Collision of Ancient and Modern in Fantasy Literature - Essay Example

COLLISSION OF ANCIENT AND MODERN IN FANTASY LITERATURE The debate regarding existence of God and devil has begun from time immemorial and it still continues and is not likely to end up in a definitive conclusion ever. While the humans believe in the power of God, at the same time they don’t rule out the potentiality of harm from evil sources that they don’t know about. Thus, it is obvious that the humans basically don’t expect God to resolve all their problems. The primeval fear inhabiting the human conscience instigates in him a threat perception towards the unknown. An underlying element in most of the fantasy fiction is man’s recognition of the evil hovering over the sphere of his existence like rain clouds in a calm horizon. The roots of this fear are firmly planted in their culture and it has transcended from generation to generation through word of mouth. This fear represents the primeval and it is gets reflected in literature of the particular era. A generation is able to understand all its implications clearly because it can relate to the fear very well from the stories they heard during their childhood or discussed in the classrooms. Thus one can see that the representation of evil in fantasies originate from man’s primeval fear of the unknown and his inevitable need to fight it, and it becomes a collision of the ancient and modern. The influences of literature can be extracted from the framework of any particular era, for they will transgress the divide borrowing something from the past and lending new ideas to the future. The genuine characteristics in literature of a given period should be observed in conjunction with understanding the social factors existing at that time. While considering the Fantasy literature from19th century, one will find certain elements existing in continuity to the past. Thus to say any age is absolutely immune to the influence of preceding ages is unrealistic. The topical discussion of the collision of ancient and modern in fantasy literature requires an essential awareness of the undercurrents of social, political, and religious factors that fashioned life in general during those times. Fantasy worlds are based on a set of natural laws different from those we are bound by on earth. According to Scott, “If you have people do some magic, impossible thing by stroking a talisman or praying to a tree, it is Fantasy; if they do the same thing by pressing a button or climbing inside a machine, it is Science Fiction.”(1990). Defining fantasy entails difficulties since there are several streams that cognate from the fountain head, such as dark fantasy, light fantasy, contemporary fantasy, heroic fantasy, traditional fantasy, feminist fantasy, and other unclassifiable fantasies. This list may go on as several varieties are still in the making. Yet, one can improvise a definition that can contain all these streams. Anything that concerns mythical or legendary creatures appearing on earth, manifestation of powers that are not predicted on science, as we know it, or pretty much anything that falls outside other established genres ends up as “fantasy.” (McCollum.1998). The fantasy literature produced during the pre-industrial era had certain defining features with its medieval setting intertwined with the escapades of knights, warriors, intervention of clerics and gods, oracles, magic, and even dragons. There was charm of romance in them that was again made remarkable by its pagan atmosphere with deities and demons taking central roles in the life of mortals. The settings of such stories were usually a remote, craggy hillock, where a demon would reside, posing threat to the inhabitants. It would call for the Knight to exhibit his skill at warfare and eventually with the aid of good angels he would liquidate the demon and salvage the beautiful lass. Most of the fantasies are of this structure except for the differences in location and characters and the intervention of the supernatural elements is evidently related with brokerage relationship between some power and person praying the former to salvage a situation. In most fantasies the demons come from the past rather than future. In modern fantasies too this trend is seen for the most part despite the story being told against the sophisticated backdrop. Though the modern fantasies attempt various techniques of novelty and intrigue, by telling the story to pique the imagination and amaze the senses of a modern reader, the supernatural intervention takes a new dimension with knights substituted by young heroes taking the anguish and confusion of the new age who will travel not in a flying carpet but in spaceships. But essentially they too have to fight fire-spitting dragons wielding laser guns, but nonetheless characterized by the spite that was necessarily a menace from the primordial times, like the goblins from hell. Even a cursory observation can reveal the fact that there are several features characterise the concept of ‘fantasy’. In the first place it can be broadly divided into ancient and modern fantasy. The literary works belonging to these two categories have several distinctive features that can be deciphered in connection with social and historical changes. Like other literary genres the fantasy literature too captures the fleeting pulses both individual as well as collective social mind. Hence, reading a fantasy novel, for the most part opens a window into the contemporary society. Moreover it can haul past into present and demystifying the recondite aspects surrounding to it. It provides a journey that suspends the disbelief and transports the reader to a make believe world where a vampire may be crouching to pounce upon a mortal. Luckily enough, most of the heroes in fantasy fiction are endowed with supernatural powers to outwit their rivals. Here, we have to conclude one kind of fancy fiction, which could be titled as ancient in variety. Right from the incipient days of human culture, man had the curiosity for the order of things around him. Later on, this curiosity took various dimensions and one of them evolved into verbalising his doubts, ambiguities, and fears in the form of epic narratives. This vast reservoir of myths, legends, and theological literary materials has entertained generations of all time. There is no hyperbolism in underscoring the fact that the modern literature, in whatever form it may be, has its foundation on the solid body of ancient literature. There are stories based on Bible, Greek, Indian, Chinese, and Arabic mythology, and it had a sustained impact on the intellectual profile of every time. An example can be drawn from the German context of Faust’s story that was made proverbial by Goethe. The story ran in several versions giving rise to ambiguities about the central character, which was known to be a mortal endowed with supernatural skills. He pawned his soul to the Satan in barter for material joys hence he could fly. While demonstrating his skills in flight, a soaring Faust was believed to be carried away by Satan. The other version held that while mounting on the vault of the sky the Satan deserted him only to be crash-landed, to embrace death. Christopher Marlow used the same story in his celebrated drama Dr. Faustus, where the university wit Dr Faustus pawned his soul to the Satan for the trifles of mundane joys. The tail end of the story had a remarkable difference with the Satan coming in his study room at the end of the leased period of 15 years and taking his soul away. Thus, we can evidence the clash of the ancient evil with a modern protagonist in this drama. Almost in the equal vein one can notice a great deal of the presence of supernatural elements in all ancient narratives. Among them, Homer’s works: Iliad and Odyssey, figure most. Reading Iliad and Odyssey takes the readers on a journey beyond the known frontiers of human mind into an un-chartered expanse of imagination. There are several instances where Odysseus encounters supernatural demons and monsters and is helped by Goddess Athena to overcome these evils. It is interesting to note that Lord Alfred Tennyson, an eminent Victorian poet used the same theme in his poem Ulysses to illustrate the adventurous spirit of contemporary English people. It is an example of the preponderance of ancient wisdom on modern creativity. Arabia, a great cultural composite, has produced a large body of fantasy sorties that were later compiled in the form of the book “One Thousand and One Nights.” It became a hot cake for Western readers in the turn of 18th century. Even history was presented in the form of fantasy, and the best example to the context is the retelling of Persian history ‘Shahnameh’by Amir Arsalan. As a hallmark of eastern intellectual acumen, the ancient India produced fantasy works that can measure its importance only against any epic literature with two dominant epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. They have several remarkable features that are identical to Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad, respectively. A reader can assimilate in all these works the necessary evil that stems from man’s origin and extend to the time when these stories are told. All these stories chronicle the collusion of the ancient with the modern, Since man began to associate himself with machines and artificially produced goods, he was increasingly becoming some kind of equipment that could manage the functioning of an apparatus Close to these developments in the society a sweeping change was beginning to take shape in literature, especially in fantasy literature where elements of science were entwined. Driven by the obvious social changes with the coming of a strong urban proletariat particularly after industrial revolution of 1830s, the reading public began to develop a new penchant for adventure and crime novels. It was in its entity a reflection of society in clear terms. Such works would provide a rich literary feast for the people, who wanted to see the books dealing with things around them from a new perspective of visualization. The portrayal of every day world spiced with sentimental strain and super human adventures was enough to catch the imagination of readers of all age groups. As a result fantasies rose to the status of being the representative genre of the respective age. The postindustrial scenario has loomed large over the normal social life affecting certain radical transformations, against which fantasy literature is not an exception. Primarily the changes are visible both in their content and form. As the fruits of the industrial revolution spread world wide, there occurred some major changes to fantasy genre too. It can be said that science fiction began in the 19th century in France, with Jules Verne. Isaac Asimov says, “the first writer to specialize in science fiction and to make a living at it.”(1981, p.158). The collision of modern with the ancient can be witnessed in his work if one examines the episode where Passepartout rescues the king’s wife and “rose to his feet like a ghost, lifted the young women up in his arms and stepped down from the pyre amid the swelling smoke, looking like a ghostly apparition. The fakirs, guards, and priests were overcome with the sudden terror and remained prostrated, not daring to raise their eyes to behold this supernatural event”, one can understand that it is the misconception of a person being a ghost that created fear in the minds of even priests and soldiers.(Jules Verne, 2004). Thus, it is apparent that the primeval fear in man for the supernatural is one of underlying themes of the fantasy genre and it is this basic collision of the ancient and the modern that brings the ardent connoisseurs to fantasy fiction. The 1980s can be said as a golden era for the fantasy genre literature. Apart from a large number of novels, the period also saw the emergence of magazines, devoted to the fantasy and science fiction genres. The most prominent magazines among them were “The Strand Magazine” and “The Idler”(which copied the formula of ‘Strand’), The Black Cat. The Golden Bough by James G. Fraser, an anthology which was released in 1890. It was a unique anthology, dealing with primitive beliefs, practices, and social institutions. He laid out the logical axioms of magic and set the standards for rigorous works of fantasy forever after/ It was followed by several classic writers and fantasy like: The Time Machine (HG Wells, 1895), Dreams of the Earth and the Sky and the Effects of Universal Gravitation (Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1894), The King in Yellow (Robert W Chambers, 1895), The Wood Beyond the World’ and The Well at the World’s End (William Morris, 1895 and 1896), The Island of Dr Moreau and the Invisible Man (H G Wells, 1896), Dracula Abraham Bram Stoker (1897) etc. Most of there, especially Dracula portrays the evil coming from an ancient age haunting the contemporary man. Traditional fantasy, after the style of Tolkein’s creation of Middle Earth, is set in extraordinarily detailed and realistic world where every nuance of culture, society and especially the working of magic have been painstakingly drawn. As for the changes in content the notable feature is the replacement of everything that is old and decadent, such as knights, squires, etc. Conan-the-Barbarian may have been the prototype for fantasy heroes, now in their stead young heroes surfaced, equipped well with modern technology to fight new Star Wars. This transition is motivated largely to compete with high-end Hollywood films, and some of the popular novels are made into blockbusters. Harry Porter series, is a common ground for these two strains, because sincere efforts are made to juxtapose the novelties of modern technology with enigmatic supernatural elements of past. These contrary elements are vying for supremacy so in Harry Porter and the Half blood Prince, the readers confront a picture in the prime minister’s room conversing with him. The evil has necessarily come from the past and collided with the modern man. Works Cited Isaac Asimov. On science Fiction. New York: Avon. 1981. Jules Verne. Around the World in Eighty Days. (Tans. Michael Glencross). London: Penguin Books. 2004. McCollum. Fantasy: Science Fiction, May 1998 www.scifi-az.com Scott, Orson. How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. Writer’s Digest Books: London. 1990. Read More