Ursula Le Guin introduced me to fantasy when I was a third grader (back in 1975). Ged the Archmage amazed me and the world he inhabited filled me with awe. When I saw that the great artist had an essay on the definition of "fantasy," I was eager to read it.
The essay appears in Le Guin's book on writing, Words Are My Matter. And we discover what a nerdy reader she was, since she says her favorite source is a book she calls "Auntie," and then we find out that the book she feels so intimate with is none other than the Oxford English Dictionary (the OED).
Now, the OED is more than just a dictionary. It is a well-researched tool for discovering the origins and history of word usage, the study of etymology. And the OED has an entry on "Fantasy / Phantasy," and the following sentence summing up Le Guin's reaction caught my eye:
So the word fantasy remains ambiguous, standing between the false, the foolish, the shallows of the mind, and the mind's deep, true connection with the real.
Students of philosophy might detect some Platonic idealism in there (since Le Guin refers to our "connection with the real"). Early usage of "phantasy" in English writings had to do with "the mental apprehension of an object of perception." That is, to phantasize meant "to imagine real objects," to form a picture in the mind's eye. Over time, the verb developed a connotation of imagining not-so-real objects, as in hallucinations and delusions.
What does any of this have to do with fantasy literature? Everything. Stories in the genres of Science Fiction and Fantasy provide readers a way of looking at reality from the outside. A reader sits firmly in the real world reading about an imaginary one. These stories have the advantage of removing distractions, eliminating the particulars of the real world that complicate our comprehension of life.
Characters in these imaginary worlds of SFF literature have the same loves and hates, talents and insecurities, advantages and disadvantages that are familiar to us. Their stories make us think outside our usual parameters. And we even begin to imagine things that transcend our experience.
We might be seeking a "deep, true connection with the real." Our "object of perception" is the true nature of life and our method of mentally apprehending it is through the fantastic. So Ged, in The Wizard of Earthsea, confronts his dark side. First he runs from it. Then his mentor (Ogion) tells him he must seek it out and stop running. People will say The Wizard of Earthsea is a children's book. But, though I read it in third grade, I understood far better as an adult.
Perhaps you, like me, have also confronted your dark side. Maybe, like me, you found Ged's adventure to be a mirror to your own experience. That makes The Wizard of Earthsea a quite successful phantasy, I think.
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