"Identity and Individuality of Derivative Fictions", shared on Academia

I have finished the translation of "Identity and Individuality of Derivative Fictions". Modified version of this study is shared on Academia divided in 4 segments. Please refer to the links below.

https://www.academia.edu/114744009/Identity_and_Individuality_of_Derivative_Fictions_Fictional_Archetype_and_Equivalency_of_a_Movie_to_the_Original_Novel_1

https://www.academia.edu/114922302/Identity_and_Individuality_of_Derivative_Fictions_Fictional_Archetype_and_Equivalency_of_a_Movie_to_the_Original_Novel_2

https://www.academia.edu/115238897/Identity_and_Individuality_of_Derivative_Fictions_3

https://www.academia.edu/115450956/Identity_and_Individuality_of_Derivative_Fictions_Fictional_Archetype_and_Equivalency_of_a_Movie_to_the_Original_Novel_4


My next post will be Fantasy as Antifantasy, a study of the inception of fantasy literature, in which Peter and Wendy and The Last Unicorn are to be discussed for their metafictional peculiarities, based on the consciousness function against the background of Holarchy Universe and the implication of fictionality in it.


Fantasy as Antifantasy

1 Transformation of Fantasy and Irony

It is only towards the end of the 20th century that the literary genre of fantasy seems to have gained its rightful citizenship in the field of literary research. For example, it is precisely because Brian Attebery actively evaluated the existence of fantasy literature as one of the established methods of literary expression, that he tried to trace the trajectory of such a thing as “the tradition of fantasy literature in the United States”, in The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin, (1980). As the subtitle of this study suggests, the scope of the “tradition” covered by this book goes back to Washington Irving, and after Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, with L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, as a turning point, he traces the existence of Ray Bradbury and others after Oz, in the line of “Baum tradition”. By acknowledging the existence of Ursula K. Le Guin’s works as one of the most complete forms of fantasy in modern times, the study completes the course of the development of fantasy literature in the United States up to 1980.
　Prior to this, there had been several research books that dealt with fantasy works, but they took the form of genre criticism rather than trying to evaluate the literary value of the works themselves, and regarded the existence of fantasy as a cultural phenomenon, deeming it an object of psychological study. It is an undeniable fact that those who tried to deal with fantasy were doing the job within the framework of social phenomena analysis.
It is true that there have been arguments in defense of fantasy for a long time. C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien adopted the term “sub-creation” to evaluate the significance of creative activity as a means of positive escapism to observe the real world. But it is safe to say that their arguments were not strictly literary theories based on systematic arguments by literary scholars, but rather were made from the subjective standpoint of those actually involved in the creation of fantasy literature. (note)

note:
Tolkien himself did not use the word “fantasy” to refer to his works. In his lecture “On Fairy-Stories” (1938), in which he defended his literary career, he used the term “fairy-story” to refer to his ideal work. This is probably in line with George McDonald’s adoption of the term “fairytale” in “The Fantastic Imagination,” which also describes his motivation for creation. Incidentally, Tolkien’s comrade C.S. Lewis used the term “science fiction” to describe the specific genre, but the adjective “fantastic” is also used in his essay. He divides what is commonly referred to as science fiction into several subcategories, some impeaching and others defending, but he cites some of the works published in the American magazine Fantasy and Science Fiction as examples of what is of particular interest to him. It has elements that depict supernatural subjects imaginatively. (“On Science Fiction”, in Other Worlds, 1975. p. 67）
The Oxford English Dictionary also lists the first occurrence of the word “fantasy” as “a genre of literary composition” in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, published in1949. And its further examples include M. F. Rodell’s, “Mystery belongs to the vast category of escapist novels of Western romance, historical fiction, and fantasy other than Satire”, (Mystery Fiction ii. 4, 1954), and F. Brown’s “Fantasy deals with things that don’t and can’t exist, and science fiction deals with things that can exist and will appear someday.” (Angels & Spaceships 9, 1955).


The trend in literary criticism was to dismiss such views as archaic and inappropriate, expressed in such research as Rosemary Jackson’s Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (1981), applying Freudian psychology to them, or to analyze them as social phenomena by structuralist theory, as Tsvetan Todorov did, in The Fantastic (1975).
In particular, Jackson did not try to evaluate Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954-5), which was the beginning of the modern fantasy literature trend, and in the case of Todorov, it can be said that the existence of this work was not at all in his sights. Moreover, what Todorov called “the fantastic” and discussed under the definition of “the hesitation that a person who knows only the law of nature feels when confronted with a seemingly supernatural phenomenon” was not works of fantasy in the general sense, but psychological horror novels that were once popular in France. It was a group of works with very limited specific tendencies, and he chose it as a conclusion, that they tended to disappear sooner or later. This prophecy came off spectacularly, and although it took a somewhat different form from what was the subject of his study, the so-called “fantasy” survived and flourished, and, like Ateberry, there are so many keen researchers who are trying to forcibly unearth the “tradition of fantasy in the United States,” which is in fact somewhat dubious as to whether it exists or not. Fantasy has become a central body in literary trend in the second half of the 20th century.
　In many respects, Attebery’s The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin, was a landmark study. He regarded Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as the epitome of fantasy literature and sought to positively evaluate contemporary fantasy works under direct influence of this creation. Whether accept Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings or not as a valuable work of literature, will be an important indicator of the viewpoint of the consideration of fantasy. It is noteworthy that Edmund Wilson refused to acknowledge the literary merit of The Lord of the Rings, which caused the fantasy craze in the United States. (note)

note:
Ref., Edmund Wilson, “Oo, Those Awful Orcs!” Nation 182 (14 April 1956), pp. 312-3


C. N. Manlove, the author of the study of fantasy literature, Modern Fantasy (1975), even though he devoted a chapter on Tolkien, he was completely dismissive of the literary value of this work. Tolkien was either gained ardent fanatical followers, completely ignored, or fiercely criticized. In light of this, Attebery, who tried to dig up the ground in this line, represents one of the perspectives of the acceptance of fantasy in the United States, a country where fantasy has not taken root, who has not only discussed the significance of the American fantasy literature that came to fruition in Le Guin, but also dared to consider the “fantasy tradition” in the United States before Tolkien’s influence, by placing Tolkien’s existence as the core of fantasy literature and taking up the works of fantasy writers such as Ray Bradbury up to 1980.
　To put it simply, however, though Attebery accepted fantasy favorably, he misunderstood the essence of it. That is, though Attebery was attempting to discuss fantasy in the broadest sense of the term, he failed to grasp the phenomenon revealed as fantasy in the most subtle and strict sense of its literary genre.
　In the first place, it is a fact that is often pointed out that the term fantasy is a very difficult thing to give a definition. Attebery himself later wrote a new book, Strategies of Fantasy (1992), in which he begins his argument as follows:

CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING DEFINITIONS:
　　　　
1. Fantasy is a form of popular escapist literature that combines stock characters and devices—wizards, dragons, magic sword, and the like—into a predictable plot in which the perennially understaffed forces of good triumph over a monolithic evil.
　　　　
2. Fantasy is a sophisticated mode of storytelling characterized by stylistic playfulness, self-reflexiveness, and a subversive treatment of established orders of society and thought. Arguably the major fictional mode of the late twentieth century, it draws upon contemporary ideas about sign systems and the indeterminacy of meaning and at the same time recaptures the vitality and freedom of nonmimetic traditional forms such as epic, folktale, romance, and myth.
p.1


And Attebery is prepared to make an equally convincing defense for both of these contradictory definitions. This is what the term fantasy means to Attebery at this point, and they are the two ends of its spectrum. And it goes without saying that this tolerance is the quality that should be most evaluated of Attebery as a critic. But when he wrote The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin, Attebery thought he would never talk about it again. However, in 1992, he was forced to reconsider the problematic nature of this genre while keeping in mind the concepts of postmodernism and metafiction with these as the main subject of fantasy. This would have been a change in the times since the 1980s, and it would have also been the development of Attebery’s own understanding of fantasy literature. However, what if we say that the literary genre that we now call fantasy has had such a problematic character from its very inception? Attebery rightly traces the emergence of fantasy literature from the fairy tales of German Romanticism. Certainly, there is a close relationship between German Romantics and fantasy movement, as is asserted in Marianne Thalmann’s The Romantic Fairy Tale (1964). It was the British fantasy writer George MacDonald, who became widely known thanks to Lewis’ evaluation, who influenced both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, who were the catalysts for the revival of fantasy in the 20th century. MacDonald was directly influenced by the German Romantics, and succeeded in opening up his own horizon in his works, which could be called the source of modern fantasy literature. Thalmann discussed the literary fairy tale movement (Kunst Märchen) attempted by the German Romantics, in the context of the reconsideration of Romanticism in the modern era and its influence on surrealism. In fact, wasn’t it the fantasy works represented by McDonald’s that have taken a more modern form, including the problematic nature of these philosophical speculative thoughts? McDonald should be considered the founder of what is called “fantasy” in modern days. In addition to the manifestation of the transcendental fantasy inherited by Tolkien and Lewis, whose main goal was to create other worlds as sub-creation, there must have been another extremely ironic mechanism hidden in the presentational mode of fiction that must not be overlooked.