ave relied
on legends, myths and fables as part of their cultural heritage and system of
socialization. Fantasy begins in the primeval depths of man’s mind creating
superstition about world and divine power. Ancient myths and religious belief
systems have created pantheons of gods, demons, heroes and monsters to
symbolise the origins of creation and explain the workings of the universe; to
personify good and evil; to help moralise and legitimise law and order, and
therefore power and punishment. Sir James Frazer in his study of magic and
ritual, The Golden Bough (1890), reminds us of the importance of
mythology and rituals, warning us not to dismiss them as primitive and
irrelevant. ‘To stigmatise these premises as ridiculous because we can easily
detect their falseness, would be ungrateful as well as unphilosophical’. The
same warning is pertinent to those who reject fantasy literature.
The psychiatrist, C.G. Jung believed that ‘primordial experiences rend
from top to bottom the curtain upon which is painted the picture of an ordered
world and allow a glimpse into the unfathomable abyss’. Fantasy allows us to
enter the spiritual realm of the ‘collective consciousness’ of humanity that
helps us to find our own individual identity and Jung applied psychological
models to fairy tales and romantic texts in his book, Modern Man In Search
of a Soul (1933). The process Jung called ‘individuation’, of becoming
whole or enlightened, demands a symbolism of transcendence. We need to reclaim
the mythologies as represented by the ancient poets and modern fantasists in
order to gain a greater personal and spiritual hold on our own realities. Continuing
Jung’s theory, Michael Moorcock explains how fabulous romance subconsciously symbolizes the inner landscape of the mind; ‘When we read a good fantasy we are being admitted into the subterranean worlds of our own souls’.
The hero-warrior, such as Hercules or Cuchulain, is an archetype which
exists in all cultures and Jung developed the idea by suggesting that ‘the
God-image does not coincide with the unconscious as such, but with a special
content of it, namely the archetype of the self’. Archetypes help us to create
symbols to express our deepest fears and emotions. Through these archetypes
fantasy forces us to confront those parts of our life that are inexplicable and
deeply personal. These stories have become an important part of our
understanding of self and society.
Medieval romantic poetry, such as the legend of St. Brendan from the tenth century and
the chivalric poems of the sixteenth century, like Palmerin of England, follow
these mythical patterns. Whilst the heroic epic represents tribal warfare, the
romance is concerned with quest and the mystery of the supernatural, employing
visionary themes, metaphysical imagery and baroque language. Since then fantasy
has been developed by literary movements and forms such as Gothic Romance,
Decadence, surrealism, horror, sf and postmodernism. These texts testify that
fears, hopes and dreams are best expressed through fantasy. Some of the
greatest novels written today are fantastic literature without much of the
general public or academic world realising.
In literary theory, the fantastic is usually discussed as a contrast to the seemingly preferred realistic or mimetic literature. Tzvetan Todorov in his ground-breaking study, The Fantastic (1975), gives a structuralist analysis of stories by Edgar Allan Poe and E.T.A.
Hoffman. In summary he concludes: ‘the fantastic is based essentially on the
hesitation of the reader’ referring to a tension that exists between what is
real and not real and the purest example he offers of fantastic uncertainty is
Henry James’ ambiguous narrative The Turn of the Screw.
Todorov naively suggests that ‘psychoanalysis has replaced (and thereby has made useless) the literature of the fantastic’ as if people no longer rely on supernatural explanations (the
marvellous) because science gives us rational answers (the uncanny). This is
only because his definition of fantastic literature is so limited. The problem 