Who Invented Fantasy?

One of the characteristics of the novel when it first appeared was that it presented fiction in a realistic manner. This bothered some folks who felt this was akin to lying, but it does mark the beginning of realism in writing, and its clear differentiation from the romances that had preceded it. Until we had 'realism,' I don't think we could have 'fantasy' as something different from it.

 

Adding for anyone who got here late that "romance" as it applied at the time doesn't refer to ripped bodices and sweaty bodies making squishing noises in a steaming humping mass. "Romance" referred to romantic prose: old-school adventure stories of heroes and knights and chivalrous feats of valor and whatever. If that's not fantasy, I don't know what is.

One of the defining features of the novel as opposed to romance literature was--and, arguably, still is--that the novel provides allegorical commentary on some aspect of life or society through a fictional narrative. This was the difference between novels and romances at the outset. Novels employed literary devices--subtext, allegory, imagery, irony, hyperbole, metaphor, the stuff of poetry--to create unspoken commentary. The words in a novel mean more than the concrete definitions of the words on the page. (This is still true today. If you have a 60,000-word book that has no subtext, i.e. written entirely concretely, you don't have a novel. You have a novel-length story. Which is great, but it's not the same thing.)

In this respect, novels were initially seen more like poetry: flowery, superficial, even vacuous. This is one of the reasons they were pooh-poohed in the early days. They weren't considered "serious" literature until later. Initially, many were considered scandalous as well for their commentary. Eventually, analyzing novels became an intellectual's game: "What he really meant was . . ." and so on, arguing over brandy late into the evening, and once it became the hip thing to do, well, here we are now.

But those fantasy stories were already around long before the novel. They were romantic literature, adventure stories of heroes and monsters with their roots going back twenty-five hundred years. The Odyssey was written in the 8th Century B.C. Heck, A Thousand and One Nights may date back to the 8th Century A.D., and it's full of magic and djinn and flying carpets and all that. We're standing on the shoulders of giants.

 

Ooh! Ooh! Again it was me on my time dragon. And it was last Friday when we went back. Don't remember exactly what date we arrived though. Dragons don't have dials! But I think it was some time after I invented the wheel!!!

Cheers, Greg.

 

TOLKIEN DID NOT INVENT FANTASY! FANTASY EXISTED FOR YEARS BEFORE TOLKIEN!

 

A lot of people are using mythology as an example, however I would like to stress the fact that mythology is not fantasy, as it is religious in origin. You wouldn't call Abrahamic Mythology (the religious stories of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) fantasy, so don't call things like Hellenist Mythology or Old Norse Mythology fantasy. It is important to respect all religions.

 

Please define what you mean by fantasy. Mythology can be regarded (in modern terms) as a form of fantasy, but it is an area where sometimes faith/religion/belief and stories about people overlap as in Homer's The Odyssey and in the Elder Edda. Legends can also be seen as a form of fantasy, as with King Arthur and Beowulf, but are themselves sometimes connected to folklore as with Wayland. With legends and mythology it is important to note that for the people of the time those were often seen as true history and not as fantasy. So a lot depends on how you define fantasy.

 

I agree that legends (such as Beowulf) are fantasy, but mythology is not.

 

Except that I don't classify mythology or legends as fantasy. As I wrote, for the people of the time they were real, not fantasy. And that was also why I asked Lancasrer for a definition of what they mean by fantasy.

 

Myths were believed, but legends were not.

 

Wait one. If I remember my teachers correctly, myths were used to explain the world around people and usually had a basis in some form of belief system. Legends were based on fact, though they often had larger than life descriptions of people and events. Both were believed by the people of the time, though for differing reasons.