Clute, John & Grant, John - The Encyclopedia of Fantasy .pdf - Fantasy Literature - gothicaz

THF

ENCYCLOPEDIA

FANTASY

EDITED

JOHN CLUTE AND JOHN

GRANT

Contributing editors

MIKE

ASHLEY

ROZ

KAVENEY

DAVID

LANGFORD

RON

TINER

Consultant editors

DAVID G.

HARTWELL

GARYWESTFAHL

CONTENTS

Introduction

vii

Contributors

Acknowledgements

xiii

Abbreviations and Symbols

The Encyclopedia of Fantasy

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INTRODUCTION

In 1993 there was published a book called The

Encyclopedia

of Science

Fiction.

Even before they had fin-

ished compiling that book, various members of its editorial team realized they had only begun to dip

their toes into the waters at the edge of the ocean that is the literature of the fantastic. The prospect

of exploring this vast ocean was irresistible, which is why the current volume has come into being.

Although the two are entirely independent, this encyclopedia can be regarded as a sibling volume

to The

Encyclopedia

of Science

Fiction.

As with many siblings there are similarities but also many profound

contrasts, primarily because fantasy is a field of literature radically different from science fiction. Its

roots go much deeper into history, and its concerns are more archetypal. Unlike science fiction, it is

a literature which is remarkably hard to define (we here use the term "literature" to cover all the modes

- text, cinema, comics, art, etc. - in which fantasy is expressed, because the field is remarkably inte-

grated). We recognized all of this before we decided to embark on the enterprise: what we did not

realize was quite how

different the new book would be.

Some similarities between the two volumes are very obvious, notably the ascription practice - the

format we use in giving titles, dates and so forth - although even here we found we had to make

minor

changes. On occasion we have felt it would be helpful to cross-refer readers to entries in

The

Encyclopedia

of Science

Fiction

(!) SFE),

usually to show that authors who have done significant work in

both areas are discussed in both books. The breakdown of entry-types also looked superficially sim-

ilar: in our huge draft list there were entries on authors, movies, recurring themes within

the

literature, etc. But the similarity is deceptive. The draft list also included a large number of entries,

intended as a whole to cast a net over the field of fantasy, and whose topics were such that they could

hardly be described as "themes"; we called them "motifs", although we were still not entirely happy

with that terminology. Some of them (like ANCESTRAL MEMORIES and COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE) were

known terms; some (like PERCEPTION and REALITY) were existing terms but with implications for fan-

tasy that had not occurred to us before; and some (like CROSSHATCH and POLDER and WAINSCOT) were

tools of literary analysis which we had found it necessary to create.

As the implications of the "motif tree" dawned on us, it became very evident that our map of fan-

tasy was going to differ very substantially from the map of science fiction adumbrated by Peter

Nicholls as long ago as 1975 when he was conceiving the first edition of The

Encyclopedia

Science

Fiction.

INTRODUCTION.

viu

And so it proved. The entry on FANTASY and some of the further entries referred to there encap-

sulate much of our sense of the distinction both between fantasy and science fiction and between the

structures of description we have used to cover the two fields. The editorial team oiThe

Encyclopedia

of Science

Fiction

was able to treat sf as a field with definable boundaries, to parse that field in various

clearcut ways, and to hope to cover everything

within those boundaries (obviously a doomed

propo-

sition, but the goal was clear). In The

Encyclopedia

of Fantasy,

on the other hand, we have

confronted

a different challenge. The term "fantasy" is used to cover a very wide range of texts, movies, visual pre-

sentations and so on. Tales involving DREAMS and VISIONS, ALLEGORY and ROMANCE, SURREALISM and

MAGIC REALISM, SATIRE and WONDERLAND, SUPERNATURAL FICTION, DARK FANTASY, WEIRD FICTION

and HORROR - all of these and more besides, sometimes expressing conflicting understandings of the

nature of fantasy, were theoretically within our remit. Clearly we could not cover everything anybody

had at one time or another thought of as "fantasy". Although it was going to be impossible to estab-

lish fixed limits, we had in so?ne

way to define our field.

The critic Brian ATTEBERY has spoken of fantasy in language which we feel well describes our final

sense of the way in which this book has been constructed. Fantasy, he has said, is a "fuzzy set". By this

he means a set which cannot be defined by its boundaries but which can be understood through sig-

nificant examples of what best represents it. The "fuzzy set" model is, therefore, both exploratory and

prescriptive. The exemplary writers and motifs making up the set of significant examples are like spot-

lights shining on a very complex world: they illuminate paths through that world and they

help

define our space, but they cannot shine on everything.

The boundaries of fantasy fade into WATER MAR-

GINS in every direction. (This might sound the same as the classic simplistic definition: "You know it's

a fantasy when you see it." But there is a difference. Much of the literature discussed in the pages of

this book does not

initially look like fantasy.)

At the centre of all the fuzzy sets is a rough definition of what we mean by fantasy: a fantasy text

is a self-coherent narrative which, when set in our REALITY, tells a story which is impossible in the

world as we perceive it (l> PERCEPTION); when set in an OTHERWORLD or SECONDARY WORLD, that

otherworld will be impossible, but stories set there will be possible in the otherworld's

terms. An asso-

ciated point, hinted at here, is that at the core of fantasy is STORY. Even the most surrealist of fantasies

tells a tale.

This notion extends to all aspects of the field, not just printed texts. Two of our editorial

team

(Grant and Tiner) have argued extensively elsewhere that FANTASY ART is, at its heart, a narrative form:

the "fuzzy set" model may cast some light on the regions of Surrealism and the Abstract, but fantasy-

art images proper depict a moment which has both a "before" and an "after"; viewers have

construct the surrounding story for themselves and will obviously come up with many different ver-

sions, but all of those tales are inherent in the image. It is easier to recognize the narrative aspect in

most other modes of fantasy - CINEMA, COMICS, OPERA, SONG, etc. - except possibly MUSIC, although

it is hard to listen to Berlioz's Symphonic

Fantastique

or Stravinsky's The

Rite of Spring

without real-

izing that one is being told a story of some sort, even if one hasn't read the programme notes

and

doesn't know what the story

is.

But to return to the central theme. As far as our coverage of texts, authors and movies goes, there-

fore, the heart of this enterprise is the kind of fantasy that evolved from a few decades before

the

beginning of the 19th century - through the elaborate

fictions

of writers like E.T.A. HOFFMANN and,

somewhat later, Edgar Allan POE - in the work of George MACDONALD, William MORRIS,

Lewis

CARROLL, Abraham

MERRITT,

E.R.

EDDISON,

Robert

E. HOWARD, J.R.R.

TOLKIEN,

C.S. LEWIS,

Sprague DE CAMP and Fletcher PRATT, Fritz LEIBER . . . and so on down to the moderns who

have

•oven worlds either out of these examples or anew. Important writers like Sheridan LE FANU, H.P.

and M.R. JAMES are given extensive entries, but are deemed more significant as authors

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