Fantasy and Mimesis: Responses to Reality in Western Literature

Since Plato and Aristotle's declaration of the essence of literature as imitation, western narrative has been traditionally discussed in mimetic terms. Thus marginalized, fantasy — the deliberate departure from reality — has become the hidden face of fiction, identified by most critics as a minor genre. This book rejects generic definitions of fantasy, arguing that it is not a separate or even seperable strain in literary practice, but rather an impulse as significant as that of mimesis. Together, fantasy and mimesis are the twin impulses behind literary creation.

In an analysis which ranges from the Icelandic sagas to science fiction, from Malory to pulp romance, from the Odyssey to the nouveau roman, Kathryn Hume systematically examines the various ways in which fantasy and mimesis contribute to literary representations of reality: offering forms of escape in adventure stories, pastoral, face and pornography; complementing each other in expressive presentations of "new" realities; pressuring readers to accept a didactic author's interpretation of reality; or battering the reader into agreeing that his or her interpretation is unprovable and that reality may indeed be unknowable.

Only by acknowledging fantasy as a legitimate response to reality, and to our demand that reality be meaningful, can we appreciate its role in literature's power to give readers a sense of meaning and its centrality to the creative imagination.

• Author
• Kathryn Hume

• Format
• paperback

• Pages
• 213

• Publisher
• Methuen Publishing

• Language
• english

• ISBN
• 9780416380200

• Genres
• fantasy, reference

• Release date
• 1984