|
Romanticism[edit]
Lord Byron's Manfred
In reaction to Enlightenment's cult of Reason, Romanticism highly prized the supernatural, tradition and imagination, together with the age in which they were supposed to rule - Middle Ages. These traits readily borrowed traditional elements of the fantastic. The Romantics invoked the medieval romance as justification for the works they wanted to produce, in distinction from the realistic pressure of the Enlightenment; these were not always fantastic, sometimes being merely unlikely to happen, but the justification was used even from fantasy.[13]
One of the first literary results of this fascinations was Gothic novel, a literary genre that began in Britain with The Castle of Otranto(1764) by Horace Walpole. It is the predecessor to both modern fantasy and modern horror fiction and, above all, has led to the common definition of "gothic" as being connected to the dark and horrific.[7] Prominent features of gothic novels included terror, mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted buildings, castles, trapdoors, doom, death, decay, madness, hereditary curses, and so on. The fantastic, dream-like atmosphere pervaded the genre at this point.[14] Gothic tales permitted, but did not require, an element of the supernatural. Some stories appeared to contain such elements and then explained them away. The genre straddled the border between fantasy and non-fantasy, but many elements from it, particularly the houses of particular import, being ancient, owned by nobles, and often endowed with legends, were incorporated in modern fantasy.[15]
Of particular importance to the development of the genre was that the Gothic writers used novelistic techniques and love, such as Defoe was using, rather than the literary style of the romance, and also began to use the landscape for purposes of expressing the characters' moods.[16]
On the other hand, the Gothic still held back the pure fantasy. In The Castle of Otranto, Walpole presented the work as a translation; the fictitious original author is therefore responsible for its fantasical elements, which Walpole distances himself from.[17] One noted Gothic novel which also contains a large amount of fantasy elements (derived from the "Arabian Nights") is Vathek by William Thomas Beckford.[18]
The Romantic interest in medievalism also resulted in a revival of interest in the literary fairy tale. The tradition begun with Giovanni Francesco Straparola and Giambattista Basile and developed by the Charles Perrault and the French précieuses, was taken up by the German Romantic movement. Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué created medieval-set stories such as Undine (1811)[19] and Sintram and his Companions (1815) which would later inspire British writers such as MacDonald and Morris.[20][21] E. T. A. Hoffmann's tales, such as "The Golden Pot" (1814) and "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (1816) were notable additions to the canon of German fantasy. [22] Ludwig Tieck's collection Phantasus (1812-1817) contained several short fairy tales, including "The Elves".[23]
In France, the main writers of Romantic-era fantasy were Charles Nodier, with Smarra (1821) and Trilby (1822) [24][25] and Théophile Gautier in stories such as "Omphale" (1834) and "One of Cleopatra's Nights" (1838), and the later novel Spirite (1866).[26][27]
In Britain, Sara Coleridge also wrote a fantasy novel, Phantasmion (1837), described as ""the first fairytale novel written in English".[28][29]
Modern fantasy[edit]
The modern fantasy genre first took root during the 18th century with the increased popularity of fictional travelers' tales, influencing and being influenced by other early forms of speculative fiction along the way, finally unfurling in the 19th century from a literary tapestry of fantastic stories and gaining recognition as a distinct genre (mainly due to the nigh-ubiquitous recession of fantastic elements from "mainstream" fiction) in the late 19th century.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
