Literature and fantasy. Is it possible to combine both?

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Literature and fantasy. Hmm. I do not think that many writers fall into that category once they write fantasy/sf. There is some sort of taboe that puts fantasy/sf always in the pulp section no matter what.

Haven't most of us read literature for school in different languages? How much on those list was fantasy/sf? Sure after the success of some books like the lord of the ring series some titles cannot be ignored.

Take a title like Das Boot, which I read in German. Literature? Well it was in the list, so yes, someone must has decided he/she liked it and put it on the list. But what if it is not a ww2 sub but a deep space destroyer?

A second example. The writer is called Marten Toonder and he has made more than excellent books about a character called Olivier B Bommel. On top of the pages 3 drawings tell the story in concert whit the text. The characters are drawed animals whit a few humans that play the foreigners. A rat as a reporter, dogs a cops, it all makes perfect sense. The main figure is a fat thick bear and his smart sidekick a cat. It is accepted as literature.

What if the main character is elven?

 

Cormac McCarthy. Margaret Atwood. Ken Follet. 1984.

Just for starters.

 

Shakespeare is definatly literature. "A midsummer nights dream" For example is more or less a pure fantasy story. One of the main characters is an elf too.

 

Doris Lessing who won the Nobel Prize last year has written a lot of SF. It is just a matter of attitudes. A book is a book is a book and then the issue is whether it is a good book or not and it doesn't matter if it is about elves, star ships or coping with motherhood in suburban Chicago. "Genre" books have gotten a bad rep for a lnog time and it is a disgrace. Some of the absolutely finest writing I have ever read have been "genre" books but I doubt the "literature people" would touch it with a ten-foot-pole (unless written by someone who had already "proven" that he could write "real" literature like Cormac McCarthy.

I think we should also keep in mind that many of those books we consider timeless classics now were the "pulp" "genre" books of their time. I think it all comes down to a case of severe narrowmindedness among many experts and that urge to be "better" to have "better taste" than others and that things need to be "real". Real is boring, realism is good but real can be so utterly boring.

When experts and critics do look at fantasy to "broaden" their horizon they tend to find the crappiest, most stereotypical tripe they can find and then draw their conclusions from that and make some condenscending remark about the genre based on Terry Brook's Shannara books or something.

 

It would be cruel and unusual to make someone read a fantasy book when learning another language

Why? Think how often a fantasy or science fiction book makes up words for peculiar phenominon. It's simply ill practice to learn another language from a book that is making up a proportion of the words.

I have personally never encountered Literature Vs Genre snobbery, my mother has a degree in englisher literature and another in english language, I have many friends in a book club and they cover all sorts of books, including fantasy books.

I do not understand how someone can define a quality of writing by genre, thought I can understand how some may opt to exclude a certain genre from their repetoires of read books, just like many exclude musical genres to their listening range

 

Exactly.

I like reading movie critics because they are so full of **** [autocensored]. It's quite amusing to browse through old pieces written at the time when a film first got out. A great movie can sometimes be trashed for no reasons (mainly because it is so easy and fashionable to criticize and find faults in any work of art especially if you don't care about the genre) and this is quite hilarious when this movie turns out to be an enduring classic years later (right now I'm thinking about Fight Club).

Back on topic, you can find science fiction novels that are written like postmodern novels.

 

I would add John Gardner to the list of writers who combine literature and fantasy.

 

Chandos, do you think there is a distinction between fantasy and literature? Isn't all literature literature or is it only special kinds of books which are literature? I don't understand how a genre can't be "literature" except for exceptions or when authors from "outside" the genre write in it. Isn't a book a book a book and it is all literature from Philip Athan's BG novel to Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment? The quality and what individuals like may differ but isn't it all literature?

 

That's what I'm wondering. What exactly do you mean by 'literature'? In my common use of the word, my Aerospace America magazine is literature because it is the written work meant to convey meaning. I guess comic books may be a little more iffy, since they only employ the written word as opposed to being entirely/almost entirely the written word. To try and classify a certain sub-set of writing as 'true literature' based on, what, subject, genre, style, how it makes a particular editor feel seems not only arbitrary, but childishly elite.

Now on the subject of learning a language, I'd agree that most SF/fantasy should be avoided simply because they tend to use highly technical language for SF and purely made up language for both. A 5th year english (as a second language) student shouldn't be exposed to words and terms like glamorie, geass, worm hole, or spatio-temproal discontinuity. Hell, entropy is pushing it at that point, and that's a perfectly legitimate word.

 

Joac - That's really a great point, but you will be faced with having to define literature, which means that ultimately, you will have to have a definition of "Art." Personally, and I think the rest of us, are trying to keep it simple by referring to wrtiers who work within a mythological tradition of literature, particularly a medieval tradition. But fantasy can have a broader definition than just a medieval tradition. Is the Odyssey a work of fantasy? You bet.

 

And let's not forget Homer, Beowulf, the brothers Grimm, et al.

 

Well, most of the really classical literature was what we would call "fantasy". Stories about heroes and gods, quests and adventure. It is really only in the last 200 years we have gotten more "realistic" fiction.

 

I would say George Orwell Animal farm but the rest of his stuff doesn't fall under the same heading

 

Joac - That's a good point as well. Mostly that is true, regarding fiction. I think there were attempts in theater at a stylized depiction of the human condition in a "realistic" sense, going back to Rome; maybe some Greek plays, but I'm not that familar with ancient Greek theater outside of the basics, like Oedipus (much to my own discredit). I'm sure playwrights, such as Plautus and Terence tapped into a Greek tradition of comedic theater that allowed them to comment on typical Roman values of their respective societies and how these values informed and sustained Roman life or how they were problematic for some within Roman society (and I'm sure this is true of the Greeks as well).

I would not regard any of this in the same sense as "realism" as you are using the term, such as in late 19th or ealry 20th Century literature in Amreica or England, (influenced by French realism) but only to say that they were not "fantasy." And certainly by the Renaissance, writers were moving away from the themes that you describe in your post and were beginning to focus more directly on the individual and his realationship to society, rather than with the Gods or religion.

 

Sorry, but I don't even understand the question. What the hell is the thing you call 'literature'? From the posts so far, it seems that if something is old, then it is "literature". It all sounds like some nebulous way of being snobby about books.

 

In many ways I think that is correct, HB. Who is to say that Harry Potter is not "literature?" Harry Potter is important because it is engaging; it has an audience that cares about its characters and what happens to them. I've never read one, but Potter books are obviously well-written in that they convey their narratives to the reader in an engaging manner. The typical response I get from this is, "well the same can be said for a soap opera." That's fine, but its not the same because the medium is different. A book is not TV and TV is not a book. They make different demands of their audience.

And regarding "genre" fiction, as has already been mentioned, Dickens or Dumas can be considered genre fiction writers in their own time. In fact, many of their stories ran as installments in the newspapers of the day. So who can say that some of the genre fiction of today will not be the literature of tomorrow? You may have a certain standard by which you judge a work of fiction, but that is a personal standard, and may not be the same for all readers. What makes yours more or less valid than anyone else?

Nevertheless, I believe there is an academic standard for literature that is valid as well. People who make literature their area of study can in a precise and systematic manner explain why a book is imporatant as a work of art and is worthy of formal study as literature. They can place it within a literary canon of works which has unfolded in the way that it has because writers from the beginning of time have influenced writers who came after them to do the same thing, (write books) and to work and expand the art form. That's not snobbery. People devote their lives to studying books the same way that you study business, HB. Does it make you a snob because you can explain what is a good business strategy? or because you can explain why people are making bad choices in their business decisions? I wouldn't think so. I could go on like this, but I'll stop ranting now.

 

J.G. Ballard. SF & splendid literature, definitely.

Doris Lessing should be noted in this, she started writing SF since by her own words "...science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time."

Fantasy literature does not seem to give as much leeway to explore social themes as SF. Still, it has the potential to do so. Ursula LeGuin's work stands strong as fine literature, even though she's written mainly 'mere' SF and fantasy. The Chronicals of Earthsea are a fine example how social themes can be embedded fittingly in fantasy literature.

 

It would be hard to find any book that wouldn't have a redeeming quality. Still as a reader I enjoy some books more than others for many different reasons. What could be refered to as "quality" depends a lot on the way words are woven and used, what in other words could be called style.

You can't fake style, you can work all you want but in the end it's style that sets a writer apart from the others.

Of course it goes without saying that it is all subjective. Although art is a matter of taste there are still criteria that define it.

That being said IMO there is no inner contradiction between literature and fantasy. The big problem may be that many books that fall in that category are a bit "poor" and lack depth or meaning.

Speaking of the Lord of the Rings there are many (interesting) discussions on moral ambiguity, modernism, ecology, feminism, etc. I even read a Jungian analysis which was compelling and thought provoking. Critics may go too far though as I've once read a piece about a Marxist interpretation of the Hobbit.

In order to define what would qualify as literature I'd say look at style and meaning. In a broad acceptation of the word literature you could certainly accept train timetables and restaurant menus as modern art or as encapsulating the zeitgeist of a given time period...

 

I'm still waiting for even an attempt at defining 'literature'. So far, on top of it being a written text, it seems it also has to be good (totally subjective), old (halfway subjuective), and important (totally subjective again). Does The Little Engine that Could count? There are many people (mostly 3-year olds) who would argue it meets those definitions. I get the impression it's not meant to, though.

 

Those are pretty good starting points, if you can articulate them in a more formal manner. For instance - literature on a basic level - communicates information and meaning from a writer to a reader by means of letters. That would be a basic definition. To your second point, the writer must have the level of craft to engage the reader in what he/she is trying to communicate. Your third point: that a piece of literature has withstood the test of time; it has value and meaning outside of its own historical and social context. That may be because of the level of craft or because of the meaning it conveys - or both. To your last point, a work of literature becomes "important" in that it is required to be read, on some level, for one to be considered "well-educated" - in a formal, academic sense of "educated."

But if your definition of literature would be "Literature as Art," you may need to reconsider that criteria and have a somewhat different definition.