Welcome to the first true post of Everything Geeky! I thought I’d start with something that captures everything I want this blog to be about: a fun discussion that gives us all a chance to nerd out, but hopefully, we should come away a little more knowledgeable as well. So get your DeLoreans, Tardises, and Time-turners ready, because we are going back in time with this short history of fantasy.
I reckon that breaking things down, bit by bit, is the best approach here. Mostly, I’ll talk in a broad sense, sweeping over big concepts such as mythology and folk tales, tip-toeing over movements like Romanticism (I am by no means an expert on it!), and then we’ll get to ideas like Escapism (that thankfully, I can be a bit more precise about). The journey will finish with Tolkien and modern high fantasy, although, of course, the genre has gone from strength to strength since.
Don’t get me wrong though, you’ll get some delicious delicious detail along the way as well. Some works are far too important to merely breeze over, so I’ve decided to line them up front and centre for you to gawk at in judgement.
Before we start, one last reminder that I’m not an expert on much of this today. If I miss anything out that you feel is important, feel free to leave a comment, it’ll add to the discussion, and I wanna hear from you!
Without further ado, let’s begin.
Part I: What is fantasy?
I wanted to write a brief history of fantasy today, but almost immediately, I found myself up against some unforeseen difficulties. When I did some reading on how people more intelligent than myself defined fantasy, I had a minor disagreement with them…kinda.
Most define fantasy as:
- A work with a presence of magic, the supernatural, or mythical creatures etc.
- A work that takes place in a secondary world, or a world hidden from our own.
- A work with a known author/s.
Now I agree wholeheartedly with the first two parts of this definition. The problem I have is with the third – the work must have a known author or authors – because it means that much of what I would consider to be fantasy, is not actually fantasy.
I am about to argue that myth and legend – stories and tales drowning in elements of the fantastical – played a key role in the early life of the, what I suppose you would call, proto-genre. For that reason, let’s not pay much attention to the third part of the definition for now, and let’s give myth, legend, and folk-tales the love they deserve from us fantasy fans.
Part II: Myth, legend, and early literature
Early literature is inherently fantastical in its nature. The heroes that are found in stories from all over the world routinely pit their wits against dreadful creatures, wicked demons, and dark magic. Homer’s The Iliad, and The Odyssey, considered the oldest works of Western literature in existence, are crucial components in the Western Canon for this reason. Odysseus and his battles with Cyclops Polyphemus, the attempted seductions of the witch Circe, and the run-in with the six-headed beast Scylla, show us one very important thing: fantasy has been with us from the very beginning.
Now it’s not just the literature of the west that is so imbued by the fantastical either.
Widely considered as one of the earliest works of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, thought to have been written around 2100 BC. Yeah, so maybe you’ve heard of it if you’re as big a nerd as I am, but there’s more than just a ‘hero’s journey’ trope to the story of Gilgamesh and his many adventures. At its heart, there’s magic, terrifying beasts, and wrathful goddesses aplenty.
There is something about magic, about monsters and gods, that is imprinted in the soul of our culture.
During the Middle Ages, the traditional view is that a veil of ignorance and religious furore descended upon the world, hence why the time between the fall of Rome and the beginning of the Renaissance is commonly known as the Dark Ages. However, this view is western-centric; Europe may have slid into a multitude of small kingdoms warring with each other, a cultural backwater, but outside Europe’s borders, things were not so grim.
Between 1706 and 1721 AC, the first English language edition of the book The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment was published. The original title of the piece was, of course, One Thousand and One Nights. The book is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales, compiled over the course of the Islamic Golden Age. The history of the book is quite difficult to crack apparently, but the earliest stories seem to have been translated into Arabic and titled One Thousand Nights, around the 8th Century. The work grew and grew as more tales were added to the original body of work over the intervening years, and the stories won renown, even making their way to Britain, where…oh, I’ve already mentioned that.
One Thousand and One Nights is a gargantuan body of work, a true giant of literature from the Middle Ages. The tales deal with a plethora of magical elements, fantastic beasts and monsters, and even cosmological ideas that could be considered Science Fiction.
The work is a true example of how folktales can evolve into something more, of how early fantasy and masterful storytelling could cross cultural and geographical boundaries, from the sands of Arabia to the mild, rainy fields of England.
To me, the stories told in Arabian Nights are great examples of early fantasy. Collections of folktales are a key stepping stone on the way to a fantasy genre. The Brothers Grimm, and their travails ‘cross Germany, collecting the fairy tales that would become a vital part of many a child’s bedtime routines, brought fantasy into the open, and it has never really gone away. If we subscribe to the original definition, however, that fantasy must have a known author, then all of these fantastical pieces become less. I’m arguing that should not be the case. Myth, legend, and folktales are fantasy. They contain elements undeniably fantastical, and their influence on what was to come, cannot be diminished.
Perhaps I was a little hard on the Dark Ages earlier in the piece? Is it not these Middle Ages where so many latter-day works of fantasy are set? We fantasy lovers are the Jay Gatsbys of the literary world, we ‘beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’ (I know it’s not fantasy, but it’s a great point, don’t you pretend it’s not!)
Why though? Where did fantasy’s obsession with the medieval world come from?
Part III: Romanticism
Tales of knightly valour were rife during the high Middle Ages. Even if King Arthur wasn’t a real dude, the legend of him and his knights of the round table, were to live on forevermore. Upper-class women loved their romances, the stories of dashing knights, of lovely ladies, and gallant deeds. Often, these stories would have everything we’ve discussed already – magic, monsters, all that jazz.
But then came the Renaissance, and after that, the Enlightenment (a little bit simplistic, I know, but let’s go with it, this is supposed to be a short history). With the Enlightenment came new ideas. Rationality could conquer the world, nature and everything in it could be placed in a box and a neat little bow could be tied around it. Man was to be the master over all. There was nothing we could not achieve. With the principles of the Enlightenment guiding us, science would be victorious in the eternal war against nature. We would make nature bow to us.
This alarmed some people.
The Romantic school of thought held that nature a mysterious force that should be left well enough alone. The emotions of a human were inherently irrational, so what was the point in delving into these murky waters. Romantics looked at the growing world of modernity and despaired. Dirty, overcrowded cities, pestilence and misery everywhere, the sanctity of nature defiled.
So Romanticists brought it back. The early romance tales valued nature. Nature was where the magic happened, literally. Once you left the city, and you journeyed out into the wilderness, you put yourself in the hands of fate. You were not the one in control, the natural world ruled all. It was the Lady of the Lake, in the very heart of the wild, who granted Arthur his sword, Excalibur.
For Romanticists, emotion and nature were supreme.
From the Romantic movement sprang several branches of literary that would have an impact on the fantasy genre. Gothic horror is probably the branch of the Romantic tree that I am most acquainted with. Fear, that deep, clawing, mysterious, exhilarating, and terrible emotion, was central to gothic horror. To inspire an incomprehensible, irrational terror in your reader was to be the true Romantic.
The tropes and themes that became central to the Romantic school were to become mainstays in both the fantasy and horror genres.
Part IV: Escapism
As time wore on, a more distinct fantasy genre developed, characterised by a more noticeable use of secondary or hidden worlds. Escapism is often looked down upon by the literary types as being second-rate, or even sub-literary. The act of letting go of the real world for a time though, and immersing yourself fully in a world quite different from our own, empathising with characters whose trials are foreign to what we know – yet still human – is a noble act. Stuff the snobs, I say, there’s nothing wrong with escapism.
One of the first true works of modern fantasy, I believe, is Gulliver’s Travels, by Johnathan Swift. The book, published in 1726, is an enchanting satire, where many of the contemporary issues of the day – European religion and politics, imperialism – are examined through the lens of metaphor. In this way, you have a story far beyond its time. This would become a popular trait of fantasy and science fiction, where the escapist nature of the piece is retained, but real life issues are also touched upon.
During the 19th Century, a true genre began to develop, with the resurgence of fairy tales, the influence of Romanticist hearkening back to a bygone past, and with the establishment of escapist storytelling. Leaving the real world – the Victorian world of manners and logic – for a nonsense realm of the weird and the wonderful, a wonderland, a true escapist adventure, is the story of one of the 19th Century’s most famous books.
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland certainly made an impact on the world of fiction. Queen Victoria became the book’s most famous lover, and even struck up something a friendship with Carroll, urging him to dedicate his next book to her. Carroll, a mathematician and logician first, did indeed dedicate his next work to Victoria. An Elementary Treatise on Determinants was perhaps not quite what the queen had in mind…Off with his head, anyone?
Children and grownups alike were to love the Alice books. Works that cross age boundaries were to become a popular trait of fantasy books in the 20th and 21st Centuries. For an author to strike both demographics is usually an indicator of the book’s success, and in this way, Lewis Carroll was one of the first modern fantasy writers.
Is escapism a naturally childish idea? When we read escapist literature, it is often with the desire to be free of our worries for a time, to eschew our responsibilities, and to hide in a realm where the weight of adulthood is lessened. There is a novel (first a stage play), written in the early 20th Century, that deals with these themes in a more structured way than perhaps any other.
Peter Pan (or Peter and Wendy), by JM Barrie, is a brilliant work for children, that strikes all the notes an escapist piece should strike. The protagonist, Wendy Darling, straddles the line between the carefree abandon of Peter, and the iron-clad commitment to humourless responsibility that Captain Hook represents. Interestingly enough, in the stage play, the role of Captain Hook is traditionally played by the same actor who plays the Darling father. Wendy is caught between these two forces; the eternal childhood daze of Peter Pan, or the desire to grow up that is deeply rooted inside her (Wendy’s willingness to be a mother to the lost boys).
As a tale of escapist fantasy, I reckon there is no clearer example than Peter Pan. However, there is another work that I believe shows the evolution of escapist literature into modern epic fantasy. I’m talking about CS Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia. There is the backdrop of escape from danger in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when the Pevensie are evacuated from war-torn London to the countryside. The proverbial wardrobe through which the children then escape into Narnia is the portal that shifts the narrative to one of high fantasy. There is no need to mention the dozens of examples of magic and monsters that exist in the Narnia books, it is a work of fantasy that perhaps more than any thus far, left the real world behind in totality.
Except in one very important way.
The Chronicles of Narnia, in many ways, plays out as a Christian allegory. The obvious example is of Aslan – the great lion – representing Christ, in him sacrificing himself for the sins of Edmund, before being resurrected later in the book. Perhaps even more obvious, is in The Last Battle, Aslan sits in judgement of all those living and dead, and the righteous are given leave to enter Aslan’s country.
Narnia, at its core, is connected to our own world. It exists not as a separate entity, either in the narrative sense, where there is a gateway between the worlds, or in the meta sense, where the Christian allegory prevents the novels from existing on their own merit. It was CS Lewis’s great friend and Oxford colleague, who would write what many of us consider to be the first true work of modern high fantasy.
Part V: Tolkien and Middle-Earth
To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode.
JRR Tolkien, On Fairy Stories
We talked in our definition of fantasy about hidden worlds and secondary worlds. For the most, most of the works we’ve discussed have taken place in the hidden world – a realm that exists alongside our own, out of site. As of yet, we haven’t looked at any examples of the secondary world.
A secondary world has its own set of rules, quite distinct from our own. History, geography, language, fauna, everything. This is the major determinant between low fantasy and high fantasy. In high fantasy, there is no anchor into our own world, everything is created in the author’s own design.
As Tolkien explains in the quote above, the creation of a secondary world is a supremely difficult task – perhaps why we have so often seen our own world being used as a counterbalance to an author’s fantastical realm, our world acts as the life jacket to keep the reader above water. So often, complete immersion into a secondary world is a challenging thing, if not done right, it leaves the reader confused.
This great difficulty – a confused reader is one who won’t be a reader for long – is what makes Tolkien’s achievement so astounding. The sheer scale of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth is something that had not been seen before. From the creation of the world, when Arda was sung into existence by the Ainur, to the great battles between Melkor and the Maiar. The First Age. The Second Age. The Third Age. A narrative spanning tens of thousands of years, a complete history.
When such an immersive world is the base of a near flawless narrative, a story where the sake of the entire world rests on the unlikeliest of shoulders, you have the recipe for perfection. The Lord of the Rings is the culmination of everything we have discussed here. Tolkien understands exactly how important myth and legend are to the human spirit, and he interweaves his epic history of Middle-Earth into the stories told around the fire by Aragorn. The setting, is, of course, something consistent with the high Middle Ages, and all of its romantic splendour. Nature, and the preservation of it, that key Romantic ideal, plays out in the battle between the Ents and Sauruman’s heartless industry. As for escapism, well, Bilbo Baggins leaves his Hobbit hole and goes on an adventure.
Part VI: Loose Ends
There you have it. My short history of fantasy. It was longer than I had meant it to be when I first had the idea to make a post on the subject. I thought I had enough knowledge on the subject to just sit down and write, but that proved to be untrue. I ended up having to do quite a bit of research for this essay. I’ll leave some of my sources below in case any of you are interested to find out a bit more. I even have a direct link to a few things that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.
I didn’t want to make this too much like an academic essay. I wanted this to be a fun read as well, so you’ll excuse some of the flippant language I’ve used throughout. Some of this essay is honest work, me trying to get across how the fantasy genre evolved, but other parts are just my own opinion as well. I’ve tried to find the middle ground I suppose, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it.
Further reading
- A Short History of Fantasy, Edward James
- The Shortest History of Europe, John Hirst
- Mythos, Stephen Fry
- On Fairy Stories, JRR Tolkein, http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien.pdf
Everything Geeky 