The A to Z of Fantasy Literature

by Stableford, Brian M.

  c1300

  The White Book of Rhydderch provides the earliest written source for the substance of Celtic fantasy.

  1307

  13th October: Knights Templar throughout France are arrested, charged with heresy, and tortured by crown inquisitors to force confessions, providing the seeds of countless secret histories and fantasies of diabolism.

  c1320

  Dante’s Divine Comedy provides a key model for afterlife fantasy.

  c1355

  The Marvellous Adventures of Sir John Maundeville exemplifies the fantasized traveler’s tale.

  c1370

  The story of Gawain and the Green Knight provides a key exemplar of English Arthuriana and a significant exercise in obscure allegory.

  c1375

  The Red Book of Hergest adds the second foundation stone of Celtic fantasy; it includes “Peredur of Evrawc,” which recycles Chrétien’s Perceval.

  c1387

  Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales introduces fantasy—as well as naturalism—into the nascent tradition of English literature; the tales display a clear understanding of the various functions of calculated fabulation.

  Early 15th century

  The first version of the chivalric fantasy Amadis of

  Gaul is written, probably in Portugal; the original is lost but serially expanded versions in Spanish and French boost the novel-length version to international popularity.

  xviii • CHRONOLOGY

  1485

  Le Morte d’Arthur, bylined Thomas Malory, refashions the massive body of Anglo-Norman Arthuriana into a continuous and more-or-less coherent prose narrative, deemphasizing its supernatural elements but providing modern fantasy with its most important taproot text and exemplar.

  1492

  Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of the New World demon-

  strates that not all traveler’s tales are ludicrous.

  1494

  Matteo Boiardo dies, leaving his epic poem Orlando Innamorato

  unfinished.

  1515

  The lifestyle fantasist styling himself “Nostradamus” publishes his first set of quatrains, laying down a rich vintage for future scholarly fantasists.

  1516

  Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso picks up where Boiardo left off, taking chivalric romance to new extremes of elaboration and exoticism, spicing them with sophisticated wit.

  1532

  François Rabelais’s Pantagruel begins a series of parodic satires that provides a crucial exemplar for Swiftian satire and Voltairean contes philosophiques, and for lifestyle fantasists avid to adopt the guiding motto of the Abbey of Thelema (“Do As Thou Wilt”).

  1550

  Gianfrancesco Straparola’s Nights offers literary versions of 20

  folktales, including texts of Puss-in-Boots and Beauty and the Beast.

  1587

  Johann Spies publishes a fantasized account of the career of an obscure German scholar, founding the genre of Faustian fantasy.

  1590

  Edmund Spenser publishes the first part of The Faerie Queene, allegorizing contemporary culture in the form of a fairy romance. Sir Philip Sidney performs a similar allegorical service for the myth of Arcadia.

  1593

  Christopher Marlowe is murdered, leaving behind The Tragical

  History of Dr. Faustus, a transfiguration of Spies’s Faust Book.

  c1595

  William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream offers a new blueprint for English fairy literature.

  1605

  Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote pillories chivalric romance as a kind of folly, but concedes that if nostalgia is a mental disease there is a tragic dimension in its cure.

  c1611

  Shakespeare’s The Tempest produces a key model of the figure of the Enchanter—an important archetype of philosophically inclined wizards—and supplies him with an equally influential exemplary household.

  CHRONOLOGY • xix

  1634

  Giambattista Basile’s Pentamerone recycles many folktales recorded by Straparola and adds many others, including versions of Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel.

  1654

  Justus van den Vondel’s epic drama of the rebellion in heaven, Lucifer, is couched as a complaint against Puritanism.

  1667

  John Milton’s epic account of the rebellion in heaven, Paradise Lost, turns the ideological tables on Vondel.

  1668

  Jean de la Fontaine’s Fables recycles works by Aesop and Pilpay, supplementing them with many new examples in a more cynical and satirical vein.

  1678–79

  The first part of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress revives and modernizes the tradition of medieval Christian allegory.

  1691

  Robert Kirk writes his account of The Secret Commonwealth of

  Elves, Fauns and Fairies, which languishes unpublished until 1893.

  1696–98

  Madame d’Aulnoy’s sophisticated satirical fairy tales found a

  fanciful tradition in French literature.

  1697

  Charles Perrault’s collection of moralistic tales adapts folklore to the function of “civilizing” children.

  1701

  Antoine Galland’s translation of the adventures of Sinbad the

  Sailor adds a vital new element to Madame d’Aulnoy’s brand of fantasy.

  1704–16

  Galland’s Thousand and One Nights provides the foundation stone of Arabian fantasy.

  1707

  Alain-René Lesage’s Asmodeus; or, The Devil on Two Sticks displays considerable sympathy for the eponymous devil and provides an important model for supernaturally assisted tours.

  1726

  Jonathan Swift’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World

  . . . by Lemuel Gulliver sets a crucial precedent for English satirical fantasy.

  1730

  The posthumous publication of tales by the exiled Count Anthony

  Hamilton—who had died in 1720—provides significant exemplars for

  French writers of Gallandesque satires and entertainments.

  1746

  Voltaire’s “The World as It Is” pioneers the tradition of fanciful contes philosophiques.

  xx • CHRONOLOGY

  1752

  Sir Francis Dashwood establishes the Friars of St. Francis of

  Wycombe (nicknamed the Hell-Fire Club by its detractors) at Medmenham Abbey, setting an important precedent for modern lifestyle fantasists.

  1757

  Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our

  Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful considers the venturesome exercise of the imagination as a psychological necessity.

  1764

  James Ridley imports Gallandesque fantasy into English in Tales of the Genii, bylined Charles Morell. Horace Walpole represents the moralistic Gothic fantasy The Castle of Otranto as a translation of an Italian manuscript.

  1765

  Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry provides a classic compendium of English ballads.

  1768

  Voltaire’s “The Princess of Babylon” leavens a conte

  philosophique with fantasy for entertainment’s sake.

  1772

  Jacques Cazotte’s The Devil in Love provides a crucial example of sympathy for a seductive devil.

  1782

  Johann Musäus issues the first volume of his collection of German Folktales, prompting the brothers Grimm to start their collection.

  1785

  Rudolf Eric Raspe’s Baron Münchhausen provides the tall story

  with its literary paradigm.

  1786

  William Beckford’s Vathek gives Arabian fantasy a decadent twist.

  1787

  Charles Garnier’s collection of Imaginary Voyages is launched, providing a library of philosophically informed traveler’s tales.

 
; 1793

  William Blake publishes the first of his “prophetic books.”

  1795

  Johann von Goethe publishes his Märchen, providing a key model for the “art fairy tale.”

  1797

  Ludwig Tieck’s “The Faithful Eckhart” transfigures material from

  Musäus to create a new German hero-myth.

  1798

  Nathan Drake’s Literary Hours describes the “sportive” element of Gothic fiction. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner appears in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads, exemplifying the fantastic aspect of British Romanticism.

  CHRONOLOGY • xxi

  1799

  William Godwin’s St. Leon introduces moralistic alchemical romance to the medium of the three-decker novel.

  1801

  M. G. Lewis’s Tales of Wonder collects ballads with a supernatural theme, adding several new compositions.

  1802

  Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border provides a significant supplement to Percy’s Reliques.

  1803

  Robert Southey’s translation of Amadis de Gaul imports chivalric romance into 19th-century Britain.

  1805

  Walter Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel” consolidates the Roman-

  tic image of the wizard in its depiction of Michael Scott.

  1808

  Goethe publishes the first part of his definitive allegorical version of Faust.

  1811

  Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s Undine and Ludwig Tieck’s “The Elves” provide the paradigm examples of the German art fairy tale.

  1812

  Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm issue the first volume of their Chil-

  dren’s and Household Tales, firmly establishing the notion of folktales as tales told by adults to children.

  1813

  Fouqué’s The Magic Ring revives the tradition of chivalric romance within the novel format. Percy Shelley’s “Queen Mab” establishes an important precedent for the 19th-century English revival of fairy art and literature.

  1814

  The first volume of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Tales in the Manner of Callot and Adalbert von Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl introduce a note of sinister grotesquerie into the German art fairy tale.

  1818

  Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein creates an important template for tales of man-made monsters.

  1819

  Washington Irving’s “Rip van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy

  Hollow” pioneer the invention of American “fakelore.” John Polidori’s

  “The Vampyre” supernaturalizes Lord Byron.

  1820

  John Keats’s “Lamia” and “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” reintro-

  duce two carefully re-eroticized classic motifs into English Romantic fantasy. Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound provides a model of disguised literary satanism.

  xxii • CHRONOLOGY

  1822

  Charles Nodier’s Trilby imagines a goblin in love with a human woman.

  1824

  Walter Scott’s “Wandering Willie’s Tale” renders the substance of

  a fantastic ballad into prose. William Austin’s “Peter Rugg—the Missing Man” Americanizes a European folktale as an allegory of history.

  1828

  Thomas Keightley’s Fairy Mythology provides a Bible for the English vogue; excerpts appear in the Athenaeum, assisting John Sterling’s experiments in fantasy fiction.

  1831

  Honoré de Balzac’s account of The Wild Ass’s Skin provides a paradigm example of modern moralistic fantasy. Nikolai Gogol’s Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka give literary form to Russian folklore.

  1832–33

  Benjamin Disraeli’s “Ixion in Heaven” exemplifies the use of

  classical fantasy as political allegory.

  1833

  James Dalton’s The Invisible Gentleman attempts to adapt humorous moralistic fantasy to the three-decker format.

  1834

  The diffusionist thesis of Keightley’s Tales and Popular Fictions emphasizes the contribution of recycling and transfiguration to the heritage of modern fantasy.

  1835

  Elias Lonnrott compiles the Kalevala, synthesizing a Finnish

  “epic” from fragmentary folk songs. Hans Christian Andersen begins publishing his synthetic fairy tales.

  1836

  Théophile Gautier’s “Clarimonde” breaks new ground in erotic

  fantasy. Gogol’s “The Nose” reinvents absurdist satire.

  1837

  Sara Coleridge’s Phantasmion provides a significant example of an allegorical fairy romance with elements of heroic fantasy. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Dr Heidegger’s Experiment” assists the foundation of an American tradition of fantastic contes philosophiques. Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” warns young women of the dangers of standing on their own two feet.

  1838

  John Sterling’s The Onyx Ring attempts to found an English tradition of experimental contes philosophiques in novel form.

  1839

  Captain Marryat’s account of The Phantom Ship transfigures the myth of the Flying Dutchman.

  CHRONOLOGY • xxiii

  1840

  Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque takes up where John Sterling left off in demonstrating the breadth and versatility of the fantasy spectrum. The first series of R. H. Barham’s Ingoldsby Legends provides a crucial exemplar for English humorous fantasy.

  1842

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni provides a key exemplar of occult fantasy and launches a thousand lifestyle fantasies. Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” establishes a paradigm of decadent fantasy. Robert Browning’s “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” recycles a famous folktale in hectic rhyme.

  1843

  Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol creates the tradition of moralistic Christmas fantasy. Richard Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman”

  begins his development of fantasy in musical form.

  1844

  Dickens’s The Chimes attempts to strike a great blow for the poor but exposes the limitations of moralistic fantasy. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s account of “Rappaccini’s Daughter” aims at a softer target.

  1845

  Andersen’s “The Ugly Duckling” gives an archetypal form to a

  hopeful modern myth. Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter takes the tactics of parental moral terrorism to a new extreme.

  1846

  Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” lays down a template for modern

  Orphean fantasy. Edward Lear’s The Book of Nonsense takes up arms against the tyranny of “common sense.”

  1848–49

  Gustave Flaubert writes the first version of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, working toward a modern conception of the Devil. Douglas Jerrold’s A Man Made of Money demonstrates the literary potential of literalized puns.

  1850

  Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Ethan Brand” embarks upon a perverse

  quest for the unpardonable sin.

  1851

  John Ruskin’s King of the Golden River provides the cardinal English example of an art fairy tale.

  1853

  Richard Wagner begins his operatic transfiguration of Nordic fan-

  tasy in The Rheingold.

  1854–56

  Éliphas Lévi’s Dogma and Ritual of Transcendental Magic provides a handbook for modern lifestyle fantasy.

  xxiv • CHRONOLOGY

  1855

  Robert Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” fur-

  nishes a key source of enigmatic imagery.

  1856

  William Morris’s account of “The Hollow Land” lays down a tem-

  plate for the design and decoration of secondary worlds.

  1857

  Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal pioneers decadent style.

  1858

  Geo
rge MacDonald’s Phantastes lays down a template for didactic portal fantasy.

  1859

  Éliphas Lévi’s History of Magic completes his couplet of scholarly fantasies, adding theory to practice.

  1860

  Paul Féval’s multilayered and chimerical Knightshade demonstrates the elasticity of metafiction.

  1861

  Bulwer-Lytton’s A Strange Story reclaims, with interest, what Éliphas Lévi had borrowed from Zanoni.

  1862

  Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” explores the symbolism of “forbidden fruit.” Jules Michelet’s La Sorcière demonstrates that real historians can fake history more skillfully and more extravagantly than mere pretenders.

  1863

  Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies explores the utility of phantasmagoric imagery in Christian fantasy.

  1865

  In response to George MacDonald’s suggestion that he too might

  produce something akin to The Water Babies, Lewis Carroll prepares Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for publication, achieving something quite different.

  1866

  Sabine Baring-Gould’s Curious Myths of the Middle Ages provides easily accessible imaginative fuel for contemporary fantasists. Théophile Gautier’s Spirite pioneers paranormal romance. William Gilbert’s The Magic Mirror exemplifies the Victorian attitude to wish-fulfillment fantasies.

  1867

  Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt demonstrates the difficulty of putting fantasy on stage.

  1869

  Jean Ingelow’s Mopsa the Fairy exemplifies the sentimental aspects of the Victorian fascination with fairies.

  1870

  Frank R. Stockton’s Ting-a-Ling founds an American tradition of children’s fantasy.

  CHRONOLOGY • xxv

  1871

  Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass takes “nonsense” to new extremes of logical effect.

  1872

  George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin exemplifies the darker aspects of the Victorian fascination with fairies.

  1874

  Gustave Flaubert publishes the revised version of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, featuring a more comprehensively modernized image of the Devil.

  1876

  Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark gives nonsense its verse epic.

  1877

  Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled lays the foundation for a scholarly and lifestyle fantasy of unprecedented complexity. Mrs. Molesworth’s The Cuckoo Clock refines didactic portal fantasy for children.

  1878

  Max Adeler’s “Mr Skinner’s Night in the Underworld” adds an