  Fantasy
This week: Literary Fantasy Edited by: emerin-liseli  
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Hello!
My name is emerin-liseli , and I'm so excited to guest-edit the Fantasy newsletter for the first time. As a guest editor, I don't have necessarily a theme to tie together my newsletters. Therefore, my thoughts will center around something I've been thinking about for a while. Welcome to my ramblings about literary fantasy, a sub-genre that I consider under-explored.
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Literary Fantasy
Fantasy is a diverse genre that, at the core, utilizes a extra-worldly phenomena in creating the story. However, Fantasy can be further divided into various subgenres: for example, Sword & Sorcery, Urban Fantasy or Science Fantasy. The division of genre (which, to be quite honest, is often arbitrary) is related to common critical consensus about tone, technique and content. For example, all three of these examples relate mostly to content. Sword & Sorcery might be fairly straight-forward, but Urban Fantasy would be a story that bring supernatural elements into the every day, often in an urban setting. Science Fantasy melds together science fiction and fantasy: wizards in outer space.
I think it's important to note that these subgenres are not mutually exclusive. A piece might be both Sword & Sorcery and Science Fantasy if our wizard in outer space was accompanied by a swashbuckling space fencer.
Another subgenre that I'm especially interested in is what critics classify as literary fantasy. To define literary fantasy, one must first take a step back and define "literary." When a piece is literary, I am not referring as much to content as to tone and technique. Take, for example, this passage from Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of a ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as through upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.
We won't get into literary criticism, but from this passage one can see the commitment to a technique that relies on imagery, clean, crisp word choice and metaphors that work on narrative and symbolic level. This is what is meant, I believe, by literary technique.
Thus, literary fantasy would be a fantastical piece rendered in a tone and technique reminiscent of literary works. And in order to advocate fantasy as a genre deserving of critical respect, I believe that more fantasy writers should be in-tune with the demands of technique, paying greater attention to such elements like word choice, avoidance of cliches and cleverly rendered metaphors.
So, instead of something like:
Anya put her fingers together as a glowing white ball of magic appeared. Then, with a great yell, she sent the magical ball at the evil necromancer Neo, who leered menacingly at her before dodging her attack.
Consider:
And yet at this moment, at this juncture, Anya could not have told you where the magic dwelled, only that it dappled within her like amber hesitations. As she had practiced so many times, the magic ballooned on her fingertips, where they rested like quiet flames. Where the strength came from, she did not know: but a deep yell bellowed within her and the magic severed from her being and toward her enemy ...
In terms of content, literary fantasy might not be too different from, say, a supernatural tale. But literature tends to take less of a black and white stance toward the work as a whole, but especially toward characters. If genre, by definition, relies on tropes and familiarity (e.g. "magic" or "sorcery" or "good and evil"), then relying on a literary style might allow your piece to take on a more ambiguous and colored tone. Take, for example, your stock villain: an evil necromancer who plans to take over the world. This would be, of course, a cliche, and something that abounds in fantasy. Now, temper that evil necromancer as someone with deeply imbued religious beliefs who must carry out his plans not because he wants to, but because he believes he must. Such a character might also offer a strong sensibility on our current political and historical situation -- something you see frequently in literary fiction, but not so much genre fiction.
Suddenly, the tone becomes much more ambiguous. The reader is asked to simultaneously hate the antagonist, but also pity him. Invoking a multiplicity of reactions toward your characters, even within fantasy, might be just what you need to spruce up your piece and separate it from the pack. |
| |  | The Bird Lady (E)
Retirement meant that the librarian could finally spend time with her beloved birds.
#1650017 by Wyvonna |
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Fantasy: November 16, 2010 Issue [#4078]
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