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IB Higher English Term 1 Mr M.

Fantastic Literature

1. Fantasy vs Realism. Brainstorming session

Opening 1

“It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking Thirteen."Opening 2

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good

fortune must be in want of a wife.Opening 3

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Opening 4

 You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a

traveler . Relax.

Opening 5

I am a sick man...I am a wicked man. An unattractive man, I think my liver hurts.Opening 6

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled

with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with

nothing in it to sit down on or to eat; it was a hobbit hole, and that means

comfort.”Opening 7

It was the day my grandmother exploded.

Analyse each opening. What does each one tell you about each book? Is it

realism or fantasy? How do you know?

2. Definitions: The identifying traits of fantasy are the inclusion of fantastic

elements in a self-coherent (internally consistent) setting. [ John Clute –

Encyclopedia of Fantasy] Within such a structure, any location of the

fantastical element is possible: it may be hidden in, or leak into the

apparently real world setting, it may draw the characters into a world with

such elements, or it may occur entirely in a fantasy world setting, wheresuch elements are part of the world.[

The Romantic:

In the late 18th century artists and intellectuals came increasingly to emphasize

the role of the emotions in human life and, correspondingly, to play down the

importance of reason (which had been regarded as supremely important by

thinkers of the Enlightenment). Those involved in the new movement were

known as Romantics. Because ‘Romanticism’ emphasised the individual, the

subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal and the spontaneous it

often led to works of literature that focused on the strange, the mysterious, eventhe grotesque. This led to works that dealt with the supernatural such as

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Frankenstein. E.T.A. Hoffman’s stories and Alice in Wonderland.

Allegory: (from Greek: αλλος, allos, "other", and αγορευειν, agoreuein, "to

speak in public")

is a figurative mode of representation conveying a meaning other than the

literal. Fictions with several possible interpretations are not allegories in the true

sense. Not every fiction with general application is an allegory. [Wikipedia]

cf. The Cave in Plato’s Republic. Lord of the Rings as a WW2 allegory

Fables:

Fable and parable are short, simple forms of naive allegory. The fable is usually a

tale about animals who are personified and behave as though they were

humans. The device of personification is also extended to trees, winds, streams,

stones, and other natural objects. The earliest of these tales also included

humans and gods as characters, but fable tends to concentrate on animating the

inanimate. A feature that isolates fable from the ordinary folktale, which it

resembles, is that a moral—a rule of behaviour—is woven into the story.

[Britannica]

Folk Tales:

Sometimes called fairy tales. Wonder tale involving marvellous elements and

occurrences, though not necessarily about fairies.. “Children's and Household

 Tales,” generally known as Grimm's Fairy Tales) of the Brothers Grimm are

transcribed directly from oral renderings. Folk tales have common motifs, thathave been categorised by Stith Thomson and V. Propp. Examples of folktale

motifs are encounters between ordinary, often humble, human beings and

supernatural adversaries such as witches, giants, or ogres; contests to win a

bride; and attempts to overcome a wicked stepmother or jealous sisters. The

most obvious characteristic of folk literature is its orality. Vladimir Propp's classic

study Morphology of the Folktale (1928) became the basis of research into

the structure of folklore texts. Propp discovered a uniform structure in Russian

fairy tales.

Utopia/Dystopia: (from the Greek meaning no-place.)

An ideal commonwealth whose inhabitants exist under seemingly perfect

conditions. Hence “utopian” and “utopianism” are words used to denote

visionary reform that tends to be impossibly idealistic. First created by Thomas

More in his book Utopia. Written utopias may be practical or satirical, as well as

speculative. In the 20th century the Utopia tended to be replaced by the

Dystopia, which is the opposite of a utopia. An oppressive nightmare place.

High Fantasy:

 Typified by Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. In popular culture, the genre of fantasy

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is dominated by its Medievalist form, also known as ‘High Fantasy’ and ‘Sword

and Sorcery’.

Science Fiction:

 Abbreviation SF.  A form of fiction that deals principally with the impact of 

actual or imagined science upon society or individuals. The term science fiction

was popularized, if not invented, in the 1920s by one of the genre's principal

advocates, the American publisher Hugo Gernsback. Many believe that the first

science fiction novel was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Magic Realism:

Chiefly Latin-American narrative strategy that is characterized by the matter-of-

fact inclusion of fantastic or mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction.

Although this strategy is known in the literature of many cultures in many ages,the term magic realism is a relatively recent designation, first applied in the

1940s by Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier, who recognized this characteristic in

much Latin-American literature. Prominent among the Latin-American magic

realists are the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, the Brazilian Jorge Amado,

the Argentines Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar, and the Chilean Isabel

Allende. [Britannica]