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RR 2013/018 The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature Edited by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn Cambridge University Press Cambridge 2012 xxiv + 268 pp. ISBN 978 0 521 42959 7 (hbck); ISBN 978 0 521 72873 7 (pbck) £55 $95 (hbck); £17.99 $29.99 (pbck)
Cambridge Companions to Literature
Keyword Literature
Review DOI 10.1108/09504121311290453
Fantasy literature, like its stablemate science fiction, has long suffered from a rather prosaic belief amongst critics that it must be juvenile because it does not fulfil a questionable need for naturalistic representation in order to be worthy. We have to wonder where this leaves Shakespeare and Marlowe, with their ghosts, devils and magicians, and the Arthurian romances. As The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature notes, this denigration corresponds to a need for scientific vigour in literature that came about in the 1700s. Indeed, they identify the 1700s as being the origin point for their definition of fantasy literature (literature of the impossible), looking to Joseph Addison's commentary on Dryden's "fairy writing". It has to be noted that "fantasy literature" is a catchall term, as nebulous and lacking in rules and consistency as the texts it gathers together, and...