Supernatural and Fantasy Literature - Essay Example

Fantasy Literature Inserts Inserts Grade Inserts Supernatural and Fantasy Literature Literature deals in many fields such as articles, journals, or narratives, which allow for the occasional use of slang and colloquial phrases. The fantasy literature of subversion seeks to explore on supernatural literature with a Marxism notion and concept of dominance and superiority, in both culture and race. There is the depiction of the impacts of Marxism, psychoanalytic theory and linguistics in literature. The literature of the fanatic is seen as the transcending reality and the construction of an alternative escapee reality, for the satisfaction of and completion of reality. The author of the fantastic literature of subversion, Rosemary Jackson, depicts and explores the use of the transcendentalist approach, theoretical perspectives, and assumptions as the basis of supernatural literature (Marcus, 2006). Supernatural literature involves the tracing of the hidden truths, the unsaid and the unseen of culture that lie unnoticed by the law, and the dominant value system. The reversal of this perspective exposes a situation whereby there is a sudden change in the dominant value system. The marginalized groups take the center stage in the dominant value system, with whatever that was central to the dominant system thrust aside. Supernatural texts tend to reveal the contents of the dominant system and its values, in the perspective of the marginalized (Friesen, 2010). Supernatural literature involves a comprehensive account of debates on the Marxist aesthetics, and proposes that Marxism is the lone major sociological tradition, and that sociology has failed to theorize the phenomenon of art. This argues out on the purpose of Marxism, and the perception on socialism and capitalism. Rosemary explores on the casual connection between the real world and the theories. There is the question of realism, in the perception of knowledge and the scientific inquiry in the real world. Fantasy is both theoretical and descriptive, i.e. comprehensive and scholarly, account of the literature of the literature of the fantastic, and a polemic calling for its recognition as a potentially subversive literature (Zipes, 2011). Supernatural literature explores the characteristic themes of fantasy, i.e. transformations or changes, invisibility, doubles and disappearances. Rosemary Jackson’s Fantasy: The literature of subversion explores questions and interrogates the relationships between reality and unreality, self or not self and conscious and unconscious. This is on the basis of the reversed perspective. The silenced in a dominant value system are covered and made invisible, absent or unavailable. The literature of subversion is based on the perspective of the figure on the margins of the text with an inclusion of the helper in the quest, the secondary character and the perceived donor of magical aid (Rudd, 2012). In supernatural literature there is the portrayal of fundamental anxiety about the limits of reason and consciousness, where there is no creation of alternative worlds. Rather, there is the articulation or description of emptiness experienced during individual confrontations with their desires, based on the perceived impossibility of those desires. This sparks criticism due to the biased use of reversed perception in writing of supernatural literature, and the revelation about supernatural narratives and their roles in disclosure of the invisible and the silenced (Barnet, Burto & Cain, 2011). Rosemary’s fantasy literature of subversion expounds on the notion of character in realistic fiction, arguing out that as long as supernatural literature does not put aside the character and everything implied by the character in terms of illusion and complicity with classical reasoning and the appropriation economy that such reasoning supports, there is continued lock up in the treadmill of production. She seeks to criticize against the vague interpretations of fantasy as mere escapism, and simultaneously tries to explore fantasy as a distinctive narrative. She seeks to explore the use of fantasy, in supernatural literature, in expressing and defining culture, and the connection between individual desires (Barnet, Burto & Cain, 2011). Immersive fantasy in supernatural literature writing encourages individuals to share to sets of assumptions and perceptions, in addition to the real world. It creates interactions between readers and protagonists, with the fantasy presented as a norm to the readers, with no space for comment and no provision of an explanatory narrative to counter the supernatural narrative. Immersive fantasy in supernatural narratives is depicted or portrayed as that which is close to science fiction, with the use of mimeses irony in the explanation of differences between effective immersive fantasy and science fiction. The impact and effectiveness of immersive fantasy depends significantly on the assumption and perception of realism, which eliminates the need for the use of explication(Rancière, & Swenson, 2011). A supernatural literary fantasy is significantly determined by and produced around its social context, in which it struggles through and against the limits, which articulates it per each struggle against the provided limits. Diverse fantastic texts take different forms, as per the number of forces which intersect and interact with it in different ways along individual works. Authors are placed in relation to social, economic, historical, sexual orientation for the recognition of these forces. The readers are inspired to read these types of literatures, despite their lengths, by literary tradition of fantasy, whereby it is difficult or impossible to identify and consider many or all determinants in connection with every text due to the assumption and perspective that literary fantasy is not flexible, as perceived by the supernatural literature texts (Rancière, & Swenson, 2011). Literary fantasy are mostly transformed according to author’s different historical positions, with fantasy texts treated more specifically according to their production and particular constraints against which the fantasy protests. The fantasies tend to seek compensation from cultural constraints, making it an experience of absence and loss and creating literature of desire to the readers. Fantasies tend to show or portray or manifest desire through linguistic utterance, representation or manifestation, if the desire is a thorny threat to cultural order and continuity through expulsion or forceful press-out. Fantasy literature tends to expel desire without bringing it to light, and thus the reader and author vicariously experience the desire in the supernatural fantasy texts. It suggests the base of cultural order and briefly opens it to disorder and illegality, which lie outside the jurisdiction of law and outside the dominant value system. The unseen and unspoken are traced by the fantasy, and made invisible and covered over (Greeson, 2010). Fantasy is literature of unreality or fiction that has been altered in line with the changing descriptions and definitions of contents of reality, and hence modern fantasy is deeply rooted in romance, fairy tales, ancient myths or folk lore. Fantasy narratives have recurrent features in the movement from expression as manifestation to expression as expulsion. This occurs as the fantasy attempts express the impossibility of attempts to make desires a reality, and turns the visible into invisible and discovers absence. Literary fantasies use the language of the order, dominant order and accept norms, and hence literary fantasies are telling indices of limits of the dominant order that begin within the dominant cultural order. In the late eighteenth century, the western society was transformed by industrialization, and hence the fantasies produced within a capitalist economy after this, tend to express some of the psychological impacts of inhabitation of a capitalist or materialistic culture, and are characterized by peculiar violence and horror (James, & Mendlesohn, 2012). French critics after the post-romantic period such as Marcel Schneider, Louis Vax and Roger Caillois tried to define literary fancy through the random cataloguing of its recurrent motives and themes. The fantasy was defined as a dramatization of anxiety or longing of existence by Marcel, whereas it was described as a form that was stranded between a serene mysticism and a purely humanistic psychology, by Caillois. Tzvetan Todorov’s ‘The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literal Genre (1973)’ is a significant study of fantasy in the post-romantic period(James, & Mendlesohn, 2012). There is a dismissal of Todorov’s encouragement of critical engagement with a form of literature, described as foolish with no possible over-estimation. Todorov spends little time with metaphysics and opposes the impressional attempts of defining and describing fantasy, and had no interest in looking for clusters of subjects necessary for the semantic approach used by other critics. Todorov endorses a structural analysis of fantasy instead of the semantic approach through seeking of structural features common in different fantasy texts for the provision of a more detailed and concrete definition and description of fantasy. However, Todorov’s ‘The Fantastic’ fails to consider and expound on the social and political implications of literary forms, with its attention mainly focused and confined to the impacts of the text and the standards of operation (Marcus, 2006). Literature fantasy tends to deal with unconscious material rather recurrently, and it seems rather absurd to try figuring out and understanding its importance without a reference to the psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic reading of texts. According to Rosemary, Todorov seems negligent of political and ideological issues in his criticism of Freudian theory as irrelevant or inadequate. Rosemary argues out and concludes that social norms and structures are reproduced and sustained in the unconscious, and hence perception of the relations between the society and individuals necessitates redirection of attention(James, & Mendlesohn, 2012). Literary fantasies are open to psychoanalytic readings, in the expression of unconscious drives, and frequently depict tensions between the human society laws and the opposition of the subconscious mind to these laws. Fantasy can be described as a literary mode from which several numbers of related genres emerge. It provides a variety of possibilities from which diverse fictions are drawn through combinations in different historical situations. Linguistically, the basic model of fantasy is portrayed as a language from which its various forms are derived. This delivers the romance literature, which includes fairy tales and scientific fiction, and fantastic supernatural literature that include stories, delusion and related tales of abnormal psychic tales, and hallucinations (Poole, 2011). There is no existent ideal theoretical model for conformation of all diverse fantasies, and hence fantasy is not an abstract entity but rather a range of diverse works with similar structural characteristics that are generated by similar structural unconscious desires. The possibilities or chances available to each particular fantasy text are diversely determined by the texts preceding it, and whose characteristic features are repeated. Literary fantasies are, therefore, made up of multiple recombined elements, and are inevitably determined by the range of the constituting elements available to the author of the fantasy text. Fantasy involves inversion of elements in the world and the recombination of its constitutive features in the new relations for the creation of strange unfamiliar things. Structuralism positions of fantasy texts depict the narrative qualities and narrative effects of basic psychic impulses. Most literary fantasies tend to eventually recover individual desire by neutralizing their own impulses towards transgression, though some tend to move towards attempting to remain open, with dissatisfied and endless desires (Poole, 2011). Fantastic means composure of visionary, visible and unreal happenings or texts, and hence all imaginary activity is fantastic, whereas all literary works are fantasies. Fantastic is rather large and cannot constitute a single genre, and hence includes whole conventional genres such as fairy tales and stories. It can be applied to any literature that does not specify or prioritize on realistic representations, such as myths, fairy tales, horror stories, science fiction and folk. A fantasy is, therefore, a story based on and controlled by the violation of accepted possibility(Hyman, 2011). It is a resultant narrative from the transformation of contrary contradictions of the real fact itself with inevitable fiction, which threatens subversion of rules and conventions due to the violation of the dominant value system and assumptions. Though fantasy is not a socially subversive activity, it disturbs the representation of artistic rules and the reproduction of reality in literature, with a close examination of fantasy revealing that it is characterized by subversive functioning (Hyman, 2011). In conclusion, a traditional form of fantastic art, ‘menippea’ exhibits the inversion of rules, introduces the unexpected and tells of abnormal psychological states of the social world. Modern fantasy is severed from its roots and is no longer a communal form. Supernatural fantasy is based on Marx’s capitalism that is characterized by dominance and superiority in culture and race, which creates a wrong perspective about reality through unrealities and fictions in fantasy texts. Fantastic should be engaged with the psychoanalytic theory, with a subsequent concentration given to the implications caused by fantastic literature (Hyman,2011). References Barnet, S Burto, W& Cain, W E 2011, Literature for composition: essays, stories, poems, and plays, Boston, Longman. Friesen, R C 2010, Supernatural fiction in early modern drama and culture, Brighton [England], Sussex Academic Press. Greeson, J R, 2010, Our South geographic fantasy and the rise of national literature, Cambridge, Mass, HarvardUniversity Press. Hyman, W B 2011, The automaton in English Renaissance literature. Burlington, Vt, Ashgate. James, E & Mendlesohn, F 2012, The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature: Cambridge Companions to Literature, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Marcus, L S 2006,The wand in the word: conversations with writers of fantasy, Cambridge, Mass, Candlewick Press. Poole, K 2011, Supernatural environments in Shakespeares England: spaces of demonism, divinity, and drama, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Rancière, J& Swenson, J2011, Mute speech: literature, critical theory, and politics, New York, NY: ColumbiaUniversity Press. Rudd, D 2012, The Routledge Companion to Childrens Literature: Routledge Companions, New York, NY: Routledge. Zipes, J 2011, Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, Hoboken, Taylor and Francis. Read More