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Rhetorics of Fantasy
Rhetorics of Fantasy
Farah Mendlesohn
Wesleyan University Press • Middletown, Connecticut
Published by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT 06459
© 2008 by Farah Mendlesohn
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3
Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mendlesohn, Farah.
Rhetorics of fantasy / Farah Mendlesohn.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN-13: 978–0–8195–6867–0 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0–8195–6867–8 (alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978–0–8195–6868–7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0–8195–6868–6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Fantasy fiction, American—History and criticism—Theory, etc. 2. Fantasy fiction, English—History and criticism—Theory, etc. 3. Science fiction, American—History and criticism—Theory, etc. 4. Science fiction, English—History and criticism—Theory, etc. 5. Fantasy fiction—Authorship. I. Title.
PS374.F27M46 2008
813'.0876609—dc22
2007033559
Dedicated to the staff of Birmingham Children’s Hospital, who allowed me to finish The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe before turning out the lights.
And to Edward James in salutation of the first time we met.
HEALTH WARNING:
This book is not intended to create rules.
Its categories are not intended to fix anything in stone.
This book is merely a portal into fantasy, a tour around the skeletons and exoskeletons of genre.
Taxonomy: Theory and practice of classification.
Classification: Any method of organizing and systematizing the diversity of organisms, living and extinct, according to a set of rules (Penguin Dictionary of Biology, 9th ed., 1994).
Taxonomy is no longer typological. It’s now systematics, consciously based in the axiom “The observer is part of the system.” —Richard Erlich, e-mail, 2003
Formal critics all begin with a truth that ideological critics too often neglect; form is in itself interesting, even in the most abstract extreme. Shape, pattern, design carry their own interest—and hence meaning—for all human beings. What some critics have called “human meanings” are not required; nothing is more human than the love of abstract forms. —Wayne C. Booth, introduction to M. M. Bakhtin’s Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics
Contents
Chapter 1: The Portal-Quest Fantasy
Chapter 2: The Immersive Fantasy
Chapter 3: The Intrusion Fantasy
Chapter 4: The Liminal Fantasy
Chapter 5: “The Irregulars”: Subverting the Taxonomy
Acknowledgments
This work has been a long time in the making. It began as an impromptu way to arrange a presentation on modern children’s fantasy at the Children’s SF and Fantasy conference organized by the Association for Research in Popular Fiction and the Science Fiction Foundation in January 2002, and I am indebted to Nickianne Moody for providing that opportunity. It continued because my audience showed immediate interest; this interest has been extended by too many other audiences to thank them all, but if you have been one of my interrogators in the past, I thank you. Every one of you has assisted in honing my thoughts. In the process of writing I rambled on to many people, but thanks are especially owed to Jon Courtenay Grimwood and Karen Traviss for their conviction that writing is a craft, to Craig Jacobsen (for his comment on “gossiping about theory”), Brian Attebery, Dave Clements, John Clute, Steve Cockayne, Stefan Ekman, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Hand, Nalo Hopkinson, Edward James, Greer Gilman, M. John Harrison, Roz Kaveney, Ken MacLeod, China Miéville, Justina Robson, Graham Sleight, Peter Straub, Steph Swainston, and Gary K. Wolfe—all listened to me as I tried to work out what I wanted to say, and all, at some stage, commented on some part of the work. One consequence is that this book has a great many references to conversations and e-mails. This book is intended to function as a jumping-off point for discussion; I consider it very important that the discussions that took place be adequately acknowledged, even if it is impossible for future readers to track them all.
Many people helped me in small ways: finding definitions, checking references, making suggestions for further reading, or just asking the right question. I hope I have included them all here.
| Zara Baxter | Paul Billinger | Glenda Guest |
| Bernadette Bosky | Judith Clute | Niall Harrison |
| Tanya Brown | Tony Cullen | Dan Hartland |
| Andrew M. Butler | Neil Easterbrook | Tim Holman |
| Elizabeth Billinger | Richard D. Erlich | Kathryn Hume |
| Kari Maund | Graham Murphy | Jennifer Stevenson |
| Kevin McVeigh | Jess Nevens | Robert Van Osten |
| Clare Mendlesohn | Faye Ringel |
|