# Fantasy literature is real literature



## face-face12 (Sep 18, 2014)

So here is my issue, in my public speaking class my teacher was telling the class about informative and persuasive speeches and he told us that we would we would have to present both and to chose a topic for each. For my persuasive speech I said that I was going to persuade everyone that fantasy novels are true literary works of art even if its bad art (because I have ran into a lot of people that believe that there is no difference between good and bad fantasy writing or that fantasy is simple to write and and those who write fantasy are not true writers) he told me that we is highly doubtful that I could find five credible sources but I insisted, he then turned to the class and asked them if they consider fantasy literature to be real literature and only one other person raised their hand and this got me going, I started throw out reasons to support my topic fiercely defending the genre  and after all of that I decided to change my topic because I realized that it would be more difficult than I thought it would be but because I was defending my topic so fiercely he told me he does not want me to change the topic and go through with it and now I don't want to give up! ALL I am asking for are at least five credible resources that I can look into so that I can support my topic things that can explain how complex fantasy writing can be and things like that. HELP!  :timebomb:


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## Steerpike (Sep 18, 2014)

I don't think people would be willing to do your research for you, but I do think people can give you some useful things to consider, and some good starting points. 

First, fantasy literature is probably the oldest kind of literature, and some of the earliest known works of literature are fantasy. Look at Beowulf.

Plenty of Shakespeare's plays are fantasy.

Moving later in time, look at Frankenstein, or Wuthering Heights. 

Angela Carter is read in college level literature and women's studies classes.

Anyone who doesn't view fantasy as being capable of producing serious or "real" literature simply lacks the proper depth of education with respect to literature.


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## face-face12 (Sep 18, 2014)

Steerpike said:


> I don't think people would be willing to do your research for you, but I do think people can give you some useful things to consider, and some good starting points.
> 
> First, fantasy literature is probably the oldest kind of literature, and some of the earliest known works of literature are fantasy. Look at Beowulf.
> 
> ...


Thanks so much for getting back so quickly and I will certainly look further into these points you have presented and I agree fully with what you said at the end, but in the question I asked only for credible writing sources I did not ask anyone to do my research for me.


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## Steerpike (Sep 18, 2014)

face-face12 said:


> ...but in the question I asked only for credible writing sources I did not ask anyone to do my research for me.



Good point. I misread what you were asking. Sorry about that. I'll do some looking around after work and see what I can find. There are a lot of people here who can point you toward some resources.


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## face-face12 (Sep 18, 2014)

Thanks so much for your help


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## FatCat (Sep 18, 2014)

face-face12 said:


> So here is my issue, in my public speaking class my teacher was telling the class about informative and persuasive speeches and he told us that we would we would have to present both and to chose a topic for each. For my persuasive speech I said that I was going to persuade everyone that fantasy novels are true literary works of art even if its bad art (because I have ran into a lot of people that believe that there is no difference between good and bad fantasy writing or that fantasy is simple to write and and those who write fantasy are not true writers) he told me that we is highly doubtful that I could find five credible sources but I insisted, he then turned to the class and asked them if they consider fantasy literature to be real literature and only one other person raised their hand and this got me going, I started throw out reasons to support my topic fiercely defending the genre  and after all of that I decided to change my topic because I realized that it would be more difficult than I thought it would be but because I was defending my topic so fiercely he told me he does not want me to change the topic and go through with it and now I don't want to give up! ALL I am asking for are at least five credible resources that I can look into so that I can support my topic things that can explain how complex fantasy writing can be and things like that. HELP!  :timebomb:



Credibility to fantasy is rare. The two authors I could say are Tokien and Martin, due to their wide-spread success. Though, I have to wonder, why does fantasy have to be the same as lit-fiction? Fantasy, as I've seen is, is about escape. Lit critics love detailed stories about an authors experience. They're two different things, fundamentally. One provideds a story to escape to, the other provids a story to relate to. 

Long story short, you shouldn't have to explain your passion to anyone, let alone someone who loves to read.


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## CupofJoe (Sep 19, 2014)

Steerpike said:


> First, fantasy literature is probably the oldest kind of literature, and some of the earliest known works of literature are fantasy. Look at Beowulf.
> Plenty of Shakespeare's plays are fantasy.
> Moving later in time, look at Frankenstein, or Wuthering Heights.
> Angela Carter is read in college level literature and women's studies classes.


I'd add three more books;
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Dracula by Bram Stoker
1984 by George Orwell
I've studied all academically and not in a genre context [_BNW_ as a response to the rise of Fascism and Eugenics,  _Dracula_ as a metaphor for disease and _1984_ as a response to post-war disillusionment and the rise of communism - I'm not saying the course was profound...].


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## Devor (Sep 19, 2014)

If Harvard Business Review can argue for putting World of Warcraft on your resume, then you can find something arguing that fantasy is literature.

If you're having trouble finding resources, you can drop the generic "fantasy" and stick to Harry Potter as a case study.  Discussions and even research on Harry Potter are abundant. For instance, here's a study that came across my feed just this week which suggests that reading Harry Potter can reduce a person's prejudices:

The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice - Vezzali - 2014 - Journal of Applied Social Psychology - Wiley Online Library

Or a better summary of it:

Why Everyone Should Read Harry Potter - Scientific American

With a quote:




> Literature with complex, developed themes and characters appears to let readers occupy or adopt perspectives they might otherwise not consider; and it seems that Rowling might get at the beautiful, sobering mess of life in a way that could have a meaningful impact on our children’s collective character.




If that isn't proof of powerful themes in fantasy, your teacher is a moron.

But what is considered literature in your class?  What are you looking for evidence of?


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## acapes (Sep 19, 2014)

Can't find the real essay itself, but it's worth tracking down from memory:

Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons? by Ursula Le Guin | Faerie Sight

Le Guin on the value of fantasy (along with some other points - Tolkien wrote something approximately similar before 74 but I can't recall what it was called.

Hope this helps some!


...wait, hope this link works - it's supposed to be for a word doc of the essay:

http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&r...=At9nCFFzWu0jMOeKiPEWNQ&bvm=bv.75774317,d.dGc


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## Chessie (Sep 19, 2014)

Steerpike said:


> Plenty of Shakespeare's plays are fantasy.
> 
> Moving later in time, look at Frankenstein, or Wuthering Heights.


Yes and YES. Steerpike, you just made my heart flutter. 

And let's take a look also at the most loved literature of all time: fairy tales. Passed down orally then written down in numerous cultures. Fantasy is engrained in our roots as human. The supernatural, things we don't know, etc are fascinating and this genre plays with all of that.


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## Incanus (Sep 19, 2014)

acapes said:


> Tolkien wrote something approximately similar before 74 but I can't recall what it was called.



Look at:  'On Fairy Stories' and 'Beowulf:  The Monsters and the Critics'--both touch on the topic at hand.

Another interesting Tolkien item is the short allegory, "Leaf by Niggle"

I suppose if fantasy is NOT literature, then we'll have to dismiss Homer as well as the other writers already mentioned.

The oldest storytelling in the world is mythology.  I believe modern Fantasy to be a (somewhat indirect) descendant.


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## FatCat (Sep 20, 2014)

Incanus said:


> Look at:  'On Fairy Stories' and 'Beowulf:  The Monsters and the Critics'--both touch on the topic at hand.
> 
> Another interesting Tolkien item is the short allegory, "Leaf by Niggle"
> 
> ...



Fantasy is most definitely literature, but to say that fantasy is literary fiction is off. Genre fiction and literary fiction are fundamentally different because fantasy is a genre, while lit-fic is a product of an authors' experience transformed into a fictional story. Now the credibility of either is in question because genre fiction inherently supposes a pre-determined path of the story, you can tell a fantasy novel is fantasy because it adheres to the scope of what fantasy should be where as a lit-fiction novel supposes nothing but what the author portrays in a fictional setting. 

How many fantasy novels deal with the triumph over evil, with elves and dwarfs and a europeanesque world of castles and nobility? The same can't be said of lit-fic, simply because with fantasy an expressive concern of a unique setting overcomes the author's own world and setting in which the written experience is expressed. While fantasy rules in the world of what-if, lit-fic excels in how to tell an experience in the most personnel way possible. 

Either are legitimate, but lit-fic will always be more respected because of the truth of the author over the cliche of a genre.


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## stephenspower (Sep 21, 2014)

The Tolkien essay on Beowulf is arguably one of the most important essays on literature: it was the first to argue that Beowulf was literature instead of history. It's a bit rambling for my taste and relies on an in-joke level of knowledge of the poem, but you might use it as a structural model since you are trying to do the same thing he was. 

My argument would be: it's the writing, depth and author's ambition that makes something literary, not the elements of the story. The most lasting books, in my opinion, succeed at both the high and low level. The high keeps the conversation going from generation to generation. The low makes them entertaining from generation to generation. Moby Dick might have a lot of philosophizing in it--and I like the technical chapters--but when the whaleboats are pulled on a Nantucket sleigh ride the Indiana Jones theme always runs through my head.

You might also consider that literature is as much about academic canonization and the expectations of what a literary author should look like as anything. If you're not part of the gang, and you don't look like the gang, then you're not literature. Consider Jonathan Franzen. He's lionized by the established order while much more talented female writers are ignored or considered yet another damned mob of scribbling women, even though Franzen writes kitchen sink dramas.  Is it because he's a middle-aged white man? Absolutely.


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## Jabrosky (Sep 21, 2014)

FatCat said:


> Fantasy is most definitely literature, but to say that fantasy is literary fiction is off. Genre fiction and literary fiction are fundamentally different because fantasy is a genre, while lit-fic is a product of an authors' experience transformed into a fictional story. Now the credibility of either is in question because genre fiction inherently supposes a pre-determined path of the story, you can tell a fantasy novel is fantasy because it adheres to the scope of what fantasy should be where as a lit-fiction novel supposes nothing but what the author portrays in a fictional setting.
> 
> How many fantasy novels deal with the triumph over evil, with elves and dwarfs and a europeanesque world of castles and nobility? The same can't be said of lit-fic, simply because with fantasy an expressive concern of a unique setting overcomes the author's own world and setting in which the written experience is expressed. While fantasy rules in the world of what-if, lit-fic excels in how to tell an experience in the most personnel way possible.
> 
> Either are legitimate, but lit-fic will always be more respected because of the truth of the author over the cliche of a genre.


I dunno, I think a lot of "literary fiction" writers are motivated by something other than a simple desire to relate their individual experiences. Sure, their experiences can inform the events in the fiction, but even then how they portray those experiences can be affected by extraneous factors like, say, political agendas. Of course having an agenda by itself isn't necessarily wrong, but agendas along with preconceived worldviews indisputably tend to affect how we perceive certain experiences.

Besides, as someone who had to read more than my fair share of "literary fiction" for school, I can vouch that even the more "biographical" ones tend to share certain commonalities, especially if their writers come from certain walks of life or deal with certain themes. For example, literary writers from non-European racial backgrounds so often vent about poverty, racism, Western imperialism, or maybe a conflict between indigenous and "modern" (read Western) values. There is of course a place for such venting, but over time the whole "poor oppressed people of color" narrative gets tiresome and actually has patronizingly racist implications if you think about it critically. Of course there are plenty of non-European writers who don't write that kind of fictionalized self-pity, but those are the ones outside the lit-fiction genre.

(To be fair, it could also be that literary writers of color who deal with themes of oppression and poverty get more attention from Western critics and school curricula than those who work with different subject matter. After all, a lot of these books get assigned in history classes in which imperialism and oppression are themes which can't be ignored.)


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## Steerpike (Sep 21, 2014)

Fantasy certainly can be literary fiction. Not all of it is by any stretch, but being fantasy doesn't render it incapable of also being literary fiction. Sometimes it gets labeled magic realism so the literary types don't have to admit it is fantasy, but even that isn't always true.


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## face-face12 (Sep 24, 2014)

Thank you everyone for your feedback and suggestions I really appreciate it with all of the points and suggestions given here I feel like I now have enough to start my research thanks again!


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