Rhetorics of Fantasy. Farah Mendlesohn

place,” the image/experience will not resolve.

      It is almost impossible to deal with each category discretely; thus there will be constant comparisons between the forms I identify in order to show the differences between their workings and tone.

      The Portal-Quest Fantasy

      A portal fantasy is simply a fantastic world entered through a portal. The classic portal fantasy is of course The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950). Crucially, the fantastic is on the other side and does not “leak.” Although individuals may cross both ways, the magic does not.⁶

      Closest in form to the classic utopian or alien planet story (sometimes, but not always, a first contact tale), portal fantasies require that we learn from a point of entry. They are almost always quest novels and they almost always proceed in a linear fashion with a goal that must be met. Like the computer games they have spawned, they often contain elaborate descriptive elements. Yet while the intrusion fantasy must be unpacked or defeated, the portal fantasy must be navigated. Frequently, portal fantasies become more mysterious, rather than less. The reliance on destiny in so many portal fantasies may reflect the need to create rational explanation of irrational action without destroying this mystery. The language of the portal fantasy is often elaborate, but it is the elaboration of the anthropologist or the Pre-Raphaelite painter, intensely descriptive and exploratory rather than assumptive. It is a rare portal fantasy that achieves the Gothic (although David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus [1920], comes to mind, as does Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland [1865]) and when it does, the need to describe and explain remains a driving force behind the narrative and the language used. Most significant, the portal fantasy allows and relies upon both protagonist and reader gaining experience. Where the stock technique of intrusion is to keep surprising the reader, portal fantasies lead us gradually to the point where the protagonist knows his or her world enough to change it and to enter into that world’s destiny. One way to envision this technique is that we ride alongside the protagonist, hearing only what she hears, seeing only what she sees; thus our protagonist (even if she is not the narrator) provides us with a guided tour of the landscapes. Diana Wynne Jones’s Tough Guide to Fantasyland (1996) both mocks this technique and reduces it to its purest form: the travel guide.

      When we think of portal fantasies, we commonly assume that the portal is from “our” world to the fantastic, but the portal fantasy is about entry, transition, and negotiation. Much quest fantasy, for all that it builds the full secondary world, fits better with the portal fantasy. Characteristically in quest fantasy the protagonist goes from a mundane life—in which the fantastic, if she is aware of it, is very distant and unknown (or at least unavailable to the protagonist)—into direct contact with the fantastic, through which she transitions, to the point of negotiation with the world via the personal manipulation of the fantastic realm. In chapter 1 I shall trace precisely this process in The Lord of the Rings. The discussion in chapter 1 will help to distinguish the creation of a convincing rhetorical secondary world from the techniques of immersive fantasy. In the quest fantasy we see the world through this transitional narrative: despite the assertion that this world has always existed, the technique remains identical to that of the portal fantasy and the effect on the language of the text is the same, forcing the author to describe and explain what is seen by the point of view character as she negotiates the world. The result, when done poorly, is didactic, but as I hope to demonstrate, even the most creative writers find it difficult in this form to avoid impressing upon the reader an authoritative interpretation of their world.

      The Immersive Fantasy

      The immersive fantasy invites us to share not merely a world, but a set of assumptions. At its best, it presents the fantastic without comment as the norm both for the protagonist and for the reader: we sit on the protagonist’s shoulder and while we have access to his eyes and ears, we are not provided with an explanatory narrative. The immersive fantasy is that which is closest to science fiction; as such, it makes use of an irony of mimesis, which helps to explain why a sufficiently effective immersive fantasy may be indistinguishable from science fiction: once the fantastic becomes assumed, it acquires a scientific cohesion all of its own. In 2000, this problem of genre led to endless debates about the status of both Mary Gentle’s Ash (2000) and China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station (2000). The effectiveness of the immersive fantasy, however depends on an assumption of realism that denies the need for explication.

      The immersive fantasy seems to be described in part by what it is not. We do not enter into the immersive fantasy, we are assumed to be of it: our cognitive estrangement is both entire and negated. The immersive fantasy must be sealed; it cannot, within the confines of the story, be questioned. While an intrusion narrative may drive the plot, as in Perdido Street Station, the setting is already fantastic so that the intrusion is not in itself the source of the fantastic. Most important is that the fantasy be immersive for the point of view characters: unlike the characters of quest fantasies, which I have argued above are better fitted to the category of portal fantasy, the point of view characters of an immersive fantasy must take for granted the fantastic elements with which they are surrounded; they must exist as integrated with the magical (or fantastic) even if they themselves are not magical; they must be “deeply competent with the world they know” (Clute, Strokes 34). As we shall see in chapter 2, successful immersive fantasy consciously negates the sense of wonder in favor of an atmosphere of ennui. M. John Harrison’s The Pastel City (1971) both achieves this negation and uses this trope to mock our expectations.

      The use of the immersive mode can undermine the intentions of an author. One might presume that Laurell K. Hamilton’s vampire novels (beginning with Guilty Pleasures [1993]) were intended as horror. They contain the requisite actors: the vampire, the vampire hunter, several nasty monsters, and later a werewolf. But the fantastic elements are not in themselves frightening, and they are most definitely not horrific. The potential horror of the Anita Blake novels is subverted by the structures and language native to immersive fantasy: although a horror novel is read with expectation, the immersive fantasy places much of that expectation on contextual difference, rather than the intruding event. Immersion, with its ironic realism, normalizes the horrific and prevents the sense of attrition that Clute identifies as essential to Horror (personal communication). That these novels ended up in chapter 3 (intrusion fantasy) has nothing to do with the accoutrements of the fantastic by which they are usually categorized; their placement arises, rather, from the trajectory of escalation that shapes both the individual books and the series.

      Perhaps most interesting is that it is most commonly in the immersive fantasies that one finds oneself in a fantasy world in which no magic occurs. Sometimes this absence is because the magic takes place elsewhere. But there are many immersive fantasy novels that differ from science fiction only in that they are set in apparently archaic worlds that are not connected to ours: in Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan (1946), the fantastic is embedded in the linguistic excesses of the text, or in the interaction between the setting and the protagonists. In the immersive fantasy, the plot may be the least fantastical element.

      Intrusion Fantasy

      In intrusion fantasy the fantastic is the bringer of chaos. It is the beast in the bottom of the garden, or the elf seeking assistance. It is horror and amazement. It takes us out of safety without taking us from our place. It is recursive. The intrusion fantasy is not necessarily unpleasant, but it has as its base the assumption that normality is organized, and that when the fantastic retreats the world, while not necessarily unchanged, returns to predictability—at least until the next element of the fantastic intrudes.

      Fantasy and “reality” are often kept strictly demarcated: in some fictions, those set apart from the protagonist may not be able to perceive the fantastic even as they experience its effects. These structural characteristics of intrusion fantasy