"The Fantastic as a Mode" by Rosemary Jackson - Chapter Summary
Jackson, Rosemary. "Chapter 2: The Fantastic as a Mode." Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion . London: Methuen, 1986. 13-60. Print. Fantasy is a genre which is hard to classify. Critics use the term to signify any literature which is not realistic, or possible in our world, including but not restricted to allegory, horror stories and myths. As a genre, fantasy breaks a lot of conventions of realistic literature. Space, time, philosophies, ideologies are all different. Language and syntax are also changed. Fantasy deals with existential issues through this breaking of conventions. Fantasy spans all themes, including erotic, criminal, psychological and macabre. Fantasy also breaks conventions of character, and many times characters within fantasy have multiple identities. According to Sartre the function of fantasy changed with the shift of society from religion to secularity. In the religious tradition fantasy was a form of escapism, but in secular society fan