Week 3

How does Attebery (1980) define fantasy? Find at least five definitions.


“How to define Fantasy?” is the main topic in Attebery’s 1980 book chapter one. Firstly, Attebery notices that the simple way to define Fantasy is to find its primary feature. Irwin (as cited in Attebery,1980) defines that Fantasy is “an overt violation of what is generally accepted as possibility”. Tolkien(as cited in Attebery,1980) also gives his definition of fantasy is “founded upon the hard recognition that the thing are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on the recognition of fact but not a slavery to it”. Based on these two descriptions, it is clear that in a fantasy narrative, there must be something never appeared in our natural world, indeed, is made up by writer. In other words, if a literary work does not contain any “impossible” things, it simply cannot be fantasy. Therefore, Attebery points out “any narrative which includes as a significant part of its make-up some violation of what the author clearly believes to be natural law-That is Fantasy” (p.3).

Another way to define Fantasy is to find out what make it different from related genres. Attebery compares fantasy with Science fiction, lyric poetry, narrative poetry and other surreal fictions on how to treat the impossible characters, object or events. Science fiction convinces people to believe that if the science technology has become advanced, the circumstances in the narrative can be possibly true. Although lyric poetry and narrative poetry also often deal with impossibilities and fantastics, the impossible object normally are treated as “temporary manifestations of states of mind” and Surreal fiction can unpredictably present discursive characters of events. However, in Fantasy, Attebery argues that “readers and witter are committed to maintaining the illusion for entire course of the fiction” which means, when reading the fantasy work, the reader not only accept the settlement of the fiction but also all the impossible details within it. Then Attebery expands his definition: “Fantasy is a game of sorts and it demand that on play whole-heartedly accepting for the moment all rules and turns of the game. The reward for this extra payment is an occasional sense of unexpected beauty and strangeness, a quality… wonder” (p.3)

Attebery evaluates other Fantasy definitions and finds some of them only give a description of minor subtype of fantasy. He enumerates the definitions from Tzvetan Todorov and Eric Rabkin point out that these definitions are only suit for particular stories. Then he goes down to his description “The most important thing [Fantasy works] share is the sense of wonder” and “Fantasy invokes wonder by making the impossible seem familiar and the familiar seem new and strange.”
Attebery also states his discovery of fantasy’s history. He explains the development from earliest kind of fantasy-the folktale, traditional fairy tale, the wonder tale to resent fantasy works to make us clear about Fantasy’s changes.


Reference

Attebery, B. (1980). The fantasy tradition in American literature: from Irving to Le Guin (pp.1-10). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.