FANTASTIC LITERATURE A Critical Reader

DAVID SANDNER

Westport, Connecticut London CONTENTS

Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 Phaedrus (388-366 B.C.), Plato 14 The Poetics (c. 334-323 B.C.), Aristotle 17 An Apology for Poetry (1595), Philip Sidney 19 "The Fairy Way of Writing" (1712), Joseph Addison 21 Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762), Pvichard Hurd 24 On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror (1773), Anna Laetitia Aikin (later Barbauld) 30 Letter (1797) and Biographia Literaria (1817), Samuel Taylor Coleridge 37 On the Supernatural in Poetry (1826), Ann Radcliffe 41 On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition (1827), Walter Scott 51 Frauds on the Fairies (1853), Charles Dickens 56 Fairy Stories (1868), John Ruskin 59 The Fantastic Imagination (1890), George MacDonald 64 Fairy Tales (1908), G. K. Chesterton 70 xii Contents

The Uncanny (1919), Sigmund Freud 74 Introduction to Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927), H. P. Lovecraft 102 Critics (1956), Damon Knight 106 The Mythos of Summer: Romance (1957), Northrop Frye 108 Characteristics of Genre and Plot Composition in Dostoevsky's Works (1963), Mikhail Bakhtin 116 Definitions of Territory: Fantasy (1970), Italo Calvino 133 The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (1970), Tzvetan Todorov 135 From Elfland to Poughkeepsie (1973), Ursula Le Guin 144 Introduction to Modern Fantasy (1975), Colin Manlove 156 The Fantastic and Fantasy (1976), Eric Rabkin 167 The Evolution of a Word (1979), Stephen Prickett 172 Magical Narratives: On the Dialectical Use of Genre Criticism (1981), Fredric Jameson 180 The Encounter with Fantasy (1982), Gary Wolfe 222 Clinamen: Towards a Theory of Fantasy (1982), Harold Bloom 236 Literary Fantasy and Ecological Comedy (1985), Don D. Elgin 255 "Fantasy" from Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy (1986), Gary Wolfe 271 Prelude: Nameless Things and Thingless Names (1987), Lance Olsen 274 Fantasy as Mode, Genre, Formula (1992), Brian Attebery 293 "Fantasy" from The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), John Clute 310 Joseph Addison: The First Critic of the Fantastic (2000), David Sandner 316 Fabling to the Near Night (2000), Jane Yolen 326 Marxism and Fantasy: An Introduction (2002), China Mieville 334 Index 345