Fantasy as Literature

[Anonymous No.18330929]

Why can't Fantasy be good literature? I've read many Fantasy stories after Tolkien, and none of them even come close to something like Moby Dick, Lolita, or Crime and Punishment. What obstacles stand in the way of Fantasy novels being great?

[Anonymous No.18330940]

>>18330929
The Second Apocalypse by R Scott Bakker is the closest thing to true literary fantasy. Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun series is great; Lord Dunsany is good too.

[Anonymous No.18331004]

>>18330929
I've written about this here before and I'll write it all again; there are two ways 'classics' are defined and codified: A book can be considered a 'classic' if it was culturally or historically important, or if it pioneered/expanded the realm of literature in some way, shape or form. Historically, fantasy has been ignored by academia at large (whether or not this is warranted is up for debate) and there's still a stigma that surrounds fantasy and science fiction as a lot of people consider it 'lesser' compared to normal literary fiction.

>Culturally or Historically Relevant
I'm a burger so I'll stick to speaking about things I am familiar with; for Americans, books like Tom Saywer and Uncle Tom's Cabin are readily considered classics because they are culturally relevant, as are the works of authors like William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. James Joyce's works are culturally important to the Irish, and also because of the literary techniques he employed, producing books that are still studied and argued about to this day. Foundational works of western literature, like The Bible, The Odyssey, the Iliad, etc. are also considered classics because of their historical and cultural relevance.

Fantasy is a niche within literature, so, in my opinion, to judge the 'classics' of fantasy, we must look at fantasy that was relevant to the culture of fantasy itself; by that metric, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are definitely classics (Tolkien's shadow looms so large over fantasy that we are still trying to escape it almost 75 years after LOTR's publication); the works of Lord Dunsany and George MacDonald would be considered fantasy classics because of the influence they had on a lot of early fantasy writers, and the work of Robert E Howard and Fritz Leiber for pioneering the fantasy genre in American magazines and creating the genre of 'sword and sorcery.'

con'd

[Anonymous No.18331077]

>>18331004
>Pioneered/Expanded the realm of literature
Because fantasy is a niche, it's very easy to see that there are no fantasy books that do something that has not already been done by literary fiction, so measuring fantasy by this metric is kind of pointless. There are fantasy books that have done new things *within the realm of fantasy literature* however.

One way to approach this is to compare fantasy literature to literary fiction, and thus create a metric of "on a scale of Dan Brown to James Joyce, how good is this book?" By this metric, a vast majority of fantasy is 'not good,' a handful of fantasy is 'decent/serviceable,' a small, small portion is 'worthy of being considered to have literary merit,' and so far I have found nothing in fantasy literature that can compare to the best of literary fiction. Why is this? Is it because fantasy literature is inherently lesser than literary fiction? Or is it because using this metric is unfair to fantasy literature? I say its the second one' that's like saying, "on a scale of Kroger's name brand frozen pizza to authentic New York deep-dish, how good is this burger?" They are similar genres but perhaps using one to sort and measure the other is not the best. Maybe we shouldn't judge fantasy literature based on 'how similar to literary fiction is it?'

So, we turn to the second option: within the literary genre, what books pioneered it/expanded it? For that, it is much easier to decide, although a lot of people won't like the results. Again, Tolkien's work shows up in full-force here, as does Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast (which got a recommendation from Harold Bloom himself). Other books could perhaps be Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword (proto-grimdark fantasy), and the works of Ursula K Le Guin.

[Anonymous No.18331104]

>>18331004
>meme picture
>reddit spacing
Post discarded

[Anonymous No.18331135]

>>18331104
You have no idea what reddit spacing means, you nigger.

[Anonymous No.18331185]

>>18331077
Nonsense, literary fiction is distinct from genre fiction, it is not a genre in of itself. I'm not going to bother arguing on this point, so I'll just get to what I really want to tackle.
>One way to approach this is to compare fantasy literature to literary fiction, and thus create a metric of "on a scale of Dan Brown to James Joyce, how good is this book?" By this metric, a vast majority of fantasy is 'not good,' a handful of fantasy is 'decent/serviceable,' a small, small portion is 'worthy of being considered to have literary merit,' and so far I have found nothing in fantasy literature that can compare to the best of literary fiction.
I think it's because the people who write fantasy do not actually want to write fantasy. They want to write books that eventually turn into movie deals, and thus don't build up to requisite knowledge to produce good words of fiction. Joyce, Melville, Faulkner, McCarthy, all are extremely well read. GRRM Martin, Stephen King, Rothfuss, spend most of their time reading in their genres, with detours into foundational literature usually taken not as a matter of want, but as a matter of course in some college program.

[Anonymous No.18331204]

>>18330929
Gravity's Rainbow

[Anonymous No.18331300]

>>18331185
>I think it's because the people who write fantasy do not actually want to write fantasy. They want to write books that eventually turn into movie deals, and thus don't build up to requisite knowledge to produce good words of fiction.
You've touched on a very good point and something I've considered before (this actually came up in a discussion on /tg/ about why older fantasy was so much better than modern fantasy); essentially, modern fantasy is a horribly inbred genre; early fantasy authors did not have an established fantasy genre or established fantasy tropes to draw on to create their stories, so they were forced to draw from real history and mythology (and a lot of times, their own personal experiences: Tolkien drew on his experience in WW1, Howard drew from his experience as a boxer, etc); also, some of the early fantasy authors were academics who were familiar with literature, and it shows in their work. The modern fantasy author draws their experience primarily from established fantasy works, and from outside sources–primarily movies, television, comic books, and anime, and it shows. You are completely right in saying that they are not trying to write good literature; they are trying to write good franchises

[Anonymous No.18331906]

>>18331104
holy retard

[Anonymous No.18331918]

the closest thing to literary fantasy that i've come across so far are the vorrh books and little, big by john crowley. neither are at the same level as the books you mention, but what is?

[Anonymous No.18331948]

>>18331185
>literary fiction is distinct from genre fiction, it is not a genre in of itself.
lol
What’s the difference?

[Anonymous No.18331960]

>>18330929
It tends to cease being fantasy when it crosses that line and becomes magical realism. The real difference between genre fiction and lit fiction is just that genre fiction is myopic, it put too much into a single aspect of the story, in this case the fantasy elements, literary fiction keeps things balanced with a slight leaning towards theme in that everything supports theme.

[Anonymous No.18331977]

>>18331960
everything in tolkien is related to theme somehow, although its sometimes subtle or obscure.
hes literature, even the hobbit

[Anonymous No.18331991]

>>18331960
Yeah, a goal of a lot of literary fiction is the exploration of human themes; fantasy books often don't focus on this, which is one of the main reasons they're not considered "literary." I think any book, regardless of genre, should have the exploration of the human condition as one of its primary goals, but this is often not the case

[Anonymous No.18332005]

>>18331104
>anonymous image board
>faux-inferences
>cancel culture

[Anonymous No.18332010]

>>18331104
all the effort posters should start using wojacks to filter the people that would discard a post before even reading it desu

[Anonymous No.18332054]

>>18331104
Go home, tourist. This board is for people who can read.

[Anonymous No.18332228]

>>18331948
cope
>>18331960
>>18331991
People would argue that Name of the Wind explores human themes. What would you say to people like that?

[Anonymous No.18332276]

>>18332228
Not them but I'm about 3/4 of the way through the first book in the series. I think that, while an enjoyable fantasy, it takes a really cursory glance at these matters.
>being poor sucks
>priests and religion bad
>rich people are dicks
I'm obviously being a little hyperbolic, but I think you get the point.

[Anonymous No.18332288]

>>18332228
>Name of the Wind explores human themes
it doesn't do it very well at all though

[Anonymous No.18332290]

>>18332276
>priests and religion bad
There's another thing, it's always so political. Even if it's shitty, it would be lovely to see a book about a fantasy priest doing fantasy priest things. Instead, they all adhere to some weird liberal-in-medieval-times formula.

[Anonymous No.18332298]

>>18332228
I am sure Name of the Wind and most fantasy explores human themes, as does most genre fiction. Again, what makes it genre fiction is the lack of balance, theme takes a background role and the genre itself often replaces the main theme completely.

[Anonymous No.18332322]

>>18330929
Because the fictional world becomes the main focus in place of any meaningful themes and literary craftmanship.

[Anonymous No.18332352]

I think the problem is that fantasy lit, like most blockbusters and video games, is usually just calendar art. It can be very nice to read/look at, but they don’t really tell you anything about the human condition. Fantasy literature often tries to have depth by having really intricate worldbuilding but imo that’s the wrong approach; worldbuilding is not a replacement for themes, and should only exist to compliment them rather than be the focus.

[Anonymous No.18332859]

>>18332290
I actually have been wanting to write something like that for a while. Just a friendly old priest that hobbles around singing hymns and exorcising demons.

[Anonymous No.18332944]

>>18330929
>Why can't Fantasy be good literature?
Because it's shit.
>something like Moby Dick, Lolita, or Crime and Punishment.
Only Moby Dick is good.

[Anonymous No.18332954]

>>18331135
>>18331906
>>18332005
>>18332010
>>18332054
Cope. No one should suffer your trite banalities.

[Anonymous No.18333342]

>>18332954
>i am veri smart
>spacing is dum dum

[Anonymous No.18334729]

>>18331104
how hard are you trying to fit in here?

[Anonymous No.18336203]

>>18330929
I don't know about you or the rest of these faggots but I consider Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass to be great fantasy literature.