30 March

Fantasy as Antifantasy: 11 Postmodernist Strategy of Antifantasy -- The Ridiculous in The Last Unicorn

The audacious revelation of the author’s own attempt to subvert the construction of fictional reality in the process of presenting it, noticeably revealed as ridiculous backstage pranks in The Last Unicorn, which Brian Attebery could not tolerate and attacked severely, is not limited to the parts that Attebery cited as outrageous examples in The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin (1980). This is rather a noteworthy trait that appears throughout The Last Unicorn, assuming various existential aspects of absurdity. The purpose of my study was to explore the possibility of evaluating such presentational devices of revealing fictionality through the process of describing the work, re-examining the ideological characteristics peculiar to fantasy literature and its mode of reality perception. In order to execute this, I have pointed out that the mechanism of correlation between metafiction and deconstruction is functioning targeting the concept and phenomenon of fantasy itself in Peter and Wendy, and is developed as a definite assertion of the existence of antifantasy which is actually the shadow visage of fantasy literature. Let us explore the full extent of the device, which I rather hastily termed “antifantasy” at the beginning of this study, as an attempt to reexamine The Last Unicorn’s postmodernist creative strategy.
An example of the antifantasy tactics that should be noticed at as a starter, is found in the opening passage of The Last Unicorn, which Attebery had cited pointing out the similarity to James Thurber’s The White Deer. This part was introduced by Attebery, using the designation “anticlimactic catalogue”, as “making the subjects depicted in the work both ridiculous and familiar.”

She [unicorn] had killed dragons with it [horn], and healed a king whose poisoned wound would not close, and knocked down ripe chestnut for bear cubs. (note)

note:
Annotated Last Unicorn (Kindaibungei-sha), p. 7
Citations from The Last Unicorn are based on the annotated text of the novel, Annotated Last Unicorn, edited by the author.


“Anticlimax” is a situation in which a description or a scene that is expected to be developed with gradual accumulation of meaning, suddenly stalls at the culmination of it, contrary to the expectations of the reader or the audience, and the initial purpose of the description or depiction is utterly derailed. It is actually one of the classic and traditional rhetoric that results in the use of a sequence or repetition in an ironic manner, disrupting the original intention. Here, as a description of the actions of the mythical unicorn, it is first mentioned that she used her horn to defeat a dragon, a sublime being like her, according to the record of a typological legend. Following this, it is narrated that she used the power of her horn to save the life of a king who was poisoned with a wound that would not be healed, which has become a legendary episode about unicorns to the extent of being normative. And the third mention that is listed as the example that should be expected as the sum of these two attributes, is nothing more than an ordinary and trivial matter, “She knocked down ripe chestnut for bear cubs,” with her horn that is the symbol of unicorns’ existence. This deflating sense was pointed out by Attebery, as the typical example of a series of descriptions leading to “anticlimax.” As Attebery points out, this development certainly makes the subject of the story’s protagonist, the unicorn, “ridiculous and familiar at the same time.” This rhetoric makes a good example of the keynote of a Thurber-style fairy tale, that blends irony and humor dexterously. However, the use of “anticlimax” that is revealed here in The Last Unicorn is actually closely related to the more complex and deep subject matter attempted by this philosophical work, in the deepest layer of its speculative construction. As in the case of Peter and Wendy, Peter S. Beagle’s ambitious fantasy The Last Unicorn cleverly conceals an elaborate magical strategy that stings those who absent-mindedly read fantasy, behind the entire story.

Let’s refocus on the beginning of the story.

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.


The gender of the unicorn, the protagonist of this story, is set as female. This stands in contrast to the image of legendary unicorn, whose horn symbolized the phallus and always carried the image of a male and was considered the guardian of virgins. The unicorn, who consolidates the man principle as the guardian of royal power in orthodox legends, is to be portrayed in this narrative world in a context that advocates the female principle that works for protecting the forest and the earth. The result of this coordinate transformation, renders the act of slaying the dragon as the usurper who endangers the royalty, healing the wounds of a king who is the embodiment of the absolute leadership of the divine bestowal as a protector of his authority and the idyllic behavior of knocking down chestnuts for bear cubs, to be treated as of equivalent value. An ingenious strategic prospect was implied in the rhetorical operation of “anticlimax,” that the patriarchal attributes of unicorns, which had been passed down in conventional myths and legends, would now be reorganized into different value principles in mirror transformation.
It also goes without saying that this view, which is conscious of the subversion of traditional values, daring to overthrow the general typological fantasy perspectives, actually reflects the ideological characteristics of fantasy literature itself, in terms of its thematic aspects. As already pointed out at the beginning of this study, conventional fantasies must be overthrown by their own constant destructive temperament. The casual insertion of the pronoun “she” should be understood as an act of injecting flares to demonstrate a radical self-consciousness of the action of regime subversion contained in fantasy, suggesting the possibility of the emergence of a constantly inverted world picture, centered on the idea of “overturning value systems.” The subversive behavior of irresponsible abandonment of the fictional world in the course of its creation, which Attebery pointed out as examples of the breakdown in the creative strategies of fantasy and science fiction writers, is rather the keynote that encourages the manifestation of self-reflective irony in their works. It eloquently illustrates the subtle significance of the idea of “antifantasy,” which we have established as a keyword for grasping the delicate nature of fantasy.