Organization: Central Michigan University
Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1992 11:38:46 EST
From: TERRY D. BARKLEY <32BSFJC@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU>
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: RFD: rec.arts.fantasy
 <pvanheus.722108122@frodo> <1992Nov19.075900.14027@neptune.inf.ethz.ch>
 <BxzL2u.2yr@apollo.hp.com>

In article <BxzL2u.2yr@apollo.hp.com>, jlevine@apollo.hp.com (Jennifer E.
Levine) says:
>
>In article <1992Nov19.075900.14027@neptune.inf.ethz.ch>, qvortrup@inf.ethz.ch
>(Michael Qvortrup) writes:
>
>|>
>|>      2) If more people find, that *.sf.* is too obscure, and a more
>|>         explicit name might be a Good thing (TM), and a consensus can
>|>         be reached on the new name (I personally like *.spec-fic.*),
>|>         then I might support such a renaming.
>
>I agree with this point but I am not sure if *.spec-fic.* is any clearer.
>
>--Jennifer
>jlevine@apollo.hp.com

I have been reading the responses to Peter van Heusden with great interest,
as I am a minor expert on fantasy as literature, I am doing extensive research
in preparation for writing my master thesis: "An Apology for Fantasy" (the
current working title)(for those not learned in literary criticism, an apology
is a defense of the subject to other literary critics).  This argument that
science fiction and fantasy are the same is a short lived one in literary
terms.  When science fiction first became a full fledged genre, critics were
wont to throw it in with fantastic literature because there were few who
believed that a man could go to the moon or that there was a possibility that
aliens could exist.  Now these writers are praised for being forward thinking,
visionaries who forsee the possibilities of mankind.  Fantasy on the other hand
has always been been a language of metaphor, speaking of things that cannot be
spoken of in realities: religon, philosophies, and other such things.  Joseph
Campbell spoke of this "language" as the ancient field of reference to these
ideas: "The best things can't be told because they transcend thought.  The
second best are misunderstood, because those are the thoughts that are supposed
to refer to that which cannot be thought about.  The third best are what we
talk about.  And myth is that field of reference to what is absolutely
transcendent." ("The Power Of Myth," Joseph Campbell (with Bill Moyers), ed.
Betty Sue Flowers (New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1988), pp. 57-8.)  Fantasy
addresses the irrational and the unexplainable because its roots are entrenched
in myth and legend, and therefore is well suited for metaphor and allegory.
When Kafka makes Gregor change into a cockroach he is using fantasy as a tool,
a tool capable of describing the psychlogical, philosophical, and spiritial.
     This gets us to the definition of fantasy, which has also been argued
about in the last few days.  I will not go into the many ways that critics have
defined Fantasy, instead I will give you the best definition I have found.  It
was put forward in Kathryn Hume's excellent book, "Fantasy and Mimesis," and is
most workable: "Fantasy is any departure from consensus reality, an impulse
native to literature and manifested in innumerable variations, from monster to
metaphor." ("Fantasy and Mimesis," Kathryn Hume (New York: Methuen, Inc., 1984)
p. 21.)  What leaves Science Fiction out of this definition is the fact that
Sci-Fi writes about what could be, based on natural law and physics or on the
real possibility that what is written will be attained eventually.  As to the
invention of aliens, most are created with natural law in mind and their
invention is no different than a realist inventing a fake country in South
America with its own customs and religion in order to move his or her story
along.  Science Fiction, in short, deals with possibilities, while Fantasy
deals with impossibilities.
     From children's fairy tales to adult epic fantasy, Fantasic literature
attempts to explain the human spirit in the only terms that can describe it. As
a literary genre, which is how Peter van Heusden wants this new group to speak
of it, Fantasy deserves its own seperate reckoning.  For those who want to
continue to blindly lump it in with Science Fiction, you cannot speak of both
in the same breath.  Science Fiction is a young genre with its own right to be
considered seperately, while Fantasy is as old as thinking man and had earned
that right centuries ago.
     To Peter, I hope that you were serious in this effort, for I am.  There
are many artists of true fantasy that deserve long discussion, some of whom
are: Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jonathan Swift, George Orwell, Homer,
Shakespeare, Poe, Tolkien, Donaldson, Jane Yolen, Eugene Ionesco, Samuel
Beckett, and Kurt Vonnegut.  There is much that has yet to be said of these
artists, and of current and future artists.  Let's get it on.


Terry D. Barkley                          "Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Graduate Student in English                Into a village,
Central Michigan University                Are twenty men crossing twenty
<32BSFJC@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU>                                       bridges,
message-id:                                Into twenty villages...."
<92325.11384732BSFJC@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU>                WALLACE STEVENS
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