- Week 3 -

- How has fantasy as a genre been defined? Find at least 5 formative definitions in Attebery (1980).

Fantasy is a one of the genre in English literature which can be defined as a fancy novel. Impossible happens could become possible and it feels like a real to people. There is the number of definitions of fantasy genre in Attebery’s writing.

First of all, Attebery uses W. R. Irwin’s view that fantasy is a clear violation of normal happens which is commonly acceptable events as possibility. Fantasy predicts a view of external actuality which is contradiction feature of internal reality. Irwin has pointed fantasy as the form of imagination and daydream. Moreover, according to Attebery (1980), any narration which positions an important part of the work and the author thinks to be natural law that is fantasy. “Fantasy treats these impossibilities without hesitation, without doubt, without any attempt to reconcile them with our intellectual understanding of the workings of the world or to make us believe that such things could under any circumstances come true” (Attebery, 1980, p.3). Lastly, fantasy is a kind of game and it requires that one play whole-heartedly, plausible for the moment all laws and turns of the game (Attebery, 1980).

- How is science fiction different from fantasy, according to Le Guinn (http://www.ursulakleguin.com/PlausibilityRevisited.html)?

Science fiction is closely related to realism because it is based on the real facts. Most science fiction is plausibility and makes the created world depended on actual and factual outside the story (Le Guinn, 2005). I think that is why we can feel more realistic and think those happens are probable and possible. “In general, science fiction proceeds just as realistic fiction do, meeting conventional expectations of how people generally act, and either avoiding events that will strike the reader as improbable, or plausibly explaining them” (Le Guinn, 2005).

On the other hand, the characteristics of fantasy are far from the realism because the imagination is the basis. As Le Guinn explains that the actions characters in fantasy meets conventional expectation as same as science fiction, but those characters in fantasy can also be nonhuman creatures which follows unpredicted ways.

In my opinion, both science fiction and fantasy genres have different attractive characteristics. Science fiction is based on the real facts so I can feel and imagine that situations in fiction can be real happened someday in the future. However, in fantasy literature, I can imagine and presuppose the future in my ways and the most interesting thing is that makes impossible things to be possible !

References:
Attebery, B. (1980). Locating the Fantasy. In The fantasy tradition in American literature: From Irving to Le Guinn (pp.2-9). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Le Guin, U. (2005). Ursula K. Le Guin: Plausibility Revisited. Wha Hoppen and What Didin’t. Retrieved 8, August, 2010 from http://www.ursulakleguin.com/PlausibilityRevisited.html