1. I'm always amazed at critics (ahem Darko Suvin cough cough) who argue science fiction is superior to fantasy. In truth, science fiction is a branch of fantasy.
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4. Fantasy as a separate genre (let's call it fantastika) is actually a curious by-product of rise of realism in the 18th century and early 19th century.
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5. Once you had prose narratives that aspired to verisimilitude (Richardson, Austen, etc) then stories of goblins & witches became more than storytelling: they became a genre of their own: fantastika.
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6. Fantastika encompasses the broad range of non-realist or anti-realist storytelling rooted in romance: gothic fiction, horror, fairytales, detective novels, science fiction.
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7. Fantastika, as
@john_clute notes, rose not just in counter-distinction to realism but also in awareness (after French Revolution) that radical change was possible.Show this thread -
8. Bourgeois mimetic fiction is inherently conservative in that it emphasizes stability of world & limits to change. Fantastika based on hope or fear that world is unstable.
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Hold on: are we sure contemporary audiences read (or listened to) those texts literally?
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They wouldn't have made the distinction between literal and non-literal reading. That requires the scientific method.
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1st line in Homer's Illiad: "Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans." Sound familiar? One angry dude having temper tantrum which causes ills for the rest of society. Moral lesson: No angry dudes should be in charge.
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Strongly disagree about Dante. He created a fictional narrative of imaginary places and things to reify parts of his religion. Despite believing in heaven, hell, and purgatory, he wasn't writing a fictional narrative of a place he thought actually existed.
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Didn’t Larry Niven say he considers the Divine Comedy the first work of hard science fiction?
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