Here Be Dragons (2 page)

Apart from occasional brief reflections on the landscape's central importance to fantasy, little has been written on the subject. In an article provocatively subtitled “The Irrelevancy of Setting in the Fantastic,” Roger C. Schlobin asserts his premise that “[s]etting does not determine the fantastic.”
⁹
I agree with Schlobin's point: the setting should not be made central to a definition of the fantastic. My intention is not to argue in favor of a
topofocal
,
¹⁰
or place-focused,
definition
of fantasy, nor to suggest that setting is
more
important than character or plot. I am, however, in favor of topofocal
readings
of fantasy, as a complement to traditional approaches, because setting is
as
important as character and plot. Fantasy offers possibilities to create fictive worlds that are fundamentally different from our own, even in cases when the setting masquerades as a copy of the world we live in. Such differences are common and constitute integral parts of the fantasy stories in which they occur.

A particular kind of difference separating our world from the settings of fantasy provides the focus for this book. A physical environment can be divided in many ways—between sea and land, along tribal, linguistic, or
political lines, cut up into any number of types of units on maps—and this is true regardless of whether the environment is actual or imaginary. But most divisions of our world are social constructs, foisted on the land, and the most basic division is that between the landscape and ourselves. In fantasy, the situation can be, and often is, different: the land can be divided into areas where separate sets of rules of causality and laws of nature apply; dividing lines that we are familiar with can be rethought; and the division between people and their environment can be bridged. The setting plays a central role in a fantasy story, and to increase our understanding of the genre, we need to learn more about this role. This book uses a topofocal perspective to examine four basic types of divisions and their function in relation to the world of which they are a part, as well as in terms of the story in which they are used.

My analysis is based on close readings of a variety of divisions in fantasy works written primarily in English, but with occasional references to works in other languages. As my interest has generally concerned the current state of the genre, I have selected works published between the mid-1970s and mid-2000s.
¹¹
The exception is
The Lord of the Rings
: its central position in the genre makes it a useful point of reference, and for that reason I discuss it throughout the book. Each work has been selected primarily for its clear treatment of the feature under investigation, but I have sought to use mainly well-established fantasy writers.
Chapter 2
includes a quantitative survey of a random sample of fantasy maps, and the maps brought up for discussion are all part of that sample, with the exception of the Middle-earth maps.

As my main interest lies in how the setting works in relation to the story, my critical affinity leans toward ecocriticism, particularly as defined by Cheryll Glotfelty and Scott Slovic.
¹²
In the introduction to
The Ecocriticism Reader
,
¹³
Glotfelty explains that “ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment.” The questions she proposes that ecocritics and theorists ask include: “How is nature represented in this sonnet?” and “What role does the physical setting play in the plot of this novel?”
¹⁴
Together, these two questions largely illustrate my own critical interest in exploring the way in which fantasy landscapes are represented and how those representations interact with the various aspects of the story, not necessarily just the plot.

In “Ecocriticism: Containing Multitudes, Practising Doctrine,”
¹⁵
Slovic considers ecocriticism to comprise both “the study of explicitly environmental texts by way of any scholarly approach [and], conversely,
the scrutiny of ecological implications and human–nature relationships in any literary text, even texts that seem, at first glance, oblivious of the nonhuman world.”
¹⁶
In other words, he argues, ecocritics can use any type of scholarly approach if they apply it to a particular kind of text, or any type of text if they approach it in a particular way. Previous scholars have approached literary settings in a wide variety of ways, too many to list them all. Some interesting examples include
Topographies
, in which J. Hillis Miller explores fiction and philosophical texts through the lens of topographical terms and descriptions of landscapes and cityscapes;
Atlas of the European Novel, 1800–1900
, in which Franco Moretti maps various literature-related data and then discusses those maps and their implications; and
A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction
, in which Robert Mighall spends a chapter examining how the urban Gothic setting developed from its forbears.
¹⁷
I have, as noted, adopted a topofocal approach to fantasy texts, but I do not look for ecological implications within or outside the narratives, nor are my critical tools selected to facilitate the study of such implications. Instead, I complement my topofocal perspective with tools that have developed within fantasy criticism to discuss features peculiar, and relevant, to the genre.

WHAT IS FANTASY?

A great many attempts have been made to define the fantasy genre. In
Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy
(1986), Gary K. Wolfe included twenty-one definitions of fantasy,
¹⁸
and two decades later, Farah Mendlesohn introduced her
Rhetorics of Fantasy
(2008) by stating that “[t]he debate over definition is now long-standing, and a consensus has emerged, accepting as a viable ‘fuzzy set,' a range of critical definitions of fantasy.” In practice, she suggests, scholars generally choose among the available definitions depending on which area of fantasy and which “ideological filter” they are interested in.
¹⁹
I do not wish to add yet another definition of the genre to the large number already proposed, but I have not found a single definition that I fully agree with. Therefore, I will outline the critical opinions about the genre that form the basis of my understanding of what fantasy is.

In this book, the fantasy genre is taken to belong to the mode of writing called the
fantastic
, succinctly defined by Kathryn Hume as “
any departure from consensus reality
.”
²⁰
The fantastic in this sense encompasses
genres such as fantasy, science fiction, and supernatural horror, as well as any other narratives in which the fictional world and events depart in any significant way from our own. Dainty flower fairies and betentacled monster deities, alternative historical development and unknown utopian societies, magical rings and spaceports are all fantastic elements that signal such departures. In fantasy, the fantastic elements are in some way “impossible,”
²¹
entailing the presence of events, objects, beings, or phenomena that break the laws of nature of the world as we understand it;
²²
in addition, there must be no attempt rationally to persuade the reader of these elements' putative “possibility” (as there is in much science fiction). Magic is magic, not a way of mentally controlling the physical world by tapping into areas of the brain that were not discovered until 2051; dragons simply exist, they are not the result of genetic manipulation of dinosaur DNA; and so on. Not all fantastic elements in fantasy need to be impossible in this respect—many writers have explored the meeting of science fiction and fantasy
²³
—but they frequently are; in the discussion that follows,
fantastic
therefore refers to something impossible.

Furthermore, for fantasy to work, writer and reader must agree that there is something impossible—something fantastic—in the story; but for the duration of the story, as part of the story world, they will treat it as if it were possible. The fantastic elements are not allegory, or metaphor, or hallucination, or dream—in the story, the impossible is as “real” and “true” as the possible.
²⁴
Texts in which the author purports to relate a true experience are not fantasy, nor are texts whose content is written to be believed by its readers: fantasy is fiction and does not present itself as anything but fiction.
²⁵
It is, in this regard, written and read in a spirit of “what if?”

In order to be taken seriously, however, the introduction of the fantastic elements must be believable. Tolkien refers to this credibility as “Secondary Belief,” which arises when what the author relates “accords with the laws of [the story] world. You […] believe it, while you are, as it were, inside.”
²⁶
Fantasy writers are free to make up whatever they like for their worlds, and change the laws by which these worlds work; but once the laws are in place, even the author is bound by them. The story must remain consistent; it must accord with the laws of its world. Rules can be changed and laws broken, but there must be a reasonable explanation for this—rules cannot change for no reason, without comment. The fantasy world must be as stable and predictable as our own, even if
it is different. It is, in W. R. Irwin's words, “an arbitrary construct of the mind […] under the control of logic and rhetoric.”
²⁷

Fantasy, in short, is fiction acknowledged by reader and writer to contain “impossible” elements that are accepted as possible in the story and treated in an internally consistent manner. This description is clearly very inclusive, and would result in a large number of works being classified as fantasy. But some of these works would be more typically fantasy than others. Brian Attebery introduces the idea of seeing genres as “fuzzy sets,” a “cloud” of works defined by a number of central “prototypes” with which they have some qualities in common (although no qualities are necessarily shared by the entire set). The closer to the center of the cloud, the greater the similarity to the prototypes. The fuzzy edges shade into other genres, explaining why certain works are difficult to place generically, as well as why some works are unarguably fantasy while others only vaguely suggest belonging to the genre.
²⁸
Attebery maintains that Tolkien's
The Lord of the Rings
is one of the prototypes of the fantasy genre, and identifies in it three features that “have become dominant in modern fantasy”: a concern with the impossible; a comic structure, which begins with a problem and ends with a resolution; and the process that Tolkien calls “recovery,” whereby the familiar is restored to “the vividness with which we first saw [it].”
²⁹

I would like to add a fourth feature that can be found in all manners of literature but is particularly common and noticeable in fantasy stories: the widespread reliance on material ladled from what Tolkien calls the “Cauldron of Story.”
³⁰
He employs this metaphor to show that even though it may be fascinating to examine a tale's source materials, it is of greater interest to consider the story as it is served. Fairy stories, he asserts, are not the result of myths dwindling into epics, which then dwindle into folktales, but are the outcome of various ingredients having boiled together in the Cauldron. Over time, and as new bits are added to the pot, the various flavors combine, until it makes little sense to try to determine how each contributed to the final tale. One example would be Arthur, who, Tolkien explains, simmered in the Cauldron “for a long time, together with many other older figures and devices, of mythology and Faërie, and even some other stray bones of history […] until he emerged as a King of Faërie.”
³¹
Tolkien also notes how the author or teller of a story—the Cook—chooses carefully among the many ingredients in the Cauldron of Story,
³²
and even though Tolkien's focus is not explicitly on fantasy literature at this point, I would claim that fantasy
writers in particular rely on material from the Cauldron. As a rule, they are also quite frank about using such material, selecting from old myths, legends, and tales in the Cauldron, as well as from more recent material, adding their individual spices to the mix. Typically, many ingredients have been boiled down beyond recognition while others have retained some distinct characteristics. Stories of varying degrees of antiquity are used and reused;
³³
magical creatures appear, altered yet recognizable, so that, for instance, dragons can enter a story in shapes either mighty or meek, taking the part of protagonist, antagonist, or both—but, nevertheless, clearly related to the wyrm in
Beowulf
or to St. George's adversary;
³⁴
and, as the following chapters point out, settings are borrowed and adapted from numerous places. Tolkien himself picked medieval tales and characters from the Cauldron and served us Merlin and Arthur as Gandalf and Aragorn. Other writers ladle up bits from Shakespeare or Dante, from Eastern myths or Celtic fairy tales, and from urban legends or medieval romances.
³⁵
Fantasy is a genre where old tales, motifs, and characters are brought to life again, in ways that make them relevant to their contemporary readers.

The texts that provide examples for the following chapters are mostly located close to Tolkien's
The Lord of the Rings
in the fuzzy set of the fantasy genre. They do display some structural differences, however, and Mendlesohn proposes a subdivision of the genre into four (equally fuzzy) categories. She bases her divisions on how the fantastic is introduced into the story, observing how, in (successful) fantasy stories, the manner in which a story is told depends on which category it belongs to.
³⁶
The
portal–quest fantasy
introduces the point-of-view character into a fantasy world, either from a version of our own world (through, for instance, a wardrobe) or from a place in the fantasy world that, like the reader's world, is “small, safe, and
understood
”
³⁷
(such as the noneventful, comprehensible Shire). The story is told from this point of origin, and the reader learns about the alien world along with the main character(s). In
immersive fantasy
, the characters, unlike the reader, are at home in the strange world, and the world is described as if totally familiar; the reader has to puzzle out how it works from the clues that are given.
Intrusive fantasy
is set in a world (often our own) into which the fantastic intrudes, causing chaos and confusion. Neither protagonist nor reader is familiar with the fantastic intrusion, and the story is a process of coming to terms with it. The ghost story is a typical intrusion fantasy. In the final category,
liminal fantasy
, the reader's expectations are used to create
worlds where the commonplace comes across as strange and wonderful, and the alien is portrayed with an everyday triteness bordering on the blasé. These fantasies are stories in which stylistic manipulation is central to the experience of the fantastic.
³⁸