It has probably come to many people's attention that I love fantasy. Yes, I do. The same could be said for a lot of people around the world. So we will talk about fantasy and we will separate this into parts. This will be part 1.
While it is true that fantasy as a genre has really taken flight these past many years in book series, film series, and beyond. However, some long time ago, fantasy was actually discouraged and seen as problematic because kids will have their heads in the cloud and in time will have hard time differentiating between fantasy and reality. These problems can go further back when people believed these to be the devil's work or witchcraft.
Sadly, this is still a problem today in some pockets of the world. So I am here to fully explore the meaning and purpose of fantasy as a genre. In all hopes, this might shed some light to some non-believers or those poor-lost souls.
Fantasy of all the genres is by far the most difficult to define. It does not have one single meaning, in fact, there are many meanings. I have had professors who attempted to provide a singular definition for this genre and I was not pleased. Trust me I got into some conflict with one of my professors about this.
Why is so difficult to define? Can out imagination be defined so easily? No. Fantasy is so varied to the point that there are branches within the genre itself. We have high fantasy (Lord of the Rings), children's fiction (Inkheart), contemporary style (Percy Jackson), and of course we even have fairy tales, myths, and legends.
If you think about it, fairy tales are a type of fantasy. Fantasy does involve some types of magical elements right, fairy tales have this. So does any myth or legend. Think of all the Greek and Norse myths. There are some fantastical elements there that could be considered fantasy in its own way.
If we consider all the above to be fantasy, then fantasy is therefore probably the oldest genre in existence. I will leave off here. Stay tuned for part 2 where we will discuss the next leg of the fantasy genre.
No comments:
Post a Comment