The document discusses key elements of fantasy literature, including predictable serial plots based on life cycles or hero's journeys, magical yet rule-based settings in primitive natural or medieval worlds, and characters that include humans alongside mythical beings representing aspects of humanity. The style is often simple with repetition and lack of metaphor, conveying archetypal themes about human psychology and experiences.

1. Elements of Fantasy Literature

2. Plot
• Plot is almost always a natural serial sequence.
• It is simple, predictable, and often patterned
on
– the schedule of birth, growth, and death,
– the seasonal cycle,
– on the hero’s journey of separation, quest, and
reconciliation/salvation.

3. Plot, Cont.
• The action is often
ritualized or stylized,
• the character’s actions
often based on traditional
roles and archetypes
rather than on personal
motivation
– (i.e. the heroine always
falls in love with the
prince, despite disguises,
deceptions and
distortions.)

4. Setting
• Usually set in primitively
natural surroundings.
• Medieval nature is usually
magicalized rather than
scientifically explained,
and is often emblematic
and symbolic rather than
literal.
• Technology and
architecture are also
usually primitive, at about
the level of the
blacksmith.

5. Setting, cont.
• Although magic works, it is not random, and
there are usually elaborate rules to govern the
use of magic but no explanations for why
magic works.

6. Characters
• Usually a few human beings are
surrounded by proto-people or
para-people who represent
transformations of basic human
traits:
– wizards,
– witches,
– elves,
– fairies,
– gnomes,
– dwarves,
– goblins,
– trolls,
– sprites,
– angels and devils, etc.

7. Characters, cont.
• Often these creatures are
psychic types such as
villains, or ugly
stepmothers;
• or emblems such as a
dragon who represents the
ultimate challenge.
• Mythological creatures are
a clue the writing may be
fantasy, as are any creatures
that could not live or be as
they are shown based on
the best knowledge that
scientists possess.

8. Style/Mood/Tone
• The style is often “folk” or “oral”,
– using simple vocabulary,
– lots of repetition,
– not much simile or metaphor, since the setting
itself tends to supply the metaphor;
• for example, “mountain” equals a tremendous
challenge.

9. Style/Mood/Tone
• In “sword and sorcery”
fantasy, the simple style
is replaced by a
baroque, ornate,
bombastically stylized
diction which is often
deliberately archaic.
• The story in either case
may be studded with
proverbs, formulaic
wisdom and clichés.

10. Theme
• Fantasy tends to • The stories lead to
concentrate on the statements about
psychological character human beings’
of archetypal truths and encounters with their
experiences: inner selves.
– birth, growth, wisdom, • Fantasy tends to be
pain, love, fear, sin, guilt, used easily as religious
beauty, discipline, good
or spiritual reading.
and evil, sacrifice and
death