Educators sternly banned the telling of fairy tales in 1854, Gustave Flaubert instructed writers “to confine ourselves to relating the facts.” The rise of scientific and rationalist thought saw the reputation of fantasy sink – it was seen as childish, superstitious, and even dangerous. Where would Hamlet be without the ghost? Where would Macbeth be without the witches, or A Midsummer Night’s Dream without the fairies? Homer’s The Odyssey is filled with witches, nymphs and one-eyed giants, as is The Aenead and Ovid’s Metamorphoses indeed, the Bible itself is crammed with marvels. ![]() Until the Renaissance, tales of heroes and monsters and magical talismans formed the mainstream of the world’s literature. This very boundlessness serves the moral purpose of the tale, which is precisely to teach where boundaries lie.’ As Marina Warner says, in ‘ From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and their Tellers’ ‘Anything can happen (in fairytale). Those ancient storytellers were both trying to make sense of the mysterious workings of the world and teaching their audience the secret boundaries of behavior and belief. When our ancestors crouched about the camp fire at night, it was stories of gods and heroes, monsters and marvels, which they told to hold back the terrors of the night. I think fantasy is best described as a kind of fiction that evokes wonder, mystery or magic, a sense of possibility beyond the ordinary world in which we live, and yet which reflects and comments upon that known world.įantasy drives its tap root into the deep rich soil of myth and legend, fairytale and folklore. Still others believe writers of fantasy fiction have taken on the mantle of the ancient myth-makers, creating a new archetypal framework for a Nietzschean world that has outgrown the mouldy old myths of the past. ![]() Other people believe it is the work of the Devil (I kid you not). Some people believe it is nothing but escapist trash, and should be banned along with fast food and lollies. Perhaps we should start by defining exactly what fantasy fiction is. Tolkien’s illustration of the dragon Smaug for The Hobbitīut why? Why are such stories so enormously popular? And, more interestingly, why are they so profoundly important? Why should we not only be allowing our children to include fantasy in their reading diet, but actually encouraging it? One publishing house in the US has even issued their staff with a T-shirt that reads ‘Unicorns Sell!’ It is clear that the world is hungry for tales of epic quests, dragons, vampires, wizards, magic rings and cloaks of invisibility. This list includes Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Harry Potter movies, Star Wars, and Shrek. Of the top grossing movies of all time, only the first of the Top 10 – Titanic – is NOT a fantasy. ![]() Lewis (120 million for the Narnia series), Robert Jordan (44 million), Terry Brooks (21 million), Dragonlance (20 million) and the Artemis Fowl books (18 million) – and it is clear that fantasy is the most popular of narrative forms. Add the sales of J.R.R Tolkien (150 million for The Lord of the Rings alone), C.S. Their books have sold more than 500 million copies in the last dozen years. Stephanie Meyer, and her sparkling vampires. Rowling and the boy wizard with the lightning scar.Ĭhristopher Paolini, and the poor farm boy who tames a dragon.
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