prolific generators of intrusions, as in the cases of Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood and Lucy Boston’s Green Knowe.
INVISIBILITY. Because the burdensome obligations of social life are policed by countless observing eyes, or at least by the possibility of observation, there is a delicious imaginative liberation to be found in daydreams of becoming invisible, which are presumably commonplace.
Caps and rings that make their wearers invisible are common motifs in folklore. As with tales of immortality, many literary fantasies are cautionary tales exploring the downside of the possibility. James Dalton’s Invisible Gentleman gets no joy from his Faustian bargain, while Charles Wentworth Lisle’s The Ring of Gyges (1886) dwells on the cynicism and paranoia that would result from the ability to penetrate the poses and hypocrisies of one’s fellows.
Other notable thought experiments in this vein include A. E. Coppard’s “The Gollan,” Christopher Priest’s The Glamour (1984), and Thomas Berger’s Being Invisible; it is a key theme in J. R. R.
Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The glee undermined in cautionary tales by embarrassment is rarely given full rein, although Jorge de Sena’s The Wondrous Physician (1979) is more self-indulgent than most. Paranoid fantasies of being observed by invisible entities are common in horror fiction, although some—like Guy de Maupassant’s
“The Horla” (1887)—are important examples of psychological fantasy, as are fantasies in which invisibility is a metaphor for inconsequential-ity, including Charles Beaumont’s “The Vanishing American” (1955)
and Robert M. Coates’s “The Man Who Vanished” (1957).
IPCAR, DAHLOV (1917–2003). U.S. illustrator and writer whose children’s picture books include several animal fantasies. Her fantasies for older children are unusually sophisticated. The Warlock of Night (1969) uses a chess game to symbolize the rivalry of night and day. The Queen of Spells (1973) is a sentimental recycling of Tam Lin. A Dark Horn Blowing (1978) also draws on ballads in its account of a young woman
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abducted into Faerie. Her short fiction is sampled in The Nightmare and Her Foal and Other Stories (1990).
IRVINE, ALEXANDER C. (1969– ). U.S. writer. A Scattering of Jades (2002) is a historical fantasy mythologizing America. One King, One Soldier (2004) features an alternative history in which the rival candidates contending for the position of a Jessie Weston-esque Fisher King include decadent poet Arthur Rimbaud. Rossetti Song (2002) and Un-intended Consequences (2003) mingle short fantasies with other materials.
IRVINE, IAN (1950– ). Australian writer. In the View from the Mirror quartet, comprising A Shadow on the Glass (1998), The Tower on the Rift (1998), Dark Is the Moon (1999), and The Way between Worlds (1999), a deceitful mirror with a long memory becomes the object of a quest. The Well of Echoes series, set in the same milieu and comprising Geomancer (2001), Tetrarch (2002), Alchymist (2003), Scrutator (2003), and Chimaera (2004), is a hybrid/science fantasy in which the forbidden art of geomancy must be recovered to combat crystalline
“clankers.”
IRVING, WASHINGTON (1783–1859). U.S. writer long resident in Europe, an important pioneer of the short-story form. His satirical essay offering A History of New York (1809, bylined Diedrich Knickerbocker) is a manifest scholarly fantasy. His serial miscellany The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (7 vols., 1819–20; omnibus 1820) included three Americanized folktales drawn from German sources, including “Rip van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” He recycled others in Tales of a Traveller (1824 as by Geoffrey Crayon), including the Faustian fantasy “The Devil and Tom Walker,” but treated the Spanish legends retold in The Alhambra (1832) more reverently. His work had a considerable influence on Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and his adaptive strategy was copied by others, notably William Austin.
IRWIN, MARGARET (1889–1967). British writer best known for historical fiction. Two of her novels added significant pleas for re-enchantment to the British flood that followed the end of World War I.
Still She Wished for Company (1924; aka Who Will Remember? ) is a bittersweet timeslip romance. These Mortals (1925) tells the story of a girl reared in the isolation of her father’s magical palace, whose romantic illusions about the world of men are rudely shattered by exposure to its
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hypocrisies and delusions. Two more timeslip stories are among the fantasies in Madame Fears the Dark: Seven Stories and a Play (1935; rev.
as Bloodstock and Other Stories, 1953).
IRWIN, ROBERT (1946– ). British scholar and writer. His expertise in Islamic studies enabled him to compile a definitive account of the history of The Arabian Nights (1994) and greatly assisted the composition of his own Arabian fantasy The Arabian Nightmare (1983), a hallucinatory fantasy in which the protagonist becomes lost in a labyrinthine web of interlocking dreams and tales. The Limits of Vision (1986) is a humorous/delusional fantasy in which a housewife mounts a heroic crusade against Mucor, the Dark Lord of dirt. Exquisite Corpse (1995) is a subtler delusional fantasy set against the background of the Surrealist movement. Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh (1997) is an erotic fantasy of the harem. Satan Wants Me (1999) is a convoluted occult fantasy.
ITALIAN FANTASY. Italian Renaissance writers produced some important taproot texts employed by modern fantasy, most notably Dante’s Divine Comedy, various folktales recorded by Gianfrancesco Straparola and Giambattista Basile, and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. Another important source was the the 15th-century Commedia dell’arte, which initially consisted of wandering troupes of actors who improvised humorous plays using stock characters that became increasingly stereotyped as the figures of the harlequinade—including the clown Pierrot, the comic cavalier Scaramouche, and the clever servant and practical joker Harlequin; the tradition was continually reinvented and remodeled, most famously by the 18th-century Venetian playwright Carlo Gozzi—who im-
ported a strong element of fantasy—eventually being transmuted into modern pantomimes and puppet shows.
The Italian Romantic movement was a pale shadow of its northern relatives and laid little groundwork for the development of a fantasy tradition. A few fugitive works by Giacomo Leopardi and others were its principal legacy, to which belated additions were made by I. U. Tarche-tti, whose work is sampled in Fantastic Tales (1992). The work of recycling the legacy of Italian folktales was left to the late 19th-century ventures of “Carlo Collodi” (Carlo Lorenzini), author of Pinocchio (1883), to Emma Perodi, and to the more sustained 20th-century labors of Italo Calvino. Italy was, however, more significantly affected by the Decadent and Surrealist movements; as in Germany, such work came to be
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regarded with some suspicion by the fascist political elite, but such opposition proved a spur rather than a blanket, assisting the motivation of such writers as Tommaso Landolfi, whose short fiction is eclectically sampled in Words in Commotion and Other Stories (1982; abridged tr.
1986), Dino Buzzati, Primo Levi, and Calvino.
Calvino’s towering example helped to increase interest in fantastic materials, preparing the way for the further experiments in literary fantasy—including Anna Maria Ortese’s The Iguana (1965; tr. 1987) and Alessandro Boffa’s You’re an Animal, Viskovitz! (1998; tr. 2002), and the tentative formation of a commercial genre with domestic exponents who include Valerio Evangelisti, author of a series of novels featuring the inquisitor Nicholas Eymerich (launched 1994) and the Magus trilogy, featuring Nostradamus (1999). See also FAIRY TALES.
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JACQ, CHRISTIAN (1947– ). French Egyptologist, author of a long series of historical fantasies whose first sequence comprises The Son of Light (tr.
1997), The Temple of a Million Years (tr. 1997, aka The Eternal Temple), The Battle of Kadesh (tr. 1998), The Lady of Abu Simbel (1996; tr. 1998), and Under the Western Acacia (1996; tr. 1999). The Black Pharaoh (1999; tr. 1999), set 500 years later, serves as
a bridge to a second sequence, comprising Nefer the Silent (2000), The Wise Woman (2000), Paneb the Ardent (2000; tr. 2001), and The Place of Truth (2001). A further sequence comprises The Empire of Darkness (2001; tr. 2002), The War of the Crowns (2002; tr. 2003), and The Flaming Sword (2002; tr. 2003).
JACQUES, BRIAN (1939– ). British writer. Most of his work belongs to a successful sequence of animal fantasies featuring the mice of Redwall Abbey, comprising Redwall (1986), Mossflower (1988), Mattimeo (1989), Mariel of Redwall (1991), Salamandastron (1992), Martin the Warrior (1993), The Bellmaker (1995), Outcast of Redwall (1995), The Pearls of Lutra (1996), The Long Patrol (1997), Marlfox (1998), The Legend of Luke (1999), Lord Brocktree (2000), Taggerung (2001), Triss (2002), Loamhedge (2003), and a variety of merchandising spinoffs. Castaways of the Flying Dutchman (2001) and The Angel’s Command (2003) follow the adventures of a boy and a dog washed away from the deck of the accursed ship. His short fiction is sampled in Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales (1991) and The Ribbajack and Other Curious Yarns (2004).
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JAKES, JOHN W. (1932– ). U.S. writer best known for historical fiction and sf (refer to HDSFL). Most of his fantasy is sword and sorcery imitative of Robert E. Howard, including a series collected as Brak the Barbarian (1968), Brak the Barbarian versus The Sorceress (1969), Brak the Barbarian versus The Mark of the Demons (1969), Brak: When the Idols Walked (1978), and The Fortunes of Brak (1980). The Last Magicians (1969) is in a similar vein. Mention My Name in Atlantis (1972) is a parody of the subgenre’s clichés. The historical romance Veils of Salome (1962, initially bylined “Jay Scotland”) recycles a classic item of erotic fantasy.
JANSSON, TOVE (1914–2001). Swedish-speaking Finnish writer and illustrator. Her fantasy series, launched in 1945, deals witha highly distinctive secondary world constructed by the unhuman inhabitants of the Moomin Valley construct, which she developed in comic strips and stage plays as well as books. Although they are in the tradition of Lewis Carroll, whose translations Jansson illustrated, along with Tolkien’s The Hobbit, their particular blend of humor, sentimentality, and lyricism—with darker intrusions—is distinctive. The English translations are Finn Family Moonmintroll (1950; aka The Happy Moomins), Comet in Moominland (1951), The Exploits of Moominpapa (1952), Moominland Midwinter (1958), Moominsummer Madness (1961), Tales from Moomin Valley (1963), Moominpapa at Sea (1966), and Moominvalley in November (1971). The characters were subsequently licensed for use by other writers.
JARRY, ALFRED (1873–1907). French writer, an important pioneer of surrealism. The work he did in association with his invention of “pataphysics”—a paradoxical science dealing with the exceptions excluded by natural laws—is a kind of anti-sf (refer to HDSFL), and much of his other work, including the plays of the Ubu cycle, is Gothically grotesque. There are significant elements of hallucinatory fantasy in the novel translated as Days and Nights (1897; tr. 1989), and of erotic fantasy in Visits of Love (1898; tr. 1993) and the historical novel Mes-salina (1900; tr. 1985). The drama Caesar Antichrist (1895; tr. 1992) is a hectic apocalyptic fantasy and “The Other Alcestis” (1896; tr. 1989) a vivid biblical fantasy.
JARVIS, ROBIN (1964–). British writer. The animal fantasy series comprising The Dark Portal (1989), The Crystal Prison (1989), The Final Reckoning (1990), The Alchymist’s Cat (1991), The Oaken Throne
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(1993), and Thomas (1995) might be regarded as urban-fantasy equivalents of Brian Jacques’s Redwall series, featuring tough and street-wise metropolitan mice instead of Grahame-esque country mice. The trilogy comprising The Whitby Witches (1991), A Warlock in Whitby (1992), and The Whitby Child (1994) is dark fantasy; a similar trilogy of “Tales from the Wyrd Museum” comprises The Woven Path (1995), Raven’s Knot (1996), and The Fatal Strand (1998). The series launched by Thorn Ogres of Hagwood (1999); and Dark Waters of Hagwood (2004) is a theriomorphic fantasy featuring “werlings.” The Intrigues of the Reflected Realm series, launched with Deathscent (2001), is an alternative history in which Elizabeth I has been enthroned for 178
years and England’s native fauna is drastically depleted.
JEFFERIES, MIKE (1943– ). British illustrator and writer. The commodified fantasy series, comprising The Road to Underfall (1986), Palace of Kings (1987), Shadowlight (1988), The Knights of Cawdor (1995), Citadel of Shadows (1996), and The Siege of Candlebane Hall (1998), is stereotyped, as is the feminized couplet Glitterspike Hall (1989) and Hall of Whispers (1990). Shadows in the Watchgate (1991) and Stone Angels (1993) are dark fantasies of unfortunate animation.
Hidden Echoes (1992) is a portal fantasy in which the protagonist is a fantasy writer. The protagonists of Children of the Flame (1994) combat the effects of an ancient curse; The Ghosts of Candleford (1999) is similar.
JEPSON, EDGAR (1863–1938). British writer. He was on the fringes of the English Decadent movement; A. E. Waite’s Horlick’s Magazine published his heretical Christian fantasy The Horned Shepherd (1904).
Similar echoes of James Frazer in scholarly fantasy recur in two items improvised from the relics of aborted novels, “Marsh Horny” and “The Resurgent Mysteries,” in Captain Sentimental and Other Stories (1911), both of which deal with the supposed survival of pagan cults in Victorian Britain—a thesis that became central to the scholarly fantasies of Margaret Murray and the lifestyle fantasies of Gerald Gardner, from which modern witchcraft took its inspiration. The Mystery of the Myr-tles (1909) and No. 19 (1910; aka The Garden at Number 19) are occult fantasies inspired by the impostures of Aleister Crowley, the latter featuring a conjuration of Pan that Crowley went on to attempt. The Moon Gods (1930) is a lost race novel in which a Carthaginian society is borrowed from Gustave Flaubert’s Salammbô.
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JEROME, JEROME K. (1859–1927). British writer. Told after Supper (1891) is a collection of parodic Christmas/ghost stories. The title story of The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1907) features an enigmatic lodger in a boardinghouse who revitalizes the lives of his neighbors; the other fantasies include the ironic Faustian fantasy “The Soul of Nicholas Snyders, or the Miser of Zandam” and the wish-fulfillment fantasy “His Time Over Again.” Malvina of Brittany (1916) includes the tongue-in-cheek title story about a stray from Faerie and the theosophist fantasy “The Lesson.”
JERROLD, DOUGLAS (1803–1857). British humorist associated with Punch, long before F. Anstey joined the staff, whose work included some significant precursors of Ansteyan fantasy. The Chronicles of Clovernook (1846) includes some tall tales reminiscent of the work of R. H. Barham. A Man Made of Money (1848–49) is a graphic wish-fulfillment fantasy with moral echoes of Honoré de Balzac’s The Magic Skin.
JEWISH FANTASY. The preservation in writing of Jewish folktales began in the Talmud, and the cultural coherency of the Jewish tradition may well have allowed orally transmitted tales to be conserved with unusual care. A new phase of recording began with such Yiddish texts as The Mayse-Book (1602), some of whose inclusions are sampled in Joachim Neugroschel’s showcase anthology The Great Works of Jewish Fantasy and the Occult (1976), which also features Yudl Rosenberg’s version of “The Golem” (1909) and Ber Horovitz’s version of “The
Dybbuk.” Neugroschel also edited The Dybbuk and the Yiddish Imagination: A Haunted Reader (2000), collecting materials related to that motif, but the golem is a much more common motif.
The Israel Folktale Archives, established in the late 1950s by Dov Noy, has amassed a considerable collection, samples of which are recycled in English in a series of collections by Howard Schwartz: Elijah’s Violin and Other Jewish Folktales (1983), Miriam’s Tambourine: Jewish Folktales from Around the World (1988), and Lilith’s Cave: Jewish Tales of the Supernatural (1991). Similar anthologies have been compiled by Josepha Sherman. Such materials are routinely referenced and transfigured in the works of modern writers, often reproducing a darkly ironic humor acquired by the tales during their transmission through the era of the
Diaspora. Notable examples can be found in the work of many U.S. writers, including Ben Hecht, Avram Davidson, Cynthia Ozick,
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Lisa Goldstein, Bernard Malamud’s collections The Magic Barrel (1958) and Idiots First (1963) and his religious fantasy God’s Grace (1982), Kate Bernheimer’s The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold (2002), and d. g. k. goldberg’s eclectically chimerical Skating on the Edge (2001). Examples from elsewhere include Brazilian Moacyr Scliar’s
The Centaur in the Garden (1980; tr. 1984) and Zimbabwe-born South African Patricia Schonstein’s A Time of Angels (2003) and The Apothe-cary’s Daughter (2004). A sampler of modern Jewish fantasy is With Signs & Wonders: An International Anthology of Jewish Fabulist Fiction (2001), ed. Daniel M. Jaffe.
JONES, DIANA WYNNE (1934– ). British writer who found her metier in young adult fantasy, often drawing disparate ideas into unusual chimerical combinations with remarkable effect. Wilkins’ Tooth (1973; aka Witch’s Business), The Ogre Downstairs (1974), Dogsbody (1975), and Eight Days of Luke (1975) are humorous fantasies. The Dalemark series, comprising Cart and Cwidder (1975), Drowned Am-met (1977), The Spellcoats (1979), and The Crown of Dalemark (1973), is relatively conventional immersive fantasy, but the Chrestomanci series, featuring a multiverse-roaming troubleshooting wizard who assists various adolescents to come to terms with burgeoning magical powers—comprising Charmed Life (1977), The Magicians of Caprona (1980), Witch Week (1982), and The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988), plus the short pieces in Mixed Magics (2000)—is much more distinctive. A multiverse of alternative histories is also featured in the messianic/Odyssean fantasy The Homeward Bounders (1981).
The Time of the Ghost (1981) is an existential/ghost story, wherein the protagonist’s quest to determine her identity is echoed in various ways in Fire and Hemlock (1984), which transfigures the tale of Tam Lin; the intricate timeslip fantasies Archer’s Goon (1984) and A Tale of Time City (1987); and the reversed portal fantasy Howl’s Moving Castle (1986) and its sequel Castle in the Air (1990). Hexwood (1993) is a science fantasy. Black Maria (1991; aka Aunt Maria) is a feminist comedy with a satirical aspect echoed in Wild Robert (1991), in which a ghost is horrified by the state of the modern world, and A Sudden Wild Magic (1992). The protagonist of Deep Secret (1997), who has the taxing responsibility of ensuring that his civilization does not collapse, experiences a similar distress; The Merlin Conspiracy (2003) is a sequel.
The A to Z of Fantasy Literature Page 38
