Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Magic, the supernatural and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds. Fantasy literature may be directed at both children and adults.
Fantasy is considered a genre of speculative fiction and is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the absence of scientific or macabre themes, respectively, though these may overlap. Historically, most works of fantasy were in written form, but since the 1960s, a growing segment of the genre has taken the form of fantasy films, fantasy television programs, graphic novels, video games, music and art.
Many fantasy novels originally written for children and adolescents also attract an adult audience. Examples include Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Harry Potter series, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Hobbit.
History
Beginnings Stories involving magic and terrible monsters have existed in spoken forms before the advent of printed literature. Classical mythology is replete with fantastical stories and characters, the best known (and perhaps the most relevant to modern fantasy) being the works of Homer (Greek) and Virgil (Roman).John Grant and John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, "Taproot texts", p 921
The philosophy of Plato has had great influence on the fantasy genre. In the Christian Platonic tradition, the reality of other worlds, and an overarching structure of great metaphysical and moral importance, has lent substance to the fantasy worlds of modern works.
With Empedocles (), elements are often used in fantasy works as personifications of the forces of nature.John Grant and John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, "Elemental" p 313-4,
India has a long tradition of fantastical stories and characters, dating back to Vedic mythology. The Panchatantra (Fables of Bidpai), which some scholars believe was composed around the 3rd century BC., Introduction, page xv; , Translator's introduction, quoting Hertel: "the original work was composed in Kashmir, about 200 B.C. At this date, however, many of the individual stories were already ancient." It is based on older oral traditions, including "animal fables that are as old as we are able to imagine". Doris Lessing, Problems, Myths and Stories , London: Institute for Cultural Research Monograph Series No. 36, 1999, p 13
It was influential in Europe and the Middle East. It used various animal fables and magical tales to illustrate the central Indian principles of political science. Talking animals endowed with human qualities have now become a staple of modern fantasy.Richard Matthews (2002). Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination, p. 8-10. Routledge. .
The Baital Pachisi (Vikram and the Vampire), a collection of various fantasy tales set within a frame story is, according to Richard Francis Burton and Isabel Burton, "the germ which culminated in the Arabian Nights, and which also inspired the Golden Ass of Apuleius, (2nd century A.D). Boccaccio's Decamerone (c.1353) the Pentamerone (1634, 1636) and all that class of facetious fictitious literature."Isabel Burton, Preface , in Richard Francis Burton (1870), Vikram and The Vampire.
The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) from the Middle East has been influential in the West since it was translated from the Arabic into French in 1704 by Antoine Galland.L. Sprague de Camp, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy, p 10 Many imitations were written, especially in France.John Grant and John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, "Arabian fantasy", p 52
The Fornaldarsagas, Norse and Icelandic sagas, both of which are based on ancient oral tradition influenced the German Romantics, as well as William Morris, and J. R. R. Tolkien.John Grant and John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, "Nordic fantasy", p 692 The Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf has also had deep influence on the fantasy genre; although it was unknown for centuries and so not developed in medieval legend and romance, several fantasy works have retold the tale, such as John Gardner's Grendel.John Grant and John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, "Beowulf", p 107
Celtic folklore and legend has been an inspiration for many fantasy works.John Grant and John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, "Celtic fantasy", p 275
The Welsh tradition has been particularly influential, owing to its connection to King Arthur and its collection in a single work, the epic Mabinogion. One influential retelling of this was the fantasy work of Evangeline Walton.Michael Moorcock, Wizardry & Wild Romance: A Study of Epic Fantasy p 101 The Irish Ulster Cycle and Fenian Cycle have also been plentifully mined for fantasy. Its greatest influence was, however, indirect. Celtic folklore and mythology provided a major source for the Arthurian cycle of chivalric romance: the Matter of Britain. Although the subject matter was heavily reworked by the authors, these romances developed marvels until they became independent of the original folklore and fictional, an important stage in the development of fantasy.Colin Manlove, Christian Fantasy: from 1200 to the Present p 12
From the 13th century Romance or chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that reworked legends, fairy tales, and history to suit the readers' and hearers' tastes, but by they were out of fashion, and Miguel de Cervantes famously burlesqued them in his novel Don Quixote. Still, the modern image of "medieval" is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, and the word medieval evokes knights, distressed damsels, dragons, and other romantic tropes.
Renaissance At the time of the Renaissance romance continued to be popular, and the trend was to more fantastic fiction. The English Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory (c.1408–1471) was written in prose, and the work dominates the Arthurian literature.John Grant and John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, "Malory, (Sir) Thomas" p 621, Arthurian motifs have appeared steadily in literature from its publication, though the works have been a mix of fantasy and non-fantasy works.John Grant and John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, "Arthur" p 60-1, At the time, it and the Spanish Amadis de Gaula (1508), which was also written in prose, spawned many imitators, and the genre was popularly well-received. It later produced such masterpieces of Renaissance poetry as Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso and Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata. Ariosto's tale in particular was a source text for many fantasies of adventure.John Grant and John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, "Ariosto, Lodovico" p 60-1,
During the Renaissance, Giovanni Francesco Straparola wrote and published The Facetious Nights of Straparola (1550–1555), a collection of stories of which many are literary fairy tales. Giambattista Basile wrote and published the Pentamerone, which was the first collection of stories to contain solely what would later be known as fairy tales. The two works include the oldest recorded form of many well-known (and some more obscure) European fairy tales.Steven Swann Jones, The Fairy Tale: The Magic Mirror of Imagination, Twayne Publishers, New York, 1995, , p38 This was the beginning of a tradition that would both influence the fantasy genre and be incorporated in it, as many works of fairytale fantasy appear to this day.L. Sprague de Camp, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy, p 11
In a work on alchemy in the 16th century, Paracelsus (1493–1541) identified four types of beings with the four elements of alchemy: gnomes (earth elementals); undines (water); sylphs (air); and salamanders (fire).Carole B. Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness, p 38 Most of these beings are found in folklore as well as alchemy, and their names are often used interchangeably with similar beings from folklore.C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, p135
Enlightenment Literary fairy tales, such as those written by Charles Perrault (1628–1703) and Madame d'Aulnoy (c.1650 – 1705), became very popular early in the Age of Enlightenment. Many of Perrault's tales became fairy tale staples and were influential to later fantasy. When d'Aulnoy termed her works contes de fée (fairy tales), she invented the term that is now generally used for the genre, thus distinguishing such tales from those involving no marvels.Jack Zipes, The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, p 858, This approach influenced later writers who took up the folk fairy tales in the same manner during the Romantic era.L. Sprague de Camp, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy, p 9-11
Several fantasies aimed at an adult readership were also published in 18th century France, including Voltaire's "contes philosophique" The Princess of Babylon (1768) and The White Bull (1774).Brian Stableford, The A to Z of Fantasy Literature, p xx, Scarecrow Press, Plymouth. 2005. This era, however, was notably hostile to fantasy. Writers of the new types of fiction such as Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding were realistic in style, and many early realistic works were critical of fantastical elements in fiction.Lin Carter, ed. Realms of Wizardry p xiii–xiv Doubleday and Company Garden City, NY, 1976
However, in the Elizabethan era in England, fantasy literature became extraordinarily popular and fueled populist and anti-authoritarian sentiment during the 1590s. Topics that were written about included "fairylands in which the sexes traded places [and] men and immortals mingl[ing]".
Romanticism Romanticism, a movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, was a dramatic reaction to rationalism, challenging the priority of reason and promoting the importance of imagination and spirituality. Its success in rehabilitating imagination was of fundamental importance to the evolution of fantasy, and its interest in medieval romances provided many motifs to modern fantasy.John Grant and John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, "Romanticism", p 821
The Romantics invoked the medieval romance as a model for the works they wanted to produce, in contrast to the realism of the Enlightenment.John Grant and John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, "Romance", p 821 One of the first literary results of this trend was the Gothic novel, a genre that began in Britain with The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole. That work is considered the predecessor to both modern fantasy and modern horror fiction. Another noted Gothic novel which also contains a large amount of Arabian Nights-influenced fantasy elements is Vathek (1786) by William Thomas Beckford.Brian Stableford, The A to Z of Fantasy Literature, p 40, Scarecrow Press, Plymouth. 2005.
In the later part of the Romantic period, folklorists collected folktales, epic poems, and ballads, and released them in printed form. The Brothers Grimm were inspired by the movement of German Romanticism in their 1812 collection Grimm's Fairy Tales, and they in turn inspired other collectors. Frequently their motivation stemmed not merely from Romanticism, but from Romantic nationalism, in that many were inspired to save their own country's folklore. Sometimes, as in the Kalevala, they compiled existing folklore into an epic to match other nation's, and sometimes, as in The Poems of Ossian, they fabricated folklore that should have been there. These works, whether fairy tale, ballads, or folk epics, were a major source for later fantasy works.Michael Moorcock, Wizardry & Wild Romance: A Study of Epic Fantasy p 35