"The Fantastic as a Mode" by Rosemary Jackson - Chapter Summary

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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 fantasy served to explore the human condition, and transform the world in which we live (because there is no longer a deity that dictates the nature of the human condition and our world). Man no longer believes in a deity so he looks to fantasy for imagination, for filling in the blanks that religion once filled in terms of the purpose of the individual and of humanity. Fantasy is thus the "heir of religion". It is contrasted with the religious myth in that it critiques the world instead of worshiping it.

Modern fantasy explores the secular idea that the universe is huge and empty. Instead of heaven and hell fantasy creates other places within secular space, and transforms our world.

Fantasy depicts something that, while unreal, is based in our own world. The fantastic world must be introduced as similar to our own and only later portrayed as different, thus "disorienting the reader's categorization of the real".


Rosemary the plant, not the author. If you are aware of a picture of Rosemary Jackson, please let me know.


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