Part 1, Essay: Two Centuries of Fantasy
Fantasy as a genre, seminal works and all, wasn’t strictly defined until the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series (BAFS) beginning in 1969 (Williamson, 2015); however, it has long existed as a cultural response to entering the industrial age, and emerging from a mythologised past. While Tolkien’s work is regarded as perhaps the most influential writings in the genre, it alone does not define fantasy: fantasy has existed, under other names, for a long time and persists in a continually evolving form. This essay will examine fantasy’s history through two texts: The Fellowship of the Ring (TFR) (Tolkien, 1990) and Legends & Lattes (L&L) (Baldree, 2022).
Ziarnik (2015, p. 5) puts forward the 1851 World’s Fair in London as the spark that lit up a cultural fascination with a ‘mixed genre of fantasy and science’, owing to the fantastical inventions and wonders of the world showcased for the first time to the average Londoner. One visitor was Lewis Carroll, who went on to publish Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, and he was followed by a group of thematically related but loosely connected authors such as William Morris, who would later be a prime inspiration of Tolkien (Murphy, 2019). This series of events can be thought of as anticipating Tolkien’s variety of fantasy, in that they invited England to engage with the idea of the impossible.
J. R. R. Tolkien exposited much of his thinking on the fantasy genre in his lectures, and he had expressed that he ‘regretted that England lacked its own mythology’; this is what Chen (2007, p. 400) calls the ‘impulse’ for Tolkien’s ‘mythopoeia of Silmarillion and the Ring Trilogy’. Tolkien’s taste for dense mythology and history can be seen in TFR (Tolkien, 1990, p. 15), in which he devotes 20 pages to the history of ‘Hobbits, and other matters’—the extent of the impact of this is merely understanding some scattered cultural references in the novel proper. Tolkien’s work was firmly rooted in a desire to fill a mythological gap in England, spurred on by a culture that had begun romanticising its fantastical past in literature as they moved into modernity.
Along with a preoccupation for mythology, Tolkien’s experiences living through the Great War come through consistently in his writing, from the plot of regular people campaigning against an evil army, to the allegorical characters. Martine (2023, p. 5) argues that Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee ‘both represent a reflection of British soldiers from World War I’—identifying, among other evidence, Frodo’s fear at Gandalf’s information about the armies of Sauron but longing for adventure, Sam’s implementation as an intentional analogy of the good men Tolkien served with, and the way the two characters bond during their traumatic journey. Tolkien served as a Second Lieutenant in the British Army after graduating from Oxford University, in June 1915 (Imperial War Museum, n.d.). From the formation of the plot to the characters, World War I evidently shaped Tolkien’s body of work into including gritty, realistic depictions of trauma.
The cultural background behind Tolkien’s fantasy and its contributions to the genre can be tracked, for a time, parallel to sword-and-sorcery fantasy (SASF). In 1923, J. C. Henneberger created the Weird Tales magazine, a collection of literature from emerging authors in ‘the realms of fantasy, [and] the bizarre’ (Holmes, 2015, p. 63). This outlet would result in the classic fantasy stories that emerged from ‘supernatural adventure fiction’, slowly migrating from historical to imagined worlds, focusing on morally grey heroes battling magical adversaries. This was the birth of SASF, including the supremely important Conan series by Robert E. Howard. The genre would leave the public’s eye for decades after Howard’s death, but eventually be integral in the diversification of fantasy literature.
In the 1960s and ‘70s, Conan returned in the form of comic books that enraptured the public—publishers were scrambling for more SASF to print and emulate Conan; after the original well of authors ran dry, ‘Ace Books published their unauthorized paperback edition (of the Lord of the Rings) in early 1965’ (Williamson, 2015, p. 2) in an attempt to capture the same market. They were subsequently sued by the Tolkien estate, who then officially reprinted the trilogy, and ‘it became a bona fide bestseller’ (p. 3). The BAFS assembled the first ‘informal canon’ (p. 5) of fantasy authors, connecting SASF and Tolkien’s work within the genre: fantasy was finally defined, and composed of a myriad of works that could now be defined and analysed as a concrete category.
Among fantasy’s new fans, two crucial individuals—Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson—would form Tactical Studies Rules in 1974 to release Dungeons & Dragons (D&D): a tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) designed to capture then-contemporary fantasy in an interactive form (Wlosek, 2023). D&D has inspired a canon of works including L&L by Travis Baldree (2023), a grouping usually defined by ‘stereotypical usage of characters, either their race or class, and of the addition of major cliches known in the TTRPG space’ (Wlosek, 2023, p. 6). However, the difference between L&L and its predecessors lies in the period of their inception. A reflection of changing times, D&D’s developers announced in 2020 that they were removing the use of the term ‘race’ in favour of ‘species’ in their books, amid the protests following George Floyd’s death (p. 30) and the Black Lives Matter movement—which was in favour of dismantling racist institutions.
Other significant and contemporary events in the battle for civil rights included the legalisation of gay marriage (Glad, 2015) and the inception of the #metoo movement against sexual violence, particularly against patriarchal sexual violence towards women (Me Too, n.d). L&L (Baldree, 2023) stands in defiance of the problematic history of fantasy novels and their portrayals of racism, sexism and sexual assault, and queerphobia—it establishes a new, more welcoming fantasy space with its lesbian Orc protagonist, Viv, and the ‘destined cadre’ (p. 242) of likewise diverse characters surrounding her. L&L stands in stark contrast to TFR, with its emphasis on a cosy, inclusive adventure, rather than creating a mythological story about the strength and weaknesses of men.
Fantasy: a genre defined by fascination with mythology, as the world industrialises itself further away from its fantastical past. Altered and expanded by the cultures and people who would come to write within it, fantasy has expanded from the fantasy of a privileged few into the fictional retreat of all who desire its comfort. From the reflective and mythological novels of Tolkien to the entertaining and comforting novels of Baldree, fantasy has and will continue to evolve.
Part 2: Personal Reflection
Fantasy is my comfort. Like a faithful pet dog, it’s always been there for me. I was already excited to attend this class before learning about the assessments, but they cemented that attitude—being given a semester to analyse fantasy and then write it is a gift. I’d already chosen fantasy as my genre over the other options without hesitation; this class, to me, is the fantasy class (although I love all of our other discussions too). I love the genre, and have spent my whole life reading, writing, watching, and playing fantasy media. Worlds of magic and possibility, where you can be anyone you want, and experience high-stakes, cathartic adventures … They’ve captured my imagination from the moment I could read.
If my influences in fantasy comprised a pantheon, Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim would be its Zeus. Everything in Greek mythology usually comes back to Zeus, and my current situation can always be traced to Skyrim. It jumpstarted my fascination with fantasy—dragons, wizards, warriors, quests and lore—and inspired my writing journey; I attended a writing course in my last few years of primary school, to emulate what I loved about Skyrim. Many other pieces of media fuel and diversify my tastes in fantasy, while presently I’d list D&D, Baldur’s Gate 3, Labyrinth, The Witcher and Vox Machina, as a child that list included Ranger’s Apprentice, The School for Good and Evil, How to Train Your Dragon, and Wolves of the Beyond.
When it comes to my experience writing fantasy, the earliest was ‘Journey’, an unfinished attempt at a novel about adventurers reclaiming an ancestral ring. It included battles, a diverse ensemble cast, and a plot-twist betrayal; it’s fun, despite simplicity, and displays my fantasy preferences.
I have been developing my own D&D worlds for a few years now, and am currently working on a setting called The Rift which I contribute to whenever I have ideas, and has folders and folders of lore. It has a few twists on the usual fantasy formula, including being populated by Australasian fauna (both extant and extinct).
Bordering fantasy and magic realism, I wrote a piece in Swinburne Magazine last semester called The Children of the Night; it’s about a werewolf and the secret vampire she doesn’t know she can trust.
In the process of researching and writing this essay, I learned many things about fantasy—the realisation that Conan is older than Lord of the Rings blew my mind, as did learning about the role H.P Lovecraft had in sword-and-sorcery fantasy, and learning why Lord of the Rings was revived in popularity in the 60s was hilariously ironic. Now that I’ve learned so much about the unique subcategories of fantasy, I feel that I have the ability to consciously choose which I will lean into, or if I mix them, how I will do so. I’m also more conscious now of how being inspired by D&D can limit my storytelling into the tropes and character types defined by the system, and I will be able to identify and address that issue should it present itself in my work. I am now more equipped than ever to write fantasy fiction.
References
Baldree, T. (2022). Legends & lattes (2023 ed.). Tor UK.
Chen, F. (2007). A new periodization of fantastic literature according to Owen Barfield’s evolution of human consciousness and language. Arcadia, 42(2), 397–414. https://doi.org/10.1515/ARCA.2007.022
Glad. (2015). Obergefell v. Hodges: Marriage Equality at the Supreme Court. Retrieved September 20, 2024 from https://www.glad.org/cases/deboer-v-snyder/
Holmes, M. T. (2015) Gothic to cosmic. In Everett, J., & Shanks, J. H. (eds.), The unique legacy of weird tales : the evolution of modern fantasy and horror. Rowman & Littlefield.
Imperial War Museum. (n.d.) Second Lieutenant J R R Tolkien. Retrieved September 20, 2024 from https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/second-lieutenant-j-r-r-tolkien
Martine, B. (2023) Beowulf, the great wars, their allegories, and influence in J.R.R Tolkien’s lord of the rings [Bachelor thesis, UIS]. University of Stavanger. https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3075611
Me Too. (n.d.) History & inception. Retrieved September 20, 2024 from https://metoomvmt.org/get-to-know-us/history-inception/
Tolkien, J. R. R. (1990). The lord of the rings part one the fellowship of the ring (1993 ed.). Harper Collins.
Williamson, J. (2015). The evolution of modern fantasy : From antiquarianism to the Ballantine adult fantasy series (1st ed. 2015.). Palgrave Macmillan US. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137515797
Wlosek, A. M. (2023, May) Characterisation, culture, and canon: fantasy fiction and the rulebooks of dungeons & dragons [Master’s thesis, NTNU]. NTNU Open. https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3078705
Ziarnik, N. (2015). Where fantasy and facts meet. Children & Libraries, 13(2), 5-.
