Joe Week 3

How does Attebery (1980) define Fantasy? Find at least five definitions. 


Fantasy presupposes a view of exterior reality which it goes on to contract.  It is that any narrative which includes as a significant part of its make-up some violation of natural law.  It can involve beings whose existence is impossible, like dragons, flying horses, or shape-shifting humans.  It can revolve around magical objects, like rings hats, or castles that possess wills, voices, mobility and other qualities that these inanimate objects do not possibly possess.  It can manifest the violation of fundamental assumptions or logic about matter and life so that two people can painlessly exchange heads, a tree can grab passers-by with its branches.  Fantasy is a game that demands one party wholeheartedly accepting all rules and turns of the game while in it.  Fantasy invokes wonder by making the impossible seem familiar and the familiar seem new and strange.   To engage attention, fantasy generates suspense, presents characters' fates, appeals to our senses, and calls forth human longings and fears.  It also can engage us intellectually and morally by presenting the clash of ideas and issues in simple and concrete form.  It can clarify philosophical and moral conflicts, embodying them in story lines that can please or inspire and give comprehensive form to life, death, good, and evil.

I have attempted to find five definitions but only be able to re-iterate from the notes provided: (Attebery, 1980:2-9)

1. "the primary feature (of fantasy), without which a work simply cannot be fantasy, is "an overt violation of what is generally accepted as possibility."
2. "Fantasy .... presupposes a view of exterior reality which it goes on to contradict."
3. "Any narrative which includes as a significant part of its make-up some violation of what the author clearly believes to be natural law - that is fantasy." 
4. "Fantasy is a game of sorts, and it demands that one plays whole-heartedly, accepting for the moment all rules and turns of the game." 
5. "fantasy ....contradicts, not our accepted model of the world, but rather the model generated within the story itself. .... more generally termed nonsense or absurdity; it involves periodic overturning of the ground rules of the fiction."
6. Fantasy invokes wonder by making the impossible seem familiar seem new and strange."

References
Attebery, B. (1980). The Fantasy Tradition In American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin.  
       Bloomington: Indian University Press, 1980.