The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature

Fantasy literature, like its stablemate science fiction, has long suffered from a rather prosaic belief amongst critics that it must be juvenile because it does not fulfil a questionable need for naturalistic representation in order to be worthy. We have to wonder where this leaves Shakespeare and Marlowe, with their ghosts, devils and magicians, and the Arthurian romances. As The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature notes, this denigration corresponds to a need for scientific vigour in literature that came about in the 1700s. Indeed, they identify the 1700s as being the origin point for their definition of fantasy literature (literature...