THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY ANKARA UNIVERSITY
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
DEPARTMENT OF WESTERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE (ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE)
DISCWORLD SERIES
PhD Dissertation
Ankara,2020
THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY ANKARA UNIVERSITY
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
DEPARTMENT OF WESTERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE (ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE)
DISCWORLD SERIES
PhD Dissertation
Supervisor
Ankara,2020
THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY ANKARA UNIVERSITY
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
DEPARTMENT OF WESTERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE (ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE)
DISCWORLD SERIES
PhD Dissertation
EXAMINING COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Name and Surname Signature
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Examination Date: 30.09.2020
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Assist. Prof.
, guidance and insightful advice she has constantly given to me during this process. I have been very lucky to have such a supervisor who cares so much about my study, and who responds to my questions so promptly. Her kind support and encouragement has not only made the completion of this work possible, but also made me a better learner and a better researcher.
I am also thankful to the members of the monitoring committee of this their invaluable advice and unique guidance. I also want to thank my colleagues Dr. Funda
contributed to my academic life to a large extent. My special thanks go to my dear
Special thanks go to my dear family who have always believed and encouraged me throughout this process and have become an important part of this success.
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and unending support. Without you, none of this would have been possible, and none of it would have mattered.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ... i
TABLE OF CONTENT ... ii
INTRODUCTION ... 1
CHAPTER I SATIRICAL FANTASY FICTION 1.1. Fantasy Literature ... 7
1.2. Tradition of Satire in Literature ... 37
... 80
CHAPTER II: 2.1. Guards! Guards!: Satire on Political Hypocrisy ... 90
2.2. Pyramids: Satire on Political Intrigues ... 127
2.3. Interesting Times: Satire on Political Revolution Attempts ... 160
CHAPTER III 3.1. Moving Pictures: Satire on the Influence of Media on Society ... 191
3.2. Equal Rites: Satire on Gender Inequality ... 223
3.3. Mort: Satire on Materiality ... 247
CONCLUSION ... 276
BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 282
... 292
ABSTRACT ... 294
1
INTRODUCTION
Literary works have their reading, writing, and interpretation styles, but it is not easy to define the genres separately in practice, and the borders between the genres have become more obscure. However, some other views contradict this, for example, as Heta
their work and readers in their encounter with texts" (109). It is also commonly agreed that each new genre is affected by the previous one to a large extent. Literary works can be seen as the products of their time's cultural, social, and political contexts, which in turn contributes to more the interconnectedness between the genres. Since satire in Terry Pratchett's fantasy novels will be examined, the historical development of fantasy literature will be briefly evaluated, and satire, a technique used in much of Pratchett's writing and style will be explained historically. In addition, the similarities and differences between fantasy literature and other genres and the textual characteristics of fantasy literature will also be highlighted in order to define it as a literary genre.
For many, Terry Pratchett is seen as one of the pioneers of the modern fantasy genre, and his reputation started to grow with the publication of his first fantasy novel The Carpet People in 1971, but it was his first Discworld novel The Colour of Magic (1983) that made him an outstanding figure of fantasy. Until his death in 2015, he wrote fifty novels and forty-one of them belong to his Discworld Series. What makes Pratchett different from other fantasy writers is the impact he has brought to the genre. Before Pratchett came onto the literary scene, fantasy was not very popular, and it was full of more serious and epic stories like The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia.
Saving humankind and bloody wars between good and evil were the dominant subjects of fantasy literature. With The Colour of Magic, Pratchett changed both the traditional tone and content. His narrative voice is highly satirical and cynical; his characters are
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not perfect fighters, kings, or knights, instead, they are less assuming figures like a failed wizard, a tourist, an actor, a young pharaoh, a lovely witch, and a turtle among many others. In other words, Pratchett's characters are a unique blend of the modern and the fantastic so that Pratchett can question his contemporary society. He does that through satire, which he employs to juxtapose the real world and his fantasy world.
Pratchett uses his works as a means of questioning serious issues regarding modern society such as education, justice, gender roles, religion, and the class system.
Discworld Series will be focused on in terms of these social issues and how Pratchett portrays them with satire.
The argument will centre upon the relationship between reality and fiction and explore how fantasy fiction can represent the social problems experienced in real life and how satire can be used to shed light on these problems.
a means of humour but also as a critical approach to the hidden social and political ent of satire are the The Lord of the Rings trilogy
Discworld Series are cynical and mock-heroic novels. The satirical juxtaposition of his fantastic world and the modern world gives his reader a chance to see the world from new directions and this dissertation will focus on portraying this comparison. It should be noted that the satirists are not only concerned with what has happened in the society;
from a historical perspective, their writings can also make predictions about the future.
Although the Discworld novels seem to be set in what would correspond to the late medieval age in the real world, the issues Pratchett deals with seem familiar even today.
In short, one of the aims in the dissertation is to portray the power of fantasy literature,
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which has been neglected until recently, in the literary world. At first sight, fantasy literature may be seen as a way of escaping from the inequalities, social, political, economic corruption and injustice in the real world, but in fact, fantasy worlds serve as a mirror to these problems and thus provide a broader insight as Pratchett himself erstanding this world is to view it from another
Fantasy literature studies have been mostly centred upon merely its elements.
Also, studies about satire in general are mostly focused on certain writers such as George Orwell, H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley and no doctoral dissertation has been written so far on Terry Pratchett in Turkey. Research on the database of The Council of Higher Education of Turkey reveals that satire in fantasy literature specifically in Terry Discworld Series will be studied in a doctoral dissertation for the first time which will make this study an original one that may become a useful source for scholars
works.
In this dissertation, fantasy literature, the tradition of satire in literature, and
focused on. Fantasy literature can be approached in many different ways, and each of these ways would offer something significant to understand what fantasy literature is.
The definition of what forms the fantasy fiction is difficult as it includes many different elements such as fantasy, ghost stories, nightmares, horror and science fiction stories, fables and epics, etc. Therefore, it would be wise to analyze the term fantasy beginning with its historical background and in relation to other genres.
It is generally accepted that what differs Pratchett from his fellow authors is folklore. As Pratchett states in his Imaginary Worlds, Real Stories
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folklorist, but I am a vast consumer of folklore an end-
Folklore covers an enormous part of his writings from the very beginning of his Discworld Series till the last. He also wrote a book with Jacqueline Simpson titled The Folklore of Discworld: Legends, Myths, and Customs from the Discworld with Helpful Hints from Planet Earth (2008). Besides folklore, he also uses popular culture, mythology, and history. His fantasies are full of monsters, dragons, and supernatural events, and by using folkloric and mythic elements, he makes his settings more familiar to his readers. Pratchett transfers the main controversial issues of our world such as religion, politics, justice, trade, gender roles, and labour force, to his Discworld and deals with them in his fantasy world. Pratchett's satirical perspective of all these controversial issues will be shed light on in this dissertation with the aim of showing how satire and fantasy literature can be an effective approach when used together to question crucial social and political issues. Therefore, fantasy literature should be taken as seriously as other literary genres while investigating the issues related to humanity.
In
satirical style, an overview of the tradition of literary satire will also be provided. Satire makes use of humour and wit to criticize institutions or humanity. Satire, as a literary form, derives mainly from Greek and Roman literatures. Basically, there are two different kinds of literary satire: Horatian and Juvenalian. Horatian satire is gentle and sympathetic, but Juvenalian is biting and bitter. Although satire is a dominant literary form throughout Europe, this dissertation will focus on English satire from a historical perspective. The eighteenth-century may be regarded as the golden age of satire in English literature. Many famous satirists such as Dryden, Swift, Pope, Addison, Steele, and Johnson dominated the century with their satirical works. In the nineteenth century, Byron and in the twentieth century, Waugh used satire in their works. This dissertation
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will examine the methods and elements of satire in the twenty-first century in relation to fantasy literature. In that context, Terry Pratchett will be discussed as a significant twenty-first-century satirist, and his works will be analyzed to lay bare the social and political satire hidden between his lines which will hopefully provide a comprehensive commentary on his perspective on humanity and social institutions.
In the theoretical part of the dissertation definition of the fantastic and fantasy literature, the difference between these two terms and the concepts of satire will be discussed. Besides, the reasons for choosing Terry Pratchett and his Discworld Series will be explained. After describing the concepts of fantasy, fantasy literature, and satire, Terry Pratchett will be discussed as a satirist. Then, focusing on fantasy literature, a Discworld Series will be provided. The Discworld Series contains forty-one novels; therefore, it is not possible to analyze all of them in one study. Among these forty-one novels, Guards Guards!, Pyramids, Interesting Times, Moving Pictures, Equal Rites, and Mort will be Discworld Series consists of different novel series and in the dissertation Interesting Times from Rincewind novels, Equal Rites from Witches novels, Pyramids from Ancient Civilizations Novels, Mort from Death Novels, Guards! Guards! from Watch Novels and Moving Pictures from Industrial Novels were selected to portray an overall picture of Pratchett's Discworld Series. None of these selected novels is completely related to a single social issue. However, it is possible to classify them as those related to social issues and political issues. Each book will be analyzed separately, referring to certain elements of satire such as incongruity, surprise, pretense, and superiority. However, at the end of each chapter, a general comment obtained from these analyses will be given to provide an overview of the social and political satire in the Discworld Series. In chapter II, Guards! Guards!, Pyramids and
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Interesting Times will be analyzed concerning the political issues they question. In chapter III, Moving Pictures, Equal Rites, and Mort will be analyzed in relation to the
satirical elements incongruity, surprise, pretense, and superiority- in order to question the social and political issues of his time will be analyzed. In the conclusion part, satire efficiency in fantasy literature in engaging with the contemporary problems will be explained. Unfettered by the limitations of the real world, satirical fantasy novels can offer new perspectives for modern society, and these perspectives will also be explained in the conclusion part as the outcome of the analyses.
In all these selected novels, Pratchett uses satire effectively, indirectly bringing forth his criticism on social values and institutions. Satirists do not write only out of personal displeasure; they also write with a concern for their society's well-being. Such works always carry hope for a change for the better. On such a note, how Pratchett uses satire and what he says between the lines in his novels; in other words, his indirect messages to his readers will be foregrounded in this study.
7 CHAPTER I
FANTASY FICTION
This chapter aims to provide a theoretical background for the following chapters in Discworld Series will be analyzed, portraying his satirical style. Although satire became a dominant literary form throughout Europe, this chapter will solely focus on satire in English literature from a historical perspective. Secondly, a definition of the fantastic and fantasy literature will be provided, and the difference between these two terms will be described. Besides, the reasons for choosing Terry Pratchett and his Discworld Series will be explained.
1.1. Fantasy Literature
Fantasy literature had been neglected in literary studies until recently, and it was mostly studied under the category of children's literature. However, the rapid increase in the number of people who are interested in fantasy literature sparked off literary studies regarding it. This part of the chapter aims to show that despite gaining popularity only recently, the roots of fantasy reach back to the oldest form of literature, and it is much more than mere children's stories. To this end, various categorizations and theories put forward by famous critics will be scrutinized to explore the place of Terry Pratchett's works within the genre.
It is commonly agreed by the critics that there is no consensus on the definition of fantasy. In his Fantasy: Liberation of Imagination, which is regarded as an essential source for fantasy literature, Richard Mathews defines fantasy literature as "a type of fiction that evokes wonder, mystery, or magic a sense of possibility beyond the ordinary, material, rationally predictable world in which we live" (1). Philip Martin also
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underlines the importance of magic in the definition of fantasy, and he remarks that:
"Fantasy creates a world imaginative to the highest degree, full of inventive creatures, rules of magic and places remar
(21).
Before focusing on fantasy and especially fantasy literature, it would be better to distinguish between the terms "fantasy" and "fantastic". Critics have different opinions about these two terms. Rabkin briefly explains how "fantastic" differs from "fantasy" as such: "The fantastic is the effect generated as we read by the direct reversal of the ground rules of the narrative world. Fantasy is that class of works which uses the fantastic exhaustively" (22). Furthermore, in The Encyclopaedia of Fantasy, John Clute and John Grant give information about the emergence of the fantastic as:
When first applied as a critical term in the science fiction community of the 1930s-40s, "fantastic" functioned as a blanket description of both science fiction and fantasy works [...]. In a similar but more expansive spirit, "the fantastic" has been recently adopted by critics as a general term for all forms of human expression that are not realistic, including fantasy and science fiction, magic realism, fabulation, surrealism, etc (335).
conceived as being in contrast to Realism is a most extraordinarily porous term, and has been used to mop up vast deposits of story which this culture or that- and this era or that-
any literary work which includes fantastic elements is regarded as belonging to fantasy literature. Fantastic elements can be found in parts of many different genres. However, fantasy literature has a more compact form. It is a genre consisting of incidents that
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cannot happen in real life or cannot be explained by scientific truths, and the story is set in alternate worlds and centred around magical, supernatural, or other imaginary elements such as wizards, monsters, dragons, or superheroes.
A brief study of texts that contain fantastic elements from a historical perspective will shed light on its development through the centuries. It should be noted that the earliest forms of literature in all languages included the fantastic like Beowulf, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Iliad and Odyssey Most elements of contemporary fantasy writing can be traced to very ancient examples: wizards and n this brief examination, the attention will be put on the origins of fantasy in English literature. If the orally transferred fairy-tales are put aside, as Colin Manlove, in his The Fantasy Literature of England, points out between 450-1050, two fantasies can be accepted to have survived. These are Beowulf and The Dream of the Rood. Beowulf is the main heroic text of the period, and Beowulf is the first hero in English literature. It describes both historical and legendary events. The monster Grendel, the dragon, Beowulf as a hero and their battle can be regarded as elements of fantasy. The Half human half monster Grendel who lives in the swampland begins to terrorize the Danes, and Beowulf comes to help them. Though unarmed, Beowulf wins the battle against Grendel and tears Grendel's arm off. Grendel returns to the swamp and dies there. Then, Grendel's mother seeking for revenge of his son, appears. Beowulf dives into a desolate lake in order to fight against her and kills her with a sword. His last battle is against a dragon. Beowulf is an older man, but he manages to kill the dragon, yet the dragon's venom kills Beowulf. These three war scenes and their detailed description in the poem make Beowulf an early example of fantasy fiction. On the other hand, The Dream of the Rood can be seen as an early example of Christian thinking. A tree, which was cut down
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and made into the cross to bear Christ, narrates the story in The Dream of the Rood. The Dream of the Rood is also crucial as it is the first of a kind of technique called 'the dream vision' which gained great popularity in later literature, especially in fantasy literature. In the twelfth century, Manlove asserts, the emergence of King Arthur, wizard Merlin and their adventures which are fraught with supernatural events are also examples of early fantasies. Manlove mentions two fantasy impulses related to King res: "one, the elaboration of an imaginary chivalric world, and two, the use of a story of the marvellous, sometimes to further Christian faith" (17). The effect of Arthur's stories on English literature was significant. Many different works were also written about his adventures, and one of the most well-known of them is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
On the one hand, there is the violent folk magic represented in the Green Man, and on
vision and allegory were widely used in Arthurian literature. After mentioning Beowulf, Dream of the Rood,
fantasies in Medieval English literature. In the Medieval period, fantasy was presented via travels to heave
Travels can be regarded as an example. The enthusiasm for and fascination with the oriental and exotic became popular in the late medieval era romance that includes fantasy. For example, in there is a princess with a magic robe and King Horn is about a superhuman hero-prince and his adventures. Last but not least, Manlove takes Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales as a medieval example of fantasy.
He supports his claims by giving references to different tales from The Canterbury Tales. For instance, in , there is a fairy story of a knight; in The , there is a child murdered by Jews who calls out from the ground; and in
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, there is a talking white crow (14,23). What is common in all these works is that they are the early examples of human imagination. In the above-listed works, human imagination is set free of realism's boundaries from the beginning till the end of each book. Only when the imagination is set free will wizards, witches, talking animals, super-heroes, dragons, demons, and all other magical entities be seen in literary works.
During the Renaissance period, more importance was given to the mind, learning, and science. Therefore, fantasy literature, which was commonly seen as the products of human imagination, lost its power. Despite the boundaries, Manlove remarks that many successful Christian fantasies were written in that period, such as Book I of Spenser's Faerie Queen Dr. Faustus, and Milton's Paradise Lost (Manlove, 1999:24). Manlove explains this situation as such:
Christian fantasy becomes almost the only kind that is sanctioned. The influence of the culture of reason and restraint, and the growth of empiricist philosophy particularly from 1600-1750, increasingly restricted the scope for a literature of the supernatural to a fenced-in area of belief (24).
One could make the case that apart from the Christian fantasies, some other literary forms could be examined as the early examples of fantasy. These forms include utopias, some of Shakespeare's plays, works of metaphysical poetry, satires written by Pope and Swift, and gothic fiction. To start with, utopian fiction is usually written for social improvement, and it is aimed to portray an ideal society to teach and introduce new ideas such as a new system of government, how to share the income of a country and how to share the social work in harmony. In this sense, utopias can be regarded as
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forward-looking fictions, and their futuristic structure includes impossible ideal schemes for a society. The impossibility can be regarded as the shared value of utopia and fantasy. Manlove takes Thomas More's Utopia New Atlantis, The Description of a New World, called The Blazing World, and Arcadia as the early examples of fantasy fiction (30,31). About
For example, In Hamlet and Julius Caesar, there are ghosts, in Macbeth, there are witches, and in , there are fairies. In Metaphysical poetry, especially in Donne's and Marvell's works, fantastic vision can also be determined.
Manlove expresses that in their poetry, "the magic is founded on the free-ranging imagination, which brings together the most disparate ideas and images to make new sense" (33). Following their new complex world view, they try to extend the world of experience and show it containing fantastic elements. For example, secondary worlds are mentioned in Marvell's The Garden and Upon Appleton House. Secondary world is
"a term coined by J. R. R. Tolkien in "On Fairy-stories" (1947) to describe the kind of location in which fairy tales generally take place, the imaginative entry into which by the reader involves the process of enchantment" (Stableford, 2005:364). Clute also explains the term as such: "A secondary world can be defined as an autonomous world or venue which is not bound to mundane reality, which is impossible according to common sense and which is self-coherent as a venue for story (847). What is confusing about the 'secondary world' is that the world it denotes may be divided into three. The first one is an entirely fictional world like the Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings.
Secondly, the secondary world might be reached through a portal or a travel starting from the real world as in Narnia Chronicles. Thirdly the secondary world can be found
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within the real world as in the Harry Potter series. Therefore, it would be better to use the term 'alternate world' to indicate a totally imaginary world that is in no way in touch with the real world. Clute defines it as such:
Clearly, any secondary world or otherworld or wonderland can be thought of as an alternate world. By definition, none of these regions are of this world [...].
They are other. Upon entering them, readers experience a clear sense of alterity [...] In fantasy, an alternate world is an account of our world as it might otherwise have been (21).
be claimed that the Middle Earth in The Lord of The Rings or Ankh-Morpork in Discworld Series are examples of alternate worlds.
Fantasy can be found in many of the previously mentioned satirical works. Pope
attack to whatever or whoever they criticize. The Rape of The Lock is a satire against
hair transfo The Dunciad has a fantastic nature
and in the context of his poetry, Pope employs fantasy to demonstrate how the dullness lost its connection with any true sense of reality. Similarly, Swift's very well-known satire, , is filled with fantastic elements. Swift creates fantastic worlds with fantastic inhabitants such as tiny inhabitants in Lilliput and giant people in Brobdingnag, cultured horses named Houyhnhnms and monkey-like Yahoos. In the second half of the eighteenth century, a new genre titled 'the gothic novel' emerged,
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beginning with Horace Walpole's masterpiece, The Castle of Otranto. Walpole reflected his imagery in the novel, and the descriptions in the story include fantastical elements such as ghosts, appearances, and disappearances. After the gothic novel, Manlove summarizes the development of fantasy in English literature as such:
After Romanticism and the new interest in the imagination, however, fantasy was to develop prolifically over the next two centuries. The irony is that such growth was to be attended with its dismissal, in a decreasingly Christian milieu, to the cultural periphery, under the dominance of realistic modes of fiction: Only recently through such literary movements as postmodernism, has fantasy come once more into its own (36).
In the mid-1800s, modern fantasy literature began to be characterized more plainly. Philip Martin explains the relation of modern fantasy with ancient tales and the change in its features as suc
ancient tales, but the stories are now recast as the specific adventures of fictional characters, detailed and individual, very different in nature from the broad, generic strokes of previous Ash-la
The domain of modern fantasy is related to a long history of myth, legend, folk-tale and wonder tale (8). Martin also articulates three strong elements whimsy, a romantic medieval mysticism, and adventure - as the cornerstone of modern fantasy writing. Martin exemplifies these three elements by referring to different works. For the first major element whimsy- Martin wn a fantastic rabbit-hole and animal characters; he
sensibility with the allegorical fantasy works of the 19th century, which, he asserts, Pre-
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Raphaelites' ideas of nature, innocence, and goodness helped shape. Thirdly, Martin talks about the 19th-century adventure tales published in novels and serial formats of which settings were realistic, involving ghosts, weird occurrences, and strange worlds in their stories. Accordingly, Martin offers to look at Lewis Carroll's
Wonderland, The Princess and the Goblin, and Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows for whimsy. For the romantic medieval mysticism part, he asserts that William Morris can be an ideal example of the Pre-Raphaelite group. This group's characteristic was that they were greatly influenced by medieval culture and believed that it had a special sort of spiritual integrity. That is why Morris' can be an example that includes this element. Thirdly, Martin talks about adventure tales and relates them to 19th-century writers such as Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Arthur Conan Doyle. (13,14). For Martin, the appearance of fantasy as a genre in the 20th century depends on combining these three threads: "popular swashbuckling adventure fiction, whimsical Victorian children's stories and the medieval mystical tales of romantic intellectuals and religious scholars" (14).
In addition to Martin's ideas about modern fantasy, Wolfe also shares his opinion about modern fantasy development. For Wolfe: "Fantasy genre may well have had its origins in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century discussions of fancy vs. imagination, history vs. romance, the mirror vs. the lamp" (11). First, there was a critical debate about the distinction between fancy and imagination. Wolfe refers to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's distinction between these two terms. For Coleridge, imagination is "the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM" (156). In other words, he described it as something beyond the boundaries. However, Coleridge defines fancy as
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having "no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space" (157).
Similar to Coleridge's distinction, while talking about literary forms, George Macdonald asserts that: "When such forms are new embodiments of old truths, we call them the product of Imagination; when they are mere inventions, however lovely, I should call them the work of the Fancy" (6). Second, when the debate on the definition of the term imagination started, it paved the way for another debate between 'mirror' and a newly- invented term 'lamp'. Imagination was regarded to be the mirror of the external world but when the scope of imagination was greatly enlarged in the light of new views, the imagination was regarded as a lamp rather than a mirror. As Wolfe underlines: "Thanks largely to the Romantic movement, [...] a view of imagination as a lamp illuminating unseen worlds beyond perceived reality got on the stage" (8). The third debate was between history novels and romance. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century literature, the early novels such as Fielding's History of Tom Jones
Robinson Crusoe were claimed to be actual journals or history of fact. On the other hand, Wolfe defines private histories "as opposed to the more public histories that were seen as the purview of historians and narratives that identified themselves as romances"
(11). After mentioning all these debates, Wolfe summarizes more specifically that three particular elements - imaginary private histories, the popularity of Gothic romance, and the renewal of interest in folk and fairy tales may have played a significant role in the development of modern fantasy (12).
Like Wolfe's view, Richard Mathews stresses the importance of realist fiction in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the emergence of modern fantasy. He declares that: "Fantasy as a modern literary category all its own took shape through a dialectic with new literature of realism" (2). Realistic fiction began to gain popularity with the
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eighteenth-century writers such as Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, and Tobias Smollet. This popularity grew bigger during the nineteenth century with the writing of Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and W. Makepeace Thackeray.
Mathews explains this ongoing popularity as such: "The widespread interest and market for stories of real-life with ordinary, believable characters grew and flourished concurrently with the increasing dominance of the scientific method, the expansion of the industrial revolution, and the unfolding of related historical developments" (3).
Realism is of central importance while talking about the modern fantasy because fantasy is commonly defined as a fundamental departure from realistic fiction. Therefore the existence of realistic fiction is essential for fantasy fiction to come to be born.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, fantasy began to be regarded as the works of serious adult literature in contrast to the Victorian period in which it was acknowledged as children's literature. To Hunt, fantasy has a role of combating and coping with deprivation and repression. It was either absorbed into or silenced by society through the puritan-evangelical religious hegemony of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries pervading the utilitarian attitude of mind in the nineteenth century (15). Therefore, modern fantasy as a genre flourished most in the twentieth century.
Further, England and the United States were the countries where the genre progressed swiftly. Richard Mathews explains its reason as such:
Both countries were at the forefront of the industrial revolution and at the cutting edge of scientific discovery at the very time when fantasy took shape [...] These factors coupled with the relative absence of folkloric and mythic traditions in England and America, contributed to the formation of modern fantasy as a
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distinct literary form in these countries where the popular imagination was nearly starved for fantasy (20).
articulates other fantasy writers and starts with the Irish writer Lord Dunsany. His The Gods of Pagana relied on a map of an imaginary land, and he used an invented mythology. Another Irishman James Stephens also mixed Irish folklore and fairy tale with humour to write his fantasies such as The Crock of Gold and Deirdre. For Mathews, Lord Dunsany contributed to fantasy fiction by influencing H. P. Lovecraft;
similarly, Joyce admired Stephens and G.K. Chesterton, whose books foreshadowed
twentieth- The Man Who was Thursday involves
detective fiction, irony, and theological subjects. Chesterton was very well-known and earned his living as a writer in his time, but David Lindsay was not as lucky as him.
David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus did not get as much attention as it deserved, because at that time the modernist writers such as Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Joyce, and Hemingway had dominated the literary world. After his death, his A Voyage to Arcturus became famous and achieved outstanding recognition. Lastly, E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros and Zimiamvian Trilogy were set in legendary places; also, in their style Homeric and Icelandic influences were dominant (21,25). Mysticism, irrationality, and mythology were used, evoking horror and unease also flourished in the twentieth century's fantasy fiction.
In the twentieth century, J.R.R. Tolkien, an Oxford Professor in language studies, was widely considered the brightest literary man of modern fantasy. His first book, The Hobbit, was a success that drew a broad audience. The Hobbit (1937) was
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J.R.R. Tolkien's first published book. Hobbit is the name of a dwarf race. The novel is about the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and his friends to regain their stolen treasure, which is protected by a dragon. Bilbo Baggins' maturing from a simple ordinary hobbit to a fighter is also another subject that lies behind the story. What is also essential about The Hobbit is that it is followed by Tolkien's most famous work, The Lord of The Rings.
Bilbo Baggins finds a ring, and the story regarding the ring is told in The Lord of The Rings. Another famous literary figure of the age C.S. Lewis was a friend of Tolkien.
They met regularly in a literary society named Inklings to read aloud and comment on their works. Tolkien kept on improving his imaginary world, namely the Middle-earth, and his wonderful stories consisted of his masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings. He created imaginary maps, races, and even languages for his book. For Philip Martin, set the bar high with his vast academic store of mythical lore, linguistics and literary style. He imbued Middle-earth with his personal perspective: anti-pollution, anti-war, anti-
Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength- and his Narnia Chronicles were well-known representatives of modern fantasy. Further, Terry Discworld Series, which consists of forty-one novels starting with The Colour of Magic in 1983 and ending with in 2015, is regarded as Harry Potter series starting with published in 1998, contributed to the popularity of fantasy fiction at the end of the twentieth century, as mostly young readers would impatiently be waiting for the new book of Harry Potter. Harry Potter series was also adapted to films and watched by millions of people throughout the world. Apart from the abovementioned En
mentioned in modern fantasy development in the twentieth century. These are Ursula Le
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Guin and George R. R. Martin. Ursula Le Guin, who is generally regarded as the queen of fantasy, is one of the most prominent fantasy literature writers. Le Guin's The Wizard of Earthsea and The Dispossessed are remarkable novels of fantasy literature. George A Song of Ice and Fire, consisting of ongoing epic fantasy novels, is an outstanding example of modern fantasy fiction. It reached many more people when it was started to be filmed as a television series. In all these twentieth-century examples, creating an alternate world plays an important role and could be regarded as their shared characteristic. One could argue that the alternate worlds' primary function is to make the readers see the real world from different perspectives. The writers' aim in creating an alternative world, where the scientific, physical, religious and social rules and norms of the real world do not have to be followed at all, could be various: satirizing the real world, presenting the possibility of a better alternative or portraying a chaotic atmosphere which implies the future of the real world.
Before mentioning the differences between fantasy and other similar genres, it would be better to focus on the close link between fantasy and satire. As already stated, satire both makes its readers laugh at its humour and directs their attention to their real world's social, moral, and philosophical issues. Terry Pratchett examines politics, ethics, gender rights, and cultural values in his Discworld Series; in this sense, it could be claimed that Pratchett presents his readers a well-balanced mixture of satire and fantasy in his works. Such fictional works take the reader out of their familiar environment in order to provide estrangement. In this way, the readers become ready to accept the themes and contents presented in a novel. In other words, an estrangement from the real world is the first step to internalize the fictive world. It is in fantasy fiction that different devices and themes are used to provide this. Secondary worlds, dragons, impossible actions, heroes, etc are used to achieve the estrangement effect. Only when the
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estrangement is achieved can the readers look at their real-world from the outside.
Fantasy takes its readers out of their real-world not just to help them escape from their daily problems but to help them see and realize the truth underlying those problems more plainly. Satire also functions the same way. When the readers are estranged cognitively and feel themselves inside the story, they can look at their real-world with the critical distance of an outsider, consequently having the opportunity to realize their faults or problems in society easily. In short, estrangement could be taken as the common point of satire and fantasy. Tools of fantasy fiction for the abovementioned estrangement of its readers are multifarious, and so it is not surprising that many of the best satires could be found within the boundaries of fantasy fiction.
What differs fantasy from other similar genres, such as science fiction and horror, has been another topic of discussion over the years. No genre is pure and in a literary spectrum, the interaction among the different genres largely contributes to the evolution of all. Fantasy fiction is closely linked to gothic fiction, science fiction, utopian fiction, and satire. Underlining the differences among these genres will help shed light on the boundaries of fantasy literature. Martin starts with the gothic fiction when briefly defining all these genres and regards it as the first significant generic rebellion against the realist novel. Gothic fiction, Martin expresses, includes fear, dark terror, and unexplained horrors in exotic settings. However, what differs the gothic fiction from fantasy literature is that the writers of gothic fiction maintain their hold on familiar and material reality despite their fearsome intrusions from the supernatural due to the realistic grounding. Secondly, Martin deals with science fiction and claims that, in comparison with fantasy, despite containing futuristic, alien, and inventive science, the events portrayed in science fiction can be explained scientifically and in cause and effect relationships. Thirdly, although fantasy literature generally includes utopian or
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dystopian elements and these two genres sometimes seem to be blended and overlapped, utopian fiction is closer to realistic rules for the ideal society that distinguishes utopian fiction from fantasy. In utopian fiction, it is implied that there is a way to transform the society to the ideal one by means other than magic. Fourthly, Martin remarks how satire can be distinguished from fantasy and stresses that the satire is closer to the real world
is tinged with the awareness of exaggeration and unbelievability, and the literary focus or thematic purpose
aimed in satire to correct the vices by holding them up for ridicule. In other words, as Martin emphasizes, satirists try to improve identifiable behaviours in real life (4,5).
ideas regarding the difference between fantasy and satire can be best seen in Discworld Series. Pratchett's novels are works of fantasy literature in essence, but he also adds satire to them. That is why they are commonly titled as works of satirical fantasy fiction. Satire is used to criticize real-world issues, so using satire in a fantasy literature work turns the readers' attention from the alternate world to the real world frequently. As the story progresses, the readers focus on fantasy again. As is seen, there are fundamental differences between fantasy literature and gothic fiction, science fiction, utopias, and satire; however, all these genres form a supportive continuum for fantasy as they involve piecemeal fantastic elements. The main difference between fantasy and other genres is that it is not a fantasy requirement to place fantastic stories within a realistic framework. However, it is needed in all other genres. Instead of a realistic framework, fantasy writers create alternate worlds for their stories, and all magical events and entities are seen as an ordinary part of daily life in those worlds.
It could be beneficial to categorize a genre to understand its construction and provide a critical tool for a literary analysis of a work belonging to that genre. What is
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important about categorizing is that a given work of fantasy fiction may incorporate more than one category because they are usually interlinked with each other and are not totally isolated or closed groups. Various critics attempted to categorize fantasy fiction from different perspectives. Traditionally, fantasy literature is divided into two subgenres as low fantasy and high fantasy. This division is carried out according to where the narrative takes place. Namely, if the story is set wholly or partly in our world, it is low fantasy, but if it is set in an alternate world, then it is called high fantasy. It should be noted that the 'low' or 'high' do not indicate the quality of a work but the level of fantasy. As the low fantasy takes place in the real world with the inclusion of fantastic elements, its level of fantasy is lower than the high fantasy, which is set wholly in the fictional world. From this perspective, Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere would be an example of low fantasy because the story is set under London's streets, and the protagonist Richard Mayhew comes across the fantastic characters in the real world. On the other hand, The Lord of the Rings would be an example of high fantasy. It is set in a totally fictional world called the Middle-Earth where elves, hobbits, wizards, demons, talking trees, and a Dark Lord live, and the magical events, wars, and supernatural powers of the characters seem to be an ordinary part of life.
Philip Martin deals with fantastic stories in five categories: High fantasy, adventure fantasy, fairy tale fiction, magical realism, and dark fantasy. He regards each of these stories as rings of tradition (37). Starting with high fantasy, Martin claims that high fantasy is about a lofty purpose and includes great struggles and lives of characters that are at stake. This kind of fantasy covers the head-on battles of Good and Evil. The Evil is often personified, and characters are faced with a big decision. They usually sacrifice something or somebody to do the right thing. The second ring, adventure fantasy, resembles the high fantasy in many aspects. However, unlike the high fantasy,
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the adventure fantasy includes the notion of adventure for its own sake. The main purpose is to look for adventures and have a good time while doing it. Rather than the battles between Good and Evil, the adventures are shaped by the protagonist's desires.
The third ring of fantasy, fairy tales fantasy serves up psychologically rich stories, and these stories are replete with domestic problems, frightening challenges, and redemption. The fairy tales are related to our daily choices such as helping a stranger or standing up to the powerful. They reveal the closest evil within us or in our surroundings. In magical realism, the fourth ring of fantasy, rather than being used as a tool by the characters, the magic acts as an independent force. Magical things unexpectedly emerge in the daily realistic settings and events. The fifth ring of fantasy is dark fantasy and it includes the historic core of horror and gothic fiction. It slides up to different marginal issues such as sharp satire, urban decay, and erotic fiction. Dark fantasy makes fun of our fears; there are often a typical protagonist and his/her friends with their choices like spending a night in a haunted house or go down in the cellar
problems and even cause their death.
Another literary scholar Manlove classifies fantasy literature under six groups:
secondary world, metaphysical, emotive, comic, subversive, and children's fantasy (4).
In secondary world literature, the writer creates a new world with its residents and own rules; for example, J.R.R. Tolkien's books can be an example of this kind. The next kind of fantasy, metaphysical fantasy, is highly related to Christianity. It is sometimes regarded as a fictional effort to preserve religious values in a society. Lindsay Clarke and Iris Murdoch's works are examples of this kind. In emotive fantasy, as it can be understood from its name, the portrayal of the feelings is central. This kind of fantasy also includes desire and wonder. Kenneth Grahame and Orwell's fantasies belong to this
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kind. The fourth kind is comic fantasy; it includes satire, parody, and play. In comic fantasy, social norms of our world are turned upside-down or portrayed through their opposites. Terry Pratchett is one of the most outstanding representatives of this kind. On the other hand, in subversive fantasy, morality, reality, reason, and all other fixed values are destabilized; Peter Ackroyd's works may be seen as examples of this kind. The last
this sense, it can also be accepted as a subcategory instead of a new kind. Lewis Carroll and C. S. Lewis' books are examples of this subcategory (Manlove 1999). These six groups always overlap with each other, so it would be wrong to assume that a given fantasy text always belongs to only one group. For example, Terry Pratchett's works are listed under the comic fantasy kind as they are fraught with satire and play, but it should be noted that Pratchett also creates a new world in his writings, so his Discworld Series can also be seen as a representative of secondary world fantasies.
that is heavily dependent on the dialectic between author and reader for the construction of a sense of wonder, that
categorizes fantasy fiction under four groups by taking its language and rhetoric into consideration. These are the portal-quest fantasy, the immersive fantasy, intrusion fantasy, and the liminal fantasy. Pratchett's works can be studied under immersive fantasy, and a detailed explanation of this category will be given by referring to various Discworld novels in the next section.
The first one is portal-quest fantasy; for Mendlesohn, it is not a strict rule for portal fantasies to be a quest fantasy simultaneously; however, most of them are. In portal and quest fantasies, a character leaves the familiar environment where he dwells and enters an unknown place through a portal. The reader's position is defined as a
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companion audience, and s/he is tied to the protagonist's explanations. Transition and exploration are the same two movements that are commonly seen in modern portal and quest fantasies. Further, the story of the portal and quest fantasies is a club story which is defined in Encyclopaedia of Fantasy
which describes a place and the people who foregather there and which serves as a
most well-known works possessing club stories are Canterbury Tales and
Progress The Lion the
Witch and the Wardrobe (Narnia Chronicles The
Lord of the Rings can be taken as examples respectively (28).
The second one is the immersive fantasy. Mendlesohn describes the immersive fantasy starting from its setting, the fictive world where the immersive fantasy is set functions as a complete world and readers are accepted as a part of this world just like all other fantastic inhabitants living in it. Mendlesohn regards the immersive fantasy as a mirror of mimetic literature and describes the mimesis "as an art of persuading the reader to forget the mediation of language" (59). In the mimetic literature, readers are expected to share the assumptions of the fictive world. Apart from mimesis, for Mendlesohn, immersive fantasies are also fantasies of thinning, which is related to the world's entropy. In a structurally complete fantasy, Clute defines that the thinning "can be seen as a reduction of the healthy land to a parody of itself, and the thinning agent- ultimately in most instances, the darklord- can be seen as inflicting this damage upon the land out of envy" (942). While explaining the immersive fantasy, Mendlesohn mentions various techniques in detail and refers explicitly to Pratchett's works. Her views will be shared in the next section, which is about Terry Pratchett's fantasy fiction.
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Apart from the portal-quest and immersive fantasies, the third group in Mendlesohn's categorization is the intrusion fantasy. In the intrusion fantasy, the world is disrupted by an intrusion and this intrusion breaks the normality of the world. The intrusion, as Mendlesohn states, "has to be negotiated with or defeated, send back whence it came, or controlled" (115). The intrusion fantasy form relies on the protagonist's disbelief of what he knows in favour of what he senses. Mendlesohn explains the trajectory of the intrusion fantasies depending on two words: denial and acceptance. She exemplifies her view by referring to vampire stories in which the story
reflection on the mirror, but then as the story continues he tries to kill the vampire using a stake. Mendlesohn states that the form of club story is used in the intrusion fantasy to establish an agreed reality. Also, latency is underlined as the most striking technique used in the intrusion fantasy. For Mendlesohn, the rhythm of the intrusion fantasy depends on "a cycle of suspension and release, latency and escalation, hesitation and remorselessness" (115). Mendlesohn mentions Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's The Wolves in the Walls as the representative of the intrusion fantasy (114,116). In The Wolves in the Walls, a little girl named Lucy hears noises from the walls, and she thinks these sounds come from wolves in the walls, but her parents do not believe her.
However, one day the wolves come out of the walls. This could be seen as 'the intrusion' that Mendlesohn mentions. This intrusion breaks the normality of their life. Then, the family escapes from their house, but Lucy persuades her family to sneak into the walls of their own house and as soon as they come out of the walls, the wolves run. In other words, the intrusion is defeated and pushed back.
The last group in Mendlesohn's categorization is the liminal fantasy, and she defines the term as a "form of fantasy which estranges the reader from the fantastic as
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seen and described by the protagonist" (182). For a better understanding, Mendlesohn refers to Joan Aiken's Yes, But Today is Tuesday. In the book, when there is a unicorn on Armitage family's lawn, which can be regarded as a fantastic element by the reader, the family questions whether something fantastical has happened (182,183). The liminal fantasy can be seen as the opposite of quest fantasy because the liminal fantasy provides possible readings. The liminal fantasy story causes a question mark in the reader's mind, but quest fantasy is closed to such readings as its story clearly distinguishes between the good and the evil; thus, the reader inevitably finds him/herself supporting the hero of the story against the antagonist.
Fantasy literature can be approached in many different ways, and each of these ways would offer something significant to understand what fantasy literature is. Beside the abovementioned categorization, theories about the criticism of fantasy literature are also crucial for literary studies. Especially, those put forward by Todorov, Rosemary Jackson, Tolkien, and Sartre can be regarded as the turning points in the criticism of The Fantastic: a Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, which was published in 1970, many scholars either accepted his arguments about the subject or rejected them and revealed their own view. As Hunter stresses:
"Fantasy has grown exponentially since the middle of the twentieth century, and theory related directly to this literature has exploded ever since Todorov's Introduction a la Litterature Fantastique
contribution to the fantasy literature cannot be underestimated.
Todorov's studies about the fantastic rely on his objection to semantic approaches, which usually define the fantastic as the opposite of realist fiction. In his structuralist approach, Todorov suggests focusing not only on what the fantastic story is about but also on how it comes into existence. Todorov defines the fantastic effect from
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the readers' experiences of a text. He puts the readers in the center of his argument. For Todorov, the readers' perception of a text as real or unreal is crucial because he asserts that the fantastic effect comes from the clash between these two perceptions. He mentions three conditions whose fulfillment is required for the definition of the fantastic. First, the reader must regard the characters' world as similar to his own and hesitate between a natural and supernatural explanation of the events described. The second one is that the hesitation must be one of the themes of the work and at the same time shared by one of the characters so the reader can also trust the character. The third one is that the reader must reject allegorical and poetic interpretations (33). Todorov defines the fantastic with reference to the readers' reaction to the work. He emphasizes that: "'I nearly reached the point of believing
spirit of the fantastic. Either total faith or total incredulity would lead us beyond the (31).
Todorov illustrates his view with a scheme in which the fantastic function is to be a boundary marker between the marvellous at one end and the uncanny at the other.
He regards the marvellous and the uncanny as being neighbouring genres of the fantastic. Todorov relates supernatural explanations with the marvellous and natural ones with the uncanny. For Todorov, what lies in the heart of the fantastic is that when an event, which cannot be explained by our world's laws, occurs in our own world, the person who experienced the event chooses one of the two possible solutions. Either he is the victim of a product of the imagination or the event is an integral part of the reality, which is controlled by laws unknown to the reader. Todorov draws attention to this uncertainty's duration and asserts that the fantastic occupies it (25). He also uses the notion of time in order to articulate his idea about the marvellous, the uncanny, and the fantastic as such:
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The marvellous corresponds to an unknown phenomenon, never seen as yet, still to come hence to a future; in the uncanny, on the other hand, we refer the inexplicable to known facts, to a previous experience, and thereby to the past. As for the fantastic itself, the hesitation which characterizes it cannot be situated, by and large, except in the present (41).
Another scholar Rosemary Jackson appreciated Todorov's work, but she found some missing parts in its scope and wrote Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion in 1981 to reveal her fantasy literature ideas. For Jackson, the major blind-spot of Todorov's work is to turn his back on Freudian theory and neglect the political and ideological issues in favour of confining the attention of his study to the effects of the text and its operation (6). In Jackson's opinion "it is in the unconscious that social structures and norms are reproduced and sustained within us, and only by redirecting attention to this area can we begin to perceive the ways in which the relations between society and the individual are fixed" (6). Therefore, she gives much importance to Freud's studies which focus on the subconscious. Jackson also mentions the concept of
resulting from cultural constraints; it is a literature of desire, which seeks that which is
view, the separation
Self with the Other occupies his world. Through fantasy, man can refuse the imposed social reality on his identity, and in the fictional world, the re-integration of Self and The Other can be achieved. Fantasy provides a realm where Self and the Other can merge again.
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As already stated, Todorov mentions the marvellous and the uncanny when he defines the fantastic, but Jackson places the fantastic between the marvellous and the mimetic. She prefers the mimetic instead of the uncanny as she asserts that the mimetic is a literary form but the latter is not. Jackson argues that stories in fantasy literature emerge from something familiar, but then they turn out to be something unfamiliar.
From this point of view, she remarks that: "Fantastic narratives assert that what they are telling is real relying on the conventions of realistic fiction to do so and then they proceed to break that assumption of realism by introducing what -within those terms- is manifestly unreal" (34). She regards this situation as a play with reality and links the play with the subversive function of fantasy. Jackson also takes the problems of vision as one of the thematic concerns of the fantasy. She argues, "in a culture which equates the 'real' with the 'visible' and gives the eye dominance over other sense organs, the un- real is that which is invisible" (45). From her discussion, it could be concluded that she regards fantasy literature as the literature of the unreal and invisible.
The
Lord of the Rings Dune, Discworld Series do not
belong to fantasy literature. Jackson defends that fantasy literature should subvert the reality but works that consist of secondary worlds have an allegorical relation with it.
She calls these works as marvellous narratives and explains her idea as such:
Their other world, however new or strange, is linked to the real through an allegorical association, as an exemplification of a possibility to be avoided or embraced. The basic relation is a conceptual one, a linking through ideas and
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ideals. The fantastic, by contrast, is moving towards the non-conceptual.[...] It moves into, or opens up, a space without/outside cultural order (43).
The Encyclopaedia of Fantasy, Clute crit
that:
This theory
(approximately 1780-1850), when the fantasy premise could be understood as an act of imagination that avowedly undermined the world. But later when secondary worlds of varying textures began to be created, the normative weight of fantasyland gave to texts an air more of refusal than of subversion (511).
As is shown, both Todorov and Jackson's theories about the fantasy are regarded to be useful for literary analysis. However, it is also clear that both seem to be problematic in the process of applicability, especially for recent works of fantasy literature.
In addition to Todorov and Jackson, J.R.R. Tolkien, who is famous as a novelist of fantasy literature, also shared his thoughts about the genre in his essay titled On Fairy Stories. One of Tolkien's essay's most important parts is that it defends the use of magical worlds in fantasy literature. Tolkien mentions the magical world as a
coherent and autonomous land of faerie as a venue for the play of the human
writer works as a craftsman and he benefits from his love, feelings, and knowledge
33
s that the aim of the fantasy is not to persuade the reader to believe in what he reads. Tolkien uses the expression
confronted with the magical world, if the readers willingly suspend their disbelief, then
describes its mechanism as such:
He (author) makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside (351).
Another expression that Tolkien employs in his article is "inner consistency of reality". He means that in order to create a secondary world, it is not adequate to place images that do not belong to the primary world. These images must be well integrated with each other and they must be used in harmony. To better understand his opinion, Tolkien talks about a green sun and remarks that creating a secondary world with a green sun "requires labour and thought and will certainly demand a special skill [...]
Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art" (364). Just imagining and picturing a green sun will not be enough to make readers easily accept it. In a well- organized story, readers can suspend their disbelief and do not deny the green sun's emergence. However, as Tolkien underlines, this requires a particular skill as it is more challenging to insert entirely imaginary elements into the plot of fantasy fiction.
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stories like travels and dreams help frame the magical world. In his article, Tolkien or rule out of order, any story that uses the machinery of Dream, the dreaming of actual human sleep, to explain the
against the idea of the involvement of background stories outside the magical world because he thinks these stories distance the magic and damage the secondary belief. It
and
Adventures in Wonderland are not fantasy as they include travel and dream stories.
Instead of using these stories, Tolkien offers a successful mixture of ordinary and magical elements. For example, a mixture of magical elements such as dwarfs, witches, dragons, trolls, and ordinary elements such as trees, birds, wine, bread, the sun, the seas.
(321,327). Clute calls this mixture as "deadpan mixing" and explains that in that mixture "the ordinary and the marvellous are 'heard' to validate each other, in a kind of utterly serious punning. Together they confirm the overarching reality they address and inhabit which is the secondary world and which become utterly autonomous" (953).
Based on Tolkien's ideas, it is possible to assert that Terry Pratchett's books could be regarded as examples of the mixture that Tolkien mentions since Pratchett's books include both magical elements such as trolls, dragons, witches, and non-magical ones such as common men, the sea, the wine, the pyramids, the animals, etc basically everything that we have in the real world.
Famous French philosopher and literary critic Jean-Paul Sartre also declared his ideas about fantasy in his essay titled Aminadab or the Fantastic Considered as a Language in 1962. For Sartre, in the twentieth century, fantasy literature is not based on
35
magical creatures such as ghosts, witches, or vampires. Man, himself, is the central figure of fantasy. Sartre expresses his opinion by referring to war and states that:
After the long metaphysical holiday of the post-war period, which ended in disaster, the new generation of artists and writers, out of pride and humility and earnestness, had returned with much ado, to the human. This tendency had an effect on fantasy itself (63).
Sartre gives Kafka and M. Blanchot as examples of fantasy of which the central figure is Man, and specifically focuses on Blanchot. For Blanchot, Sartre declares,
"there is only one fantastic object, man. Not the man of religion and of spiritualism, waist-high only in things of this world, but man-as-he-is-given, natural man, social man" (64). Sartre's ideas about fantasy are important because Terry Pratchett's characters are also common men. When faced with a fantastic situation, Pratchett's characters' reaction is predictable as they are ordinary men. It should also be noted that it is easier for the readers to associate themselves with the character who is an ordinary human, as Sartre underlines, "the sole way of access to the fantastic is to borrow the character's point of view" (69). The emotional impact of a work of fantasy literature is especially strongly felt when the reader forgets that s/he is reading fiction and imagines him/herself as if s/he is experiencing the fantastic events.
fantasy literature seem to require a greater imagination than others. Fantasy literature
exp
essentially democratic forms- democratized by being outside the solipsistic system of a group of superior texts whose superiority is
36
validated by some set of privileged judges is alien to both (3). However, regarding a fantasy work as childish seems strange in that, as it is already mentioned, fantasy is set in alternate worlds which is fraught with desirable and unattainable options. As Hunt
literature as a genre, it should be noted that alternate worlds are not invented just for pleasure and they are not only places of wonder. Instead, they have a much deeper meaning in the social, moral, and political context. No matter how inventive the alternate worlds are, they are related to the real world. The relation between them cannot be underestimated because an alternate world is invented out of the real world.
Discworld Series, despite the alternate universe, the Defence of Realism, Raymond
s and empathize with them. In furtherance of this idea, in his book with Stephen Briggs, Pratchett talks about his Discworld Series: "I wanted the world to be fantastic but the people to be as realistic as possible" (472). Despite being a fantasy writer, Pratchett can also be regarded as a realist in terms of his satire on real-world issues. Pratchett's realism makes his alternate worlds more coherent, and some familiarity between the real and alternate worlds helps readers associate themselves with the Discworld more easily.
As already mentioned, the emergence of literature in almost all languages starts with fantastic stories. Therefore, the importance of fantasy in literature should not be ignored. It is as old and valuable as other literary genres. As Butler stresses, "Fantasy
