2. Find at least five formative definitions in Attebery (1980).
3. According to Attebery, Can the genre legitimately be defined by examples?
4. How do English and American constructions of fantasy diverge, according to Attebery?
5. How is science fiction different from fantasy, according to Le Guinn (http://www.ursulakleguin.com/ PlausibilityinFantasy.html)?
6. Can you identify any common fantasy meta-narratives from your own reading/viewing? What are some archetypes (e.g. common character types)of fantasy fiction?
7. Note while you are reading A Wizard of Earthsea Le Guinn’s depiction of race and gender. Is there anything surprising in this? Why?
8. In what ways does Tax (2002) suggest Earthsea may still be relevant today?
Fantasy is a "genre that uses magic or supernatural forms"(wikipedia 2008).For example, Lord of the rings,The Hobbit,Harry porter,The chronicals of Narnia and so on.These are book wirtten by poeple who have an inspiration of fantasy.According to Attebery(1980) he states that the fantasy nature is like for example "dragons, flying horses,or shape shifting men" or magical obejects such as hats,rings,voices and so on are all part of fantasy.One good example would be from 'Wizard of earth sea'.This is obviosuly a fantasy text and in most of the chapters, it talks about how this young boy called Duny learnt how to use magic.As you read futher on it can be seen that there are unknown creatures and dragons which are included in the story.For instance in chapter 3 pg 529(line 20-25)"The creatures are found only on four southern isles...." This is basically an idea of what fantasy is all about and this is my view point...what do you gals think??
I agree with your concept for the fantasy~ Deli ^^* good point!
To be honest, i'm not a big fan of fatasy stories... but i'm quite enjoyiing reading 'a wizard of earthsea'! What about you gals?~^^
So! for the first question, I think 'the fantasy' is the stories that based on imaginations as well as possibilities and there are always wizards, witches, and dragons! hahaha As i read through the lecture note, i found that there are High fantasy & Low fantasy. The high fantasy is the stories that start in the total new world, like Lord of the Ring and A wizard of Earthsea, whereas the low fantasy has the border between our own world and the new world so the characters can come and go two different worlds freely, like Harry Potter.
According to Attebery(1980), I found that there are several definitions of fantasy.
1. "Whatever the material, extravagant or seemingly commonplace, a narrative is a fantasy if it presents the persuasive establishments and development of an impossibility, an arbitrary construct f the mind with all under the contrl of logic and rhetoric." (p.3)
2. "Any narrative which includes as a significant part of its make-up some violation of what the author clearly believes to be natural law." (p.3)
3. "Fantasy treats impossibilities without hesitation, without doubt, wihtout any attempt to reconcile them with our intellectural understanding of the workings of the world or to make us believe that such things could under any circumstances come true." (p.3)
4. "..untilize unconvincing characters and unlikely events, but it makes every effort to place them in a mundane, nonfantastic world." (p.3)
5. "Fantasy is a game of sorts, and it demands that one play whole-heartedly, accepting for the moment all rules and turns of the game." (p.3)
6. "...fantasies which contradict, nor our accepted model of the world, but rather the model generated within the story itself." (p.4)
Question 3. I think it is not good to define the genre by examples because the genre is one of the essential characteristics that we have to consider when we read books or even watch films and some of them could be mixture of two different genres so it would be hard to say in one word- it's a fantasy/SF/comdedy etc...
Attebery (1980) said " i do not believe that it is useful to take the definition of fantasy any further than this. This single condition, that a story treat an impossibility as if it were true, marks off a large body of literature for us; we can then seek to determine the characteristics of that body as a whole and of the various subdivisions we may wish to make within it." (p.4)
Hi guys, I agree with what you guays said about definition of fantasy.
As Deli said, in fantasy we can always find people who can do magic tricks and as Attebery(1980) says there are magical object: rings,hats.... possess.
Like Hanna, I am not huge fan of fantasy but i was thinking the reasons why a lot of people are crazy about fantasy fictions or films like Lord of the ring or Harry porter. I think it's because we cannot have that kind of experienves and that can't can be happend in real life.
According to Attebery (1980)fantasy treats these impossililties without hesitation, without doubt without any attempt to reconcile them with out intellectual understanding of the workings of the world or to make us believe that such things could under any circumstances come true.(p,3)
What i found the definitions of fantasy according to Attebery(1980) is the exactly same as what Hanna found.
I want to talk about question 6.
When I saw this questions, I was thinking of Harry in Harry Potter, Prodo in lord of the ring and lastly Ged in a wizard of earthsea. These charaters are all hero in that story. I think in fantasy fiction there is always one hero who fights with monsters or dragons like Harry and Ged.
I would like to comment on question 6.I agree with u kristy.I think in most fantasy books or movies there is always a hero.As you mentioned even in Harry porter most of them time Harry is the main character and most people will look up to him because he is a hero and is able to overcome anything.I think i have also considered another thing that most of the heroes in the fantasy world are mainly males and not females.I think male takes that role of being the hero in most fantasy fiction for example in Wizard of earthsea Ged is a boy and he is main hero in this text.Another example would be in Harry porter,Harry is also a boy who is famous and takes most the challenges that come along...whereas females are not so important in the fantasy world as poeple feel that women are weak and so on....I dont whther im out of the topic..but i hp im making sense here...pls feel free to comment.=)
i agree with deli and kirsty said- and..after i read ur comments...i thought about any fantasy that with "girl" or "women" hero...! but can't think of any actually...t.t there were always women or girl characters in the stories but they were not 'main' characters...just supporting main boy or man character! like in a wizard of earthsea - a daughter of the lod Lord of Re Albi. do you guys have any ideas or comments about it? ^^;;
add bit more for my last comment- I found from Tax (2002)that, it said "traditionally there are only four possible roles for women - absent beloved, evil witch, damsel in distress and girl warrior" (p.13) which i quite agree with as well ^^*
According to Leguinn, the fantasy starts with "empty" noun which gave me a big impression with this description! It means that the events or places in the story are not existable. For example, for the story of 'a wizard of earthsea' she said " I drew the map but i didn't know anything about each island till i well to it" (http://www.ursulakleguin.com/ PlausibilityinFantasy.html)
And then there is a detail which are 'more realistic, exact and factual' so it could be more believable world. Therefore, the fantasy could be called as "imaginative fiction" which is pretty logical.
However, the article says that SF, the realistic fiction, tends to be more inconsistent comparing with our reality.
Hi,deli and hanna I agree with your opinions about fantasy, you got the point!
I think hanna's point about high fantasy and low fantasy is quite interesting, it's new for me!
The typical fantasies are Lord of ring, Harry porter which are very popular nowadays; while A wizard of Earthses is less popular since Le Guinn writes follow her own way rather than to cater to the market, according to Tax(2002).
I also found that impossible, grotesque things such as trees can talk, people have super magic are pervaded in fantasy gerne. There is a secondary world in fantasy.
I was quite surprised when I found some gender depiction in a Wizard of Eeathsea becuase the author is also woman but she wrote like women don't have as much power as men and are less clver then men.
For example, any witch knows a few of these words in the Old Speech and a mage know many. (p.51) Witch is a woman magician and mage is a man, so it means men knows more than women.
Here is another example for gender depiction.
'This is my sister,the youngest of us,prettier than i am as you see, but much less clever.
'Lord wizard'.....her head and hid her eyes with her hands to show respect as woman did in the East Reach. (p,144,145)
From this example, I realised that in the East Reach women have to respect men. Addition to this, men think that women are not as clever as men.
But,magic true magic, is worked only by thoes beings who speak the Hardic tongue of Earthsea, or the Old Speech from which it grew. (p,50) From example above, we can see the race depiction that only hardic language speakers can do real magic.
Hi, girls I totally agree with all of your opinions about the main characters in fantasy. It's really hard to find a female main character form fantasy genre,they rather appear as accompaniments. Reversely, male always appear as the hero who has power to save people.
I also quite surprised when i noticed Le guinn's depiction for race and gender- As Kirsty said, it was more surprising because the writer was a women...! I think Kirsty got the points so i just want to add little bit more...^^;;
For the race (even language) depiction, it says "Hardic" is better than others - " ...true magic, is worked only by those beings who speak the Hardic tongue of Earthsea.." (p.50)
Also , when Ged met Vetch he described him as "He had the accent of the East Reach, and was very dark of skin, not red-brown like Ged and Jasper...but black-brown." (p.43) & Vetch's sister "..dark like her brother.." (p.145) which show the sense of differences by color of skin.
Another example for the gender point of view could be a Ged's aunt who doesn't have full power of magic as a witch as well as Serret who was bit oppressed by her husband Lord of the Terrenon. (p.113)
According to Tax(2002), Earthsea is still relevant because it leads readers to freer and more imaginative world which could provide some vitality in ordinary life of people.
"..they lead one to think and feel outside of regular realistic patterens and the details of everyday life, laying depth charges that bring up long-forgotten reveries of childhood, unrecognized forms of heroism, secret challenges to power." & "they let the wind into our imaginations and help to set us free" (p.16)
Hi, all I want to give some comments on question 1 and 2.
I think that Attebery (1980) gives the definition of fantasy step by step. First of all, he gives some examples of fantasy such as well-known the Alice books, the Lord of the ring, etc. Then, Attebery points out some essential characteristics of fantasy. As Attebery cites from W.R.Irwin, the primary feature of fantasy is “an overt violation of what is generally accepted as possibility” Attebery also points out that fantasy is the narratives that have considerable parts of scenes which violate the natural law. Impossible characters, objects or events are treated straightforward in fantasy genre. Moreover, fantasy needs consistency to enable reader commit their “secondary believes” and accept the impossibilities. What is more, as Attebery states, fantasy is a game of sorts, which requires reader to indulge with it whole-heartedly.
Hi, Kristy, Hanna You mentioned about the gender depiction in A Wizard of Earthsea, I have the same feeling as you. It’s quite surprising me that female characters are depicted as less intelligent than men, they can’t have the full power of magic, and it’s wrote by a female writer! I think this is likely because of the traditional concept of this sort of book, which give women four possible roles only: absent beloved, evil witch, damsel in distress and girl warrior, according to Tax (2002).
Hey gals...yeah agree with u all too..yes hanna i think female take different types of roles such as evil witch...like for example in the first narnia movie..it can be seen that a lazy played the role of being an evil witch,but i dont see them carrying a good role...yeah even in earthsae they did mentioned about that girl but she was not the highlight of this fiction.it was mostly the guy...As i mentioned before maybe people prefer a guy to take up that role of being a hero..as they appear to be strong,goodlooking,wise and so on
hey gals, i would like to comment on question 8.I think Tax mentioneed in some areas of why The eathsea is relavant to day.In one part of the text Tax(2002)suggest that tale of earth sea "are books by a master stylist writing at the height of her powers".I think overeall a good style of writing is needed in fantasy fiction.Fantasy novels are all about imagination.I think a writer shoud know how to be creative and have an interesting imagination in order to produce a good fantasy fiction.what do u all think??
Hi, Deli, I agree with your opinion about question 8. According to Tax (2002), fantasy creates people's imagination and it's the writer's vision of the world. The Earthsea lead reader to imagine the other side of the realistic and everyday life, to build a balanced Taoist "second world". In such second world which Earthsea created, light and dark, life and death are intertwined rather than opposed. I think that in this way Earthsea may still be relevant today.
According to Le Guinn(http://www.ursulakleguin.com/ plausibilityinfantasy.html), plausibility is vital for fantasy. In her writing, the ideas, purposes or policies are followed by the story. She believes that the fantasy writer should use their imagination and belieives to creat a bodily world,to make such second imagined world plausible. Slso they follow strict coherence to keep the plausiblity of the world they created.
23 comments:
1. How has fantasy as a genre been defined?
2. Find at least five formative definitions in Attebery (1980).
3. According to Attebery, Can the genre legitimately be defined by examples?
4. How do English and American
constructions of fantasy diverge, according to Attebery?
5. How is science fiction different from
fantasy, according to Le Guinn (http://www.ursulakleguin.com/ PlausibilityinFantasy.html)?
6. Can you identify any common fantasy meta-narratives from your own reading/viewing? What
are some archetypes (e.g. common character types)of fantasy fiction?
7. Note while you are
reading A Wizard of Earthsea Le Guinn’s depiction of race and gender. Is there anything
surprising in this? Why?
8. In what ways does Tax (2002) suggest Earthsea may still be relevant today?
Fantasy is a "genre that uses magic or supernatural forms"(wikipedia 2008).For example,
Lord of the rings,The Hobbit,Harry porter,The chronicals of Narnia and so on.These are book wirtten by poeple who have an inspiration of fantasy.According to Attebery(1980) he states that the fantasy nature is like for example "dragons, flying horses,or shape shifting men" or magical obejects such as hats,rings,voices and so on are all part of fantasy.One good example would be from 'Wizard of earth sea'.This is obviosuly a fantasy text and in most of the chapters, it talks about how this young boy called Duny learnt how to use magic.As you read futher on it can be seen that there are unknown creatures and dragons which are included in the story.For instance in chapter 3
pg 529(line 20-25)"The creatures are found only on four southern isles...."
This is basically an idea of what fantasy is all about and this is my view point...what do you gals think??
I agree with your concept for the fantasy~ Deli ^^* good point!
To be honest, i'm not a big fan of fatasy stories... but i'm quite enjoyiing reading 'a wizard of earthsea'! What about you gals?~^^
So! for the first question, I think 'the fantasy' is the stories that based on imaginations as well as possibilities and there are always wizards, witches, and dragons! hahaha
As i read through the lecture note, i found that there are High fantasy & Low fantasy. The high fantasy is the stories that start in the total new world, like Lord of the Ring and A wizard of Earthsea, whereas the low fantasy has the border between our own world and the new world so the characters can come and go two different worlds freely, like Harry Potter.
According to Attebery(1980), I found that there are several definitions of fantasy.
1. "Whatever the material, extravagant or seemingly commonplace, a narrative is a fantasy if it presents the persuasive establishments and development of an impossibility, an arbitrary construct f the mind with all under the contrl of logic and rhetoric." (p.3)
2. "Any narrative which includes as a significant part of its make-up some violation of what the author clearly believes to be natural law." (p.3)
3. "Fantasy treats impossibilities without hesitation, without doubt, wihtout any attempt to reconcile them with our intellectural understanding of the workings of the world or to make us believe that such things could under any circumstances come true." (p.3)
4. "..untilize unconvincing characters and unlikely events, but it makes every effort to place them in a mundane, nonfantastic world." (p.3)
5. "Fantasy is a game of sorts, and it demands that one play whole-heartedly, accepting for the moment all rules and turns of the game." (p.3)
6. "...fantasies which contradict, nor our accepted model of the world, but rather the model generated within the story itself." (p.4)
Question 3.
I think it is not good to define the genre by examples because the genre is one of the essential characteristics that we have to consider when we read books or even watch films and some of them could be mixture of two different genres so it would be hard to say in one word- it's a fantasy/SF/comdedy etc...
Attebery (1980) said " i do not believe that it is useful to take the definition of fantasy any further than this. This single condition, that a story treat an impossibility as if it were true, marks off a large body of literature for us; we can then seek to determine the characteristics of that body as a whole and of the various subdivisions we may wish to make within it." (p.4)
Hi guys, I agree with what you guays said about definition of fantasy.
As Deli said, in fantasy we can always find people who can do magic tricks and as Attebery(1980) says there are magical object: rings,hats.... possess.
Like Hanna, I am not huge fan of fantasy but i was thinking the reasons why a lot of people are crazy about fantasy fictions or films like Lord of the ring or Harry porter. I think it's because we cannot have that kind of experienves and that can't can be happend in real life.
According to Attebery (1980)fantasy treats these impossililties without hesitation, without doubt without any attempt to reconcile them with out intellectual understanding of the workings of the world or to make us believe that such things could under any circumstances come true.(p,3)
What i found the definitions of fantasy according to Attebery(1980) is the exactly same as what Hanna found.
I want to talk about question 6.
When I saw this questions, I was thinking of Harry in Harry Potter, Prodo in lord of the ring and lastly Ged in a wizard of earthsea. These charaters are all hero in that story. I think in fantasy fiction there is always one hero who fights with monsters or dragons like Harry and Ged.
Hey everyone,
I would like to comment on question 6.I agree with u kristy.I think in most fantasy books or movies there is always a hero.As you mentioned even in Harry porter most of them time Harry is the main character and most people will look up to him because he is a hero and is able to overcome anything.I think i have also considered another thing that most of the heroes in the fantasy world are mainly males and not females.I think male takes that role of being the hero in most fantasy fiction for example in Wizard of earthsea Ged is a boy and he is main hero in this text.Another example would be in Harry porter,Harry is also a boy who is famous and takes most the challenges that come along...whereas females are not so important in the fantasy world as poeple feel that women are weak and so on....I dont whther im out of the topic..but i hp im making sense here...pls feel free to comment.=)
i agree with deli and kirsty said- and..after i read ur comments...i thought about any fantasy that with "girl" or "women" hero...! but can't think of any actually...t.t there were always women or girl characters in the stories but they were not 'main' characters...just supporting main boy or man character! like in a wizard of earthsea - a daughter of the lod Lord of Re Albi.
do you guys have any ideas or comments about it? ^^;;
add bit more for my last comment-
I found from Tax (2002)that, it said "traditionally there are only four possible roles for women - absent beloved, evil witch, damsel in distress and girl warrior" (p.13) which i quite agree with as well ^^*
I wanna talk about 'Question 5"-
According to Leguinn, the fantasy starts with "empty" noun which gave me a big impression with this description! It means that the events or places in the story are not existable.
For example, for the story of 'a wizard of earthsea' she said " I drew the map but i didn't know anything about each island till i well to it" (http://www.ursulakleguin.com/ PlausibilityinFantasy.html)
And then there is a detail which are 'more realistic, exact and factual' so it could be more believable world. Therefore, the fantasy could be called as "imaginative fiction" which is pretty logical.
However, the article says that SF, the realistic fiction, tends to be more inconsistent comparing with our reality.
Hi,deli and hanna
I agree with your opinions about fantasy, you got the point!
I think hanna's point about high fantasy and low fantasy is quite interesting, it's new for me!
The typical fantasies are Lord of ring, Harry porter which are very popular nowadays; while A wizard of Earthses is less popular since Le Guinn writes follow her own way rather than to cater to the market, according to Tax(2002).
I also found that impossible, grotesque things such as trees can talk, people have super magic are pervaded in fantasy gerne. There is a secondary world in fantasy.
I was quite surprised when I found some gender depiction in a Wizard of Eeathsea becuase the author is also woman but she wrote like women don't have as much power as men and are less clver then men.
For example,
any witch knows a few of these words in the Old Speech and a mage know many. (p.51)
Witch is a woman magician and mage is a man, so it means men knows more than women.
Here is another example for gender depiction.
'This is my sister,the youngest of us,prettier than i am as you see, but much less clever.
'Lord wizard'.....her head and hid her eyes with her hands to show respect as woman did in the East Reach. (p,144,145)
From this example, I realised that in the East Reach women have to respect men. Addition to this, men think that women are not as clever as men.
But,magic true magic, is worked only by thoes beings who speak the Hardic tongue of Earthsea, or the Old Speech from which it grew.
(p,50)
From example above, we can see the race depiction that only hardic language speakers can do real magic.
Hi, girls
I totally agree with all of your opinions about the main characters in fantasy. It's really hard to find a female main character form fantasy genre,they rather appear as accompaniments. Reversely, male always appear as the hero who has power to save people.
I also quite surprised when i noticed Le guinn's depiction for race and gender-
As Kirsty said, it was more surprising because the writer was a women...!
I think Kirsty got the points so i just want to add little bit more...^^;;
For the race (even language) depiction, it says "Hardic" is better than others - " ...true magic, is worked only by those beings who speak the Hardic tongue of Earthsea.." (p.50)
Also , when Ged met Vetch he described him as "He had the accent of the East Reach, and was very dark of skin, not red-brown like Ged and Jasper...but black-brown." (p.43) & Vetch's sister "..dark like her brother.." (p.145) which show the sense of differences by color of skin.
Another example for the gender point of view could be a Ged's aunt who doesn't have full power of magic as a witch as well as Serret who was bit oppressed by her husband Lord of the Terrenon. (p.113)
According to Tax(2002), Earthsea is still relevant because it leads readers to freer and more imaginative world which could provide some vitality in ordinary life of people.
"..they lead one to think and feel outside of regular realistic patterens and the details of everyday life, laying depth charges that bring up long-forgotten reveries of childhood, unrecognized forms of heroism, secret challenges to power." &
"they let the wind into our imaginations and help to set us free" (p.16)
Hi, all
I want to give some comments on question 1 and 2.
I think that Attebery (1980) gives the definition of fantasy step by step. First of all, he gives some examples of fantasy such as well-known the Alice books, the Lord of the ring, etc. Then, Attebery points out some essential characteristics of fantasy. As Attebery cites from W.R.Irwin, the primary feature of fantasy is “an overt violation of what is generally accepted as possibility” Attebery also points out that fantasy is the narratives that have considerable parts of scenes which violate the natural law. Impossible characters, objects or events are treated straightforward in fantasy genre. Moreover, fantasy needs consistency to enable reader commit their “secondary believes” and accept the impossibilities. What is more, as Attebery states, fantasy is a game of sorts, which requires reader to indulge with it whole-heartedly.
Hi, Kristy, Hanna
You mentioned about the gender depiction in A Wizard of Earthsea, I have the same feeling as you. It’s quite surprising me that female characters are depicted as less intelligent than men, they can’t have the full power of magic, and it’s wrote by a female writer! I think this is likely because of the traditional concept of this sort of book, which give women four possible roles only: absent beloved, evil witch, damsel in distress and girl warrior, according to Tax (2002).
Hey gals...yeah agree with u all too..yes hanna i think female take different types of roles such as evil witch...like for example in the first narnia movie..it can be seen that a lazy played the role of being an evil witch,but i dont see them carrying a good role...yeah even in earthsae they did mentioned about that girl but she was not the highlight of this fiction.it was mostly the guy...As i mentioned before maybe people prefer a guy to take up that role of being a hero..as they appear to be strong,goodlooking,wise and so on
opps sorry gals...made a mistake...lady and not lazy...ehehehe...
hey gals, i would like to comment on question 8.I think Tax mentioneed in some areas of why The eathsea is relavant to day.In one part of the text Tax(2002)suggest that tale of earth sea "are books by a master stylist writing at the height of her powers".I think overeall a good style of writing is needed in fantasy fiction.Fantasy novels are all about imagination.I think a writer shoud know how to be creative and have an interesting imagination in order to produce a good fantasy fiction.what do u all think??
Hi, Deli,
I agree with your opinion about question 8.
According to Tax (2002), fantasy creates people's imagination and it's the writer's vision of the world. The Earthsea lead reader to imagine the other side of the realistic and everyday life, to build a balanced Taoist "second world". In such second world which Earthsea created, light and dark, life and death are intertwined rather than opposed. I think that in this way Earthsea may still be relevant today.
According to Le Guinn(http://www.ursulakleguin.com/
plausibilityinfantasy.html), plausibility is vital for fantasy. In her writing, the ideas, purposes or policies are followed by the story. She believes that the fantasy writer should use their imagination and belieives to creat a bodily world,to make such second imagined world plausible. Slso they follow strict coherence to keep the plausiblity of the world they created.
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