Dulcie Barker - A Wizard of Earthsea (Fantasy)

How does Attebery define fantasy?

The definition of fantasy is not as straight forward as it would first appear to be. Attebery(1980) notes that there are many ways in which literature can proclaim itself fantastical. One definition of fantasy that Attebery burrows is from the words of W. R. Irwin where it is suggested that the primary feature of fantasy is when an overt violation is made against that which is generally accepted to be possible, or in simpler terms to make what is deemed impossible, possible. Of course this is the definition which resonates with me most. After all, why do we read, watch and listen to fantasy stories? To gain an escape, a break from everyday life around us, broaden our minds and imagine that the world really is an oyster, and anything is possible. Where it is often wonderful to relate to something, it is also equally just as wonderful to be thrown into something completely out of your comfort zone and beyond your imagination.

Although fantasy has this attractive ability to be so extremely far-fetched Attebery adds in Tolkien’s idea that fantasy is “founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun” (pg.3) and that the genre more or less may recognise fact, without becoming bound a slave to its limits. Therein lies a range of fantasy where high fantasy may break factual boundaries, a low fantasy simply gives them a shove.

If we use Ursula Le Guinn’s(1968) fantasy ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’ as an example, we can see that the lands, although fictionally named, are based upon the facts of the Earth’s surface where in the first chapter Le Guinn describes “the island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land…” (pg.13). In addition, her use of real animals also in the first chapter, “the goats came to him… They looked at him out of the dark slot in their yellow eyes” (pg.14), allow the reader to easily visualise the natural surroundings being depicted in the story, as they are already familiar with these concepts. However the story becomes defined a fantasy when Le Guinn supposes that the idea of wizards, witches, spells and sorcery are all possible in her fictional world.  Given the time of release, Le Guinn’s works which see the merge of the possible and the impossible could be said to be a kind of fantasy archetype, making way for modern day fantasies such as Harry Potter, and Bewitched and so on.

References

Attebery, B. (1980). Locating fantasy. The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guinn. Bloomington: Indiana U P

Le Guinn, U. (1993; 1968). A Wizard of Earthsea. In The Earthsea Quartet (pp.13-167). London: Penguin.