{"id":1045,"date":"2019-03-03T11:22:22","date_gmt":"2019-03-03T18:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fantastic-arts.org\/jfa\/?page_id=1045"},"modified":"2019-03-03T11:22:39","modified_gmt":"2019-03-03T18:22:39","slug":"jfa-29-1-2018","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.fantastic-arts.org\/jfa\/jfa-29-1-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"JFA 29.1 (2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Introduction: Epic Fantasy<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

At the beginning of N. K. Jemisin\u2019s award-winning trilogy The Broken Earth, the narrator sets the stage in the grandest possible way: \u201cLet\u2019s start with the end of the world, why don\u2019t we?\u201d Later, after talking about more personal tragedies, this is amended to \u201cLet\u2019s try the ending again, writ continentally.\u201d That seems to me to be a good definition of epic fantasy: a story writ continentally (or oceanically or astronomically). Conventional fiction takes a narrower view of its task: to tell the story of an individual or a marriage or a career. It sometimes uses those individuals as filters through which to consider moments of historical change: a reform, a battle, a revolution. But an epic thinks globally: its protagonist is the world. Even as it invites us focus briefly on this personal interaction, that heroic effort, it keeps the big picture in front of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any use of the term \u201cepic\u201d directly or indirectly refers to the Greek oral narratives that we ascribe to Homer.  Epos meant a song, but not just any song. These were the big songs: stories of battles and sea voyages and squabbling gods and heroes. Fusing secular history and scripture, they were compendia of knowledge about the world of Bronze Age Greece and its environs. Two survive; others we know from fragments and contemporary references. We understand from the work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord how they must have come about: talented singers recreating the stories in performance, drawing on formulaic phrases, lines, and scenes. They are the product of a particular social system involving courtly sponsorship and a long apprenticeship, recorded by scribes during the overlap between oral culture and literacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word epic was applied to written imitations of Homer in Greco-Roman culture and thence to Christian-era adaptations of the form like The Divine Comedy<\/em> and Paradise Lost<\/em>. At the same time, the term began to be extended to long narratives from other traditions: Old English and Sanskrit and Babylonian and eventually the South Slavic songs that Parry and Lord were able to explore as a living tradition. By now we know that most narratively sophisticated cultures have something like an epic cycle: there are African and Central Asian and Meso-American and Austsralian Aboriginal epics. People everywhere hunger for epic grandeur and assurance. J. R. R. Tolkien considered himself to be supplying the English epic that did not yet exist. And thus modern fantasy was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But though epic was always the big story, it was never the only story. Alongside the Homeric songs, and sometimes incorporated into them, there were smaller tales. While the bard was chanting an epic in court, someone was telling magical folktales in the kitchen or singing bawdy songs out in the fields. Contemporary fantasy can draw on any and all these versions of oral narrative, repurposing structures and recombining motifs to give us access to the rich soup that simmers still in what Tolkien called the Cauldron of Story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I began this introduction with N. K. Jemisin because she, along with Steven Erikson and scholar Edward James, was slated to be one of the Guests of Honor at the 2017 International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, which was devoted to the theme of epic fantasy. Jemisin was unable to attend because of a personal loss, and the Conference was the poorer for her absence. Her fiction speaks for itself; those who want a sample of her fiery brilliance as a speaker can seek out her Guest of Honor address from the 2015 Wiscon, the feminist sf convention held every years in Madison, Wisconsin. It is available in the conference volume, the Wiscon Chronicles, volume 9, edited by Mary Ann Mohanraj and can also be found on Jemisin\u2019s website at http:\/\/nkjemisin.com\/2014\/05\/wiscon-38-guest-of-honor-speech\/<\/a> .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luckily, both James and Erikson were present at the Conference, and they are represented in this issue by their respective luncheon addresses. James looks at a particular expression of fantasy\u2019s epic ambitions, the trilogy. Partly by historical accident\u2014the need to break J. R. R. Tolkien\u2019s huge novel into three volumes for publication\u2014\u201cfantasy\u201d and \u201ctrilogy\u201d seem inextricably linked, like \u201cscrewball\u201d and \u201ccomedy.\u201d Yet James suggests there might be a more natural link between the three-ness of a trilogy and the introduction, exploration, and resolution of a world-spanning conflict. He points out that The Lord of the Rings<\/em> was not the first such triple-header: before Tolkien there was Dante. Looking at an impressive 156 trilogies published starting in the 1970s, James points out that the best of them are successful not in spite of the formulaic nature of the genre but because of it\u2014like its Medieval predecessor, the romance, whose kinship with epic was long denied by doyens of literary taste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steven Erikson speaks in very personal terms about the forces that formed him during a difficult childhood and youth in Canada and England. As he says, \u201cOur histories are complicated, an accumulation of private experiences hidden away inside silent worlds.\u201d The broad landscapes, convoluted political scenarios, and philosophical battles of his ten-volume Malazan Book of the Fallen are ways of coming to terms with some of that private experience. Though he doesn\u2019t draw point-for-point connections in his talk, he ends by observing that \u201cIn writing epic fantasy, I turn-about. I face the real world head-on.\u201d Previous guest of honor Terri Windling made much the same point about her brand of fantasy, which is modeled after fairy tale more than epic, but which likewise faces reality by departing from it. (Windling\u2019s address is in JFA<\/em> volume 28, number 1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the articles in this issue examines a work of epic fantasy. David Ashford\u2019s “\u2019Orc-Talk\u2019: Soviet Linguistics in Tolkien\u2019s Middle-Earth\u201d looks at The Lord of the Rings<\/em> through the lens of Tolkien\u2019s own discipline of philology and finds that one of the invented languages in the book, the Black Speech of the Orcs, can be seen as a trace of an epic conflict in the real world: the East\/West conflict that, by the time the books were published, had coalesced into the Cold War. Philology\u2019s way of equating languages and racial identities shows up in the portrayal of the Orcs and their speech, surprisingly, Ashford suggests, reflecting Tolkien\u2019s awareness of the work of his Soviet contemporaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other two articles move away from the epic and into more intimate versions of the fantastic, although Christopher Sims\u2019s \u201cThe Ontological Task of the Hero in Philip K. Dick’s The Cosmic Puppets<\/em>\u201d could be considered to be a study of a fantastic epic if one were to take Dick\u2019s entire output to constitute a single narrative arc. The forces at work in Dick\u2019s 1957 novel The Cosmic Puppets<\/em> are there throughout his oeuvre: an authenticity grounded in empathy fighting against the forces of disintegration and illusion. Sims asserts that the novel\u2019s overtly fantastic, rather than science fictional, framework makes it a sort of reading key to the larger Dickian universe. He uses terms drawn from Martin Heidegger\u2019s existentialist ontology to highlight Dick\u2019s views on technology and knowledge. Paraphrasing Heidegger, Sims reminds us that \u201cTechnology is not just manipulation of beings in the world to produce gadgets and gizmos, but rather the force that determines the very way we perceive beings and reveal meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christy Williams explores a short story by Kelly Link in her \u201cAmbiguous Villains and Fairy-Tale Monsters in Kelly Link’s \u2018The Cinderella Game.\u2019\u201d Link\u2019s story is, says Williams, about the way we use stories like \u201cCinderella\u201d to try on identities in the form of story-frameworks. Rather than simply updating \u201cCinderella\u201d or retelling it from the point of view of one of the minor characters, as many writers have done, Link\u2019s meta-tale \u201cblurs the lines between […] genres, and positions each character as a possible villain of the story in the absence of a heroic protagonist.\u201d The small tale takes on larger implications\u2014one might say epic ones\u2014as its characters work through various permutations of hero, villain, and victim. Such roles, like those of warrior and antagonist, lover and trickster in Homer, help us define ourselves but also, if we are not careful, allow us to delude ourselves into thinking we know who we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Articles<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Epics in Three Parts
Edward James <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stand Fast
Steven Erikson<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOrc Talk\u201d: Soviet Linguistics in Tolkien\u2019s Middle-Earth
David Ashford<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ontological Task of the Hero in Philip K. Dick\u2019s The Cosmic Puppets <\/em>
Christopher Sims<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ambiguous Villains and Fairy-Tale Monsters in Kelly Link\u2019s \u201cThe Cinderella Game\u201d
Christy Williams<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviews<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

James Gunn\u2019s Paratexts: Introductions to Science Fiction and Fantasy <\/em>
Rev. by Katherine E. Bishop<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rob Latham\u2019s Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of Essential Writings <\/em>
Rev. by Cait Coker<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott Cutler Shershow and Scott Michaelsen\u2019s The Love of Ruins: Letters on Lovecraft <\/em>
Rev. by Greg Conley<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jared Lobdell\u2019s Eight Children in Narnia: The Making of a Children\u2019s Story <\/em>
Rev. by Anelise Farris<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anya Heise von der Lippe\u2019s Posthuman Gothic <\/em>
Rev. by Anelise Farris<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jessica R. McCort\u2019s Reading in the Dark: Horror in Children\u2019s Literature and Culture <\/em>
Rev. by Anelise Farris<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Catherine Spooner\u2019s Post-Millennial Gothic: Comedy, Romance, and the Rise of Happy Gothic <\/em>
Rev. by Stephanie Flint<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daniele Fioretti\u2019s Utopia and Dystopia in Postwar Italian Literature: Pasolini, Calvino, Sanguineti, Volponi <\/em>
Rev. by Sarah M. Gawronski<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zachary A. Rhone\u2019s The Great Tower of Elfland: The Mythopoeic Worldview of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and George MacDonald <\/em>
Rev. by James Hamby<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oliver Hepp\u2019s Der Bekannte Fremde: Der Vampir in der Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts <\/em>[The Familiar Other: The Vampire in 19th-Century Literature]
Rev. by Corinna Lenhardt<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lucy Fraser\u2019s The Pleasures of Metamorphosis: Japanese and English Fairy Tales Transformations of \u201cThe Little Mermaid\u201d <\/em>
Rev. by Sylvia Veronica Morin<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction: Epic Fantasy At the beginning of N. K. Jemisin\u2019s award-winning trilogy The Broken Earth, the narrator sets the stage in the grandest possible way: \u201cLet\u2019s start with the end of the world, why don\u2019t we?\u201d Later, after talking about more personal tragedies, this is amended to \u201cLet\u2019s try the ending again, writ continentally.\u201d That […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1045","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fantastic-arts.org\/jfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fantastic-arts.org\/jfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fantastic-arts.org\/jfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fantastic-arts.org\/jfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fantastic-arts.org\/jfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1045"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.fantastic-arts.org\/jfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1047,"href":"http:\/\/www.fantastic-arts.org\/jfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1045\/revisions\/1047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fantastic-arts.org\/jfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}