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odrzut

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Magic and adventure - this makes the Iliad fantasy.

Yes, if you interpret the classification strictly. That's why nobody does. Do you see my point now?

BTW I've read the Bible. The protagonist is a jerk in the first chapter, but seems to get more likeable in the second.
 

Lacrymas

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According to the Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature (if someone wants a copy PM me), fantasy literature is defined by a narrative which doesn't rely on real-life history or nature to be coherent. The Iliad, while a very different story than anything else in Greek literature, doesn't fall into this category. Beowulf, however, does. It doesn't need supernatural elements to be fantasy, as is often the case with 19th century examples.
 

AwesomeButton

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According to the Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature (if someone wants a copy PM me), fantasy literature is defined by a narrative which doesn't rely on real-life history or nature to be coherent. The Iliad, while a very different story than anything else in Greek literature, doesn't fall into this category. Beowulf, however, does. It doesn't need supernatural elements to be fantasy, as is often the case with 19th century examples.
Ok, that's a good definition. So it is a genre. But I think even this definition would include much under "fantasy" which people don't normally think of when they think of fantasy.
 

Lacrymas

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It can also be a setting, not only a genre. Just like the Rondo can be a genre, a form, a principle of form structuring and a character-type (i.e. fast and vivacious). The genre fantasy refers to the narrative, the setting fantasy refers to, obviously, the setting. The story you made up about the dwarf is the genre because the plot turns to fantastical elements at the end (literally selling his soul to a demon), while if the dwarf was hired to find the elven bar singer, but uncovers an underground trafficking ring with a slight theme of corruption, it would be noir in a fantasy setting. It's usually pointless to decouple the genre and the setting in this way, but it works as a hypothetical situation. Shadowrun is a good example of such decoupling. The missions usually don't hinge on supernatural elements to push the plot forward.
 

passerby

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How is Illiad, Oddysee, or all Greek mythos for that matter not fantasy. All other religious texts/mythos and fairy tales are also fantasy.
This genre exists since the beginning of literature.

What modern fantasy authors did, is they wrote more stuff in this genre.
Without pretending these stories and worlds are real, unlike religious stuff in the past on one hand.
With teenagers and manchildren as their main target audience instead of little kids, unlike fairytales in the past on the other hand.
 

ilitarist

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Iliad and Odyssey are not fantasy because people who listened to it actually believed it happened in one way or another. Maybe they didn't believe literal gods and monsters participated in those events but for them it was perhaps the same as us seeing bullet time and improbable aiming skills in historical movies.
 

Lacrymas

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No, neither the Odyssey nor the Iliad are fantasy, since they don't hinge on fantastical elements to push the plot forward. The Iliad is the strangest of Greek stories since the gods actively help the mortals and exhibit mortal traits, but it's speculated (quite well I might add) that the gods embody the mortals' strengths, weaknesses and struggles. Since the mortals are not at peace, so are the gods. When they help the mortals it's always in some kind of strengthening manner, in effect just pushing the traits they have on the surface, rather than imbuing them in the mortals. Even if the gods didn't exist, the Iliad would still make sense. Same with the Odyssey. The fantastical elements aren't the focus in these works, they are there to bring them closer to the mythology. Calling them fantasy is reductionist and even anachronistic. It's like saying mythology is fantasy. It's accepted that Beowulf is the first example of the modern definition of fantasy.

The examples before the 19th century are sparse, literally just a dozen books or so, like Sir Thomas Malory's La Morte D'Arthur (1469) or Edmun Spenser's The Fearie Queen (1590).
 
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AwesomeButton

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But the Odyssey does contain fantasy elements - there are the Cyclopses and Circe for example ;)
 

ilitarist

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You can just as well call books like Flat Earth, Mein Campf or Truth about 9/11 fantasy literature then.
 

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The words you're looking for are legends and epics. Also fairy tales and fables to an extent. All of these have been around for a lot longer than what we consider fantasy today and combined contain more or less what modern fantasy amounts to.

Beowulf is an epic poem, btw.
 

Lacrymas

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Beowulf is an epic poem, btw.

If this is meant to say that Beowulf isn't fantasy -

Bs7NI7O.jpg
 

Taluntain

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Beowulf is an epic poem, btw.

If this is meant to say that Beowulf isn't fantasy -

Bs7NI7O.jpg

No, just that what we call fantasy today is pretty much never meant to indicate poetry of any kind. I haven't read that book but I assume that they explain their reasoning behind lumping everything from poetry to novels together. Frankly, I've never heard Beowulf referred to as anything but an epic poem but SURE, it's got more than enough fantastical elements that you can also label it "FANTASY" if you happen to be making a book covering pre-modern-fantasy "fantasy".
 
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ilitarist

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I can understand calling Shakespear fantasy writer sometimes. It's clear that he doesn't believe in elfs and so doesn't audience so they are there for the plot.

Mary Shelley looks much more like sci-fi to me. I remember her saying something akin to "science doesn't consider things described in this book to be impossible" and it's clear that the book itself is about a possible invention that has huge implications; the Monster is not a MacGuffin but an idea that changes lifes of people like you and me. It's similar to Azimov or Bradbury or Wells, it asks what would you do if X happens. Fantasy is about completely another world - and sometimes it's about our world which was really different all along, like in books where vampires exist or Harry Potter.

Iliad and Odessey describes world as it is. Audience believes that monsters live far away or gods help heroes.
 

passerby

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Iliad and Odessey describes world as it is. Audience believes that monsters live far away or gods help heroes.

The authors were making shit up just like fantasy authors make today.
They were either nutjobs, or didn't actually believed stuff they were making up themselves.

By this logic Divine Comedy also describes the world as it is, because people believed in hell, purgatory and heaven.
People enjoyed making these stories up and listening to them for the same reason people like to create and read fantasy today.
What does it matter that gullible uneducated people believed in made up bullshit centuries ago ? ( many still do in XXIst century ).
It's all the same for me.
 

Lacrymas

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No, Divine Comedy is a prelude to the Renaissance thinking, where the individual experience and assimilation of religion and the divine is a central idea. DC is essentially that, religion filtered through Dante's person, it's not fantasy, not everything that isn't a scientific journal or an encyclopedia is fantasy.
 

Popiel

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Guy who read one book from gen.lib.rus.ec on the subject and copy-pastes stuff from it here plays a judicious sage.

Not even funny.
 

Lacrymas

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You are welcome to cite other sources, especially those which don't agree with this, no need to be a smarmy asshole about it.
 

Iznaliu

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I don't get why people can't understand that genres can overlap.
 

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