
Conan the Barbarian, and
Fritz Leiber's
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. Howard's works, especially Conan, were to have a noteworthy, even defining, influence on the
sword and sorcery subgenre.
[52] They were tales of vivid, larger-than-life action and adventure,
[53] and after the work of Tolkien, the most widely read works of fantasy.
[54] Leiber's stories were particularly noted for their uncommon realism for the time;
Unknown developed this trait, with many stories in it showing credibility and realism.
[55] Like Morris and Eddison before him, Leiber continued the tradition of drawing on Northern European legend and folklore.
[56] C. L. Moore was among Howard's first imitators, with "The Black God's Kiss", in which she introduced
Jirel of Joiry and the heroine protagonist to sword and sorcery.
[57]
Outside the pulp magazines, several American writers used the medium of fantasy for humorous and satirical purposes, including
James Branch Cabell (whose 1919 novel
Jurgen became the subject of an unsuccessful prosecution for
obscenity),
[58] Thorne Smith, with
Topper (1926) and
Turnabout (1931),
[59] and
Charles G. Finney, author of
The Circus of Dr. Lao (1935).
[60]
In Britain in the aftermath of World War I, a notably large number of
fantasy books aimed at an adult readership were published, including
Living Alone by
Stella Benson,
[61] A Voyage to Arcturus by
David Lindsay,
[62] Lady into Fox by
David Garnett,
[61] Lud-in-the-Mist by
Hope Mirrlees,
[61][63] and
Lolly Willowes by
Sylvia Townsend Warner.
[61][64] E. R. Eddison,
another influential writer, wrote during this era. He drew inspiration
from Northern sagas, as Morris did, but his prose style was modeled more
on Tudor and Elizabethan English, and his stories were filled with
vigorous characters in glorious adventures.
[36] Eddison's most famous work is
The Worm Ouroboros,
a long heroic fantasy set on an imaginary version of the planet
Mercury. His characters were often of great ability and noble, if not
royal, birth. These characters have been admired for his work in making
his villains, particularly, more vivid characters than Tolkien's.
[65]
Others have observed that while it is historically accurate to depict
the great of the world trampling on the lower classes, his characters
often treat their subjects with arrogance and insolence, and this is
depicted as part of their greatness.
[66] Indeed, at the end of
The Worm Ouroboros,
the heroes, finding peace dull, pray for and get the revival of their
enemies, so that they may go and fight them again, regardless of the
casualties that such a war would have.
[67]
Several of these writers (including Eddison, Lindsay, and Mirrlees) had
their fantasy work republished during the 1960s and 1970s.
[61]
In 1938, with the publication of
The Sword in the Stone,
T. H. White introduced one of the most notable works of
comic fantasy.
[68] This strain continued with such writers as
L. Sprague de Camp.
[69]
Literary critics of the era began to take an interest in "fantasy" as
a genre of writing, and also to argue that it was an genre worthy of
serious consideration.
Herbert Read devoted a chapter of his book
English Prose Style
(1928) to discussing "Fantasy" as an aspect of literature, arguing it
was unjustly considered suitable only for children: "The Western World
does not seem to have conceived the necessity of Fairy Tales for
Grown-Ups".
[33] Edward Wagenknecht
also discussed fantasy elements in both children's and adult fiction in
his 1946 article "The Little Prince Rides the White Deer".
[70]
Tolkien
"Creation of the Two Trees" from Tolkien's work
However, it was the advent of high fantasy and, most importantly, the popularity of
J. R. R. Tolkien's
The Hobbit and
The Lord of the Rings which finally allowed fantasy to truly enter into the mainstream. Tolkien had published
The Hobbit in 1937 and
The Lord of the Rings in the 1950s; while the first was a juvenile fantasy, the second was an
epic fantasy of great scope and seriousness.
[71][72]
Although Tolkien's works had been successful in Britain, it was not
until the late 1960s that they finally became popular in America;
however, at that point they began to sell steadily and in large numbers.
[73] Numerous polls to identify the greatest book of the century found
The Lord of the Rings selected by widely different groups.
[73]
It is difficult to overstate the impact that
The Lord of the Rings
had on the fantasy genre; in some respects, it swamped all the works of
fantasy that had been written before it, and it unquestionably created
"fantasy" as a marketing category.
[74] It created an enormous number of
Tolkienesque works, using the themes found in
The Lord of the Rings.
[74]
While fantasists had created
fantasy worlds from the time of William Morris, Tolkien's influence enormously boosted them, with a decline of such devices as
dream frames
to explain away the fantastical nature of the setting. This stemmed not
only from his example, but from his literary criticism; his "
On Fairy Stories", in which he termed such settings "secondary worlds," was a formative work of fantasy criticism.
[75]
The impact that his books, combined with the success of several other series such as
C. S. Lewis's
Chronicles of Narnia,
Mervyn Peake's
Gormenghast series[76] and Ursula K. Le Guin's
Earthsea, helped cement the genre's popularity and gave birth to the current wave of fantasy literature.
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