#13: What is ‘Literary Fantasy’?
My academic piece 'A New Definition For Literary Fantasy' will be published in the winter edition of the British Fantasy Society journal, out on December 10.
This is a literature review looking at the ways in which academics and publishers have used the term ‘literary fantasy’ when writing, reading, studying, and marketing different works.
The subtitle on this piece is ‘Looking beyond publishing elitism’. And this is for a reason.
I found that academics and publishers have often used the term ‘literary fantasy’ to mean ‘good fantasy’ – couching personal preference in the appearance of ‘literary’ legitimacy, and falsely justifying elitism.
But I also found that the term is not actually well-known at all outside this circle. I surveyed a group of readers at UQ and online, and asked what it meant to them. Some used the term to mean ‘fantasy fiction’ – deeming the ‘literary’ not as a genre marker but simply a signpost that we were in fact talking about books.
Literary fantasy is a hybrid genre between literary fiction and fantasy fiction.
You might have seen hybrid genres before. Romantasy, or hybrid romance/fantasy, is one of the most popular.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
is a historic fantasy.
Frankenstein
is gothic science fiction.
But there’s trouble in hybridising with the literary fiction genre. Namely, no one seems to agree on exactly what ‘literary’ means.
Oh, you’ve seen it around.
UQP is a ‘literary’ publisher –
never
publishing genre fiction except for all the times they do. The classics all seem to be ‘literary’. And contemporary ‘literary’ isn’t too hard to spot. Think Sally Rooney. Think
The Lovely Bones. There is something identifiable about it, even if it’s hard to pin down. There’s a (dare I say, literary) essay which almost gets at this idea. It says when asked what an eshay is, an Australian might rightly answer, “You know, you see them on trains.”
But is that something just that the thing is good?
Um, no, I say. That’s a value judgement, not a genre.
In my piece, I argue that while fantasy fiction works are driven by the presentation of realities far removed from a reader’s waking experience, literary fiction works are driven by experimentation with form and the prose within it. A literary work doesn’t need to be good at this – this just needs to be the most important thing about it, above and beyond the characters, the plot, the worldbuilding.
And literary fantasy? Now it seems much easier to define. If your experimentation with form and prose supports your efforts at creating a magical reality, now you’re working in the hybrid genre. Whether or not you’re good at it.
To celebrate the BFS Journal’s winter issue, I'm joining Avery-Claire Galloway (fiction editor at The Peacock's Feet), Dr Joyce McPherson (biographer of George MacDonald) and Amanda Coleman White (Ink Sweat and Tears feature) for an
online launch event.
Apologies to my Brisbane friends, it will be at 4am on December 11 for us – but for those across the pond I would be delighted to see you register.
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